Joseph Stefano (5 May 1922 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - 25 August 2006) was an American screenwriter.

As a teenager, Stefano was so keen to become an actor that he dropped out of high school two weeks before graduation and went to New York City. In Manhattan he adopted the stage name Jerry Stevens.

But Stefano's initial career was as a composer of pop music in the 1940s, writing songs for Las Vegas showman Donn Arden. In possession ofa large collection of sheet music, he once spent five hours challenging pianist Michael Feinstein on names of obscure Tin Pan Alley songs.

Stefano began writing movie scripts in the late 1950s, firstly for Martin Ritt with The Black Orchid (1958); his father, a tailor, had made silk flowers and this was an influence on the screenplay. In 1960 though, Stefano was commissioned by Alfred Hitchcock to adapt Robert Bloch's pulp novel Psycho for the screen. His work was recognized by the Mystery Writers of America when he was given a 1961 Edgar Award, for Best Motion Picture Screenplay. Stefano was also offered the job of scripting Hitchcock's The Birds (1963) and Marnie (1964), but chose instead to produce and write for his friend Leslie Stevens' science fiction television anthology series The Outer Limits. This involvement was short-lived. After leaving the series due to network interference and exhaustion, Stefano wrote and directed The Ghost of Sierra de Cobre (1964; AKA The Haunted), a difficult-to-find film utilizing many of the crew responsible for The Outer Limits. The thriller Eye of the Cat (1969) and the comedy Futz! (1969) (co-written by Rochelle Owens) were Stefano's last big-screen jobs for many years. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, he wrote many made-for-TV movies, such as Home for the Holidays (1972), and Snowbeast (1977). In 1990, he revisited the characters from Psycho with the TV movie script for the last sequel in what had become an increasingly disappointing series of films. Psycho IV: The Beginning (1991) interestingly posits the origins of Norman Bates' destructive mother-love, featuring Olivia Hussey as Mrs. Bates. Stefano wrote and executive produced the Al Pacino drama Two Bits (1995; AKA A Day to Remember), a personal project that fared poorly at the box-office and with critics, leaving Stefano less than enthusiastic about continuing to write for modern Hollywood. Gus Van Sant's remake of Psycho (1998) followed Stefano's script punctiliously. Stefano died of a heart attack at Los Robles Hospital in Thousand Oaks, California.

The Outer Limits

Stefano was a producer for the first season of The Outer Limits and wrote a total of 12 episodes. They are:

• "Nightmare"
• "It Crawled Out of the Woodwork"
• "The Zanti Misfits"
• "The Mice" (teleplay)
• "Don't Open Till Doomsday"
• "The Invisibles"
• "The Bellero Shield" (story & teleplay)
• "Moonstone" (story)
• "Fun and Games" (teleplay)
• "A Feasibility Study"
• "The Chameleon" (story)
• "The Forms of Things Unknown"

The last episode was originally a pilot for a proposed TV series called The Unknown, but after ABC rejected it, Stefano reworked it as the season one finale.

References

• Bernstein, Adam. (2006, August 30). ''Joseph Stefano; Key Writer for 'Psycho'''. The Washington Post, page B6

External links

• Joseph Stefano - Psycho Screenwriter Interview

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