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Screenwriter of `Psycho` Dies

The entertainment and movies fans surely are familiar with the great "Psycho" movie, which became classic. The film`s screenwriter Joseph Stefano has died a few days ago at the age of 84. The cause of his death has not been exposed. Stefano`s career had started as him being a pianist, singer and dancer. But the real success only came to him with his writing - first songs, and then screenplays. He was best known for adapting Robert Bloch`s novel Psycho - which director Alfred Hitchcock asked him to rework for the big screen. Born in 1922 in Philadelphia, Stefano started working in stage entertainment, writing music and lyrics and touring with a modern dance troupe.

But his big break in the entertainment world was only in the 1950s, when he was hired as a writer for TV show The Ted Mack Family Hour. By 1958, he had scripted two films - comedy Anna di Brooklyn and drama The Black Orchid, which starred Sophia Loren and Anthony Quinn. In 1960, he was taken on by studio 20th Century Fox and given Robert Bloch`s pulp novel Psycho to adapt.

Three years after writing Psycho, Stefano returned to TV writing to create sci-fi entertainment show The Outer Limits with Leslie Stevens. The series ran for two years between 1963 and 1965 and was famous for the line: "There is nothing wrong with your television. Do not attempt to adjust the picture." During the 1970s and `80s, Stefano mainly wrote TV movies - including the fourth sequel to Psycho.