In passing

Janet Leigh, famous for ‘Psycho’ role, 77

Hollywood Janet Leigh, Hollywood’s perfect “nice girl” ingénue who memorably changed her acting image and earned an Academy Award nomination in Alfred Hitchcock’s classic “Psycho,” has died. She was 77.

Leigh, who appeared is more than 60 motion pictures, died Sunday in her Beverly Hills, Calif., home of vasculitis, an inflammation of the blood vessels.

At her bedside were her husband of more than 40 years, stockbroker and producer Robert Brandt, and her two daughters from her marriage to actor Tony Curtis, actresses Kelly and Jamie Lee Curtis. Of her scores of motion pictures and movies for television, Leigh was proudest of three, all made within four years, she noted in her 1984 autobiography, “There Really Was a Hollywood.”

They happen to be her most critically acclaimed films and a trio often included on lists of the best all-time movies: Orson Welles’ “Touch of Evil” with Charlton Heston and Welles in 1958, “Psycho” in 1960 and, in 1962, “The Manchurian Candidate,” which was directed by John Frankenheimer and starred Frank Sinatra and Laurence Harvey.

But “Psycho,” with its fatal shower scene that tantalized viewers’ imaginations, was unquestionably the zenith of Leigh’s career.

Her 45 minutes on screen, ending with her dramatic stabbing death in the shower, earned Leigh a Golden Globe award as well as an Oscar nomination and a slot in Hollywood history.

Born Jeannette Helen Morrison in Merced, Calif., on July 6, 1927, she was studying music and psychology at College of the Pacific in Stockton when fate fit for a Hollywood script intervened.

MGM star Norma Shearer saw a photo of the 19-year-old on the desk of her doting father at the ski lodge where he worked. Shearer took the photo to agent Lew Wasserman, who signed her to a contract at MGM – then known for developing actors – for $50 a week.

In addition to her husband and daughters, Leigh is survived by a grandson and a granddaughter.

Gordon Cooper, Project Mercury astronaut, 77

Ventura, Calif. Gordon Cooper, who as one of the original Mercury astronauts was a pioneer in human space exploration, has died. He was 77.

Cooper died Monday at his home in Ventura, NASA officials said in a statement.

“As one of the original seven Mercury astronauts, Gordon Cooper was one of the faces of America’s fledgling space program,” said NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe. “He truly portrayed the right stuff, and he helped gain the backing and enthusiasm of the American public, so critical for the spirit of exploration.” Cooper piloted the final flight of the Mercury program, the United States’ first manned spaceflight program that had the primary goal of putting a man in orbit around Earth.

Born March 6, 1927, in Shawnee, Okla., Cooper was selected as a Mercury astronaut in April 1959. The astronauts became heroes in the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Cooper’s cocksure attitude was immortalized in Tom Wolfe’s book “The Right Stuff” and the 1983 movie of the same name.

On May 15, 1963, Cooper piloted the “Faith 7” spacecraft on a 22-orbit mission that concluded the operational phase of the Project Mercury. He flew for 34 hours and 20 minutes.

Two years later, he served as command pilot of the Gemini 5 mission, during which he and Charles Conrad established a new space endurance record by traveling more than 3.3 million miles in a time of 190 hours, 56 minutes.

The flight proved that humans could survive in a weightless state for the length of a trip to the moon.