A Look at Janet Leigh’s Rise to Stardom Through Rare 1940s Portraits

This article highlights a collection of 35 vintage portraits documenting Janet Leigh during the 1940s, while also tracing the remarkable beginning of her Hollywood career. Before becoming internationally recognized for her unforgettable performance in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 thriller Psycho, Leigh was an ordinary college student studying music and psychology at the College of the Pacific. Her life changed dramatically during the winter of 1945–1946 when retired MGM star Norma Shearer noticed a photograph of the young Jeanette Helen Morrison at a ski resort operated by her parents in Sugar Bowl, California. Impressed by her appearance, Shearer shared the photograph with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer executives, leading to Leigh signing a studio contract despite having no previous acting experience. MGM immediately invested in her development by providing professional training in acting, voice, and dance while giving her the screen name Janet Leigh. Her film debut came in The Romance of Rosy Ridge (1947), where she starred opposite Van Johnson and earned praise for portraying a wholesome young woman. She soon demonstrated greater dramatic range in Act of Violence (1948), playing the wife of a troubled World War II veteran. By the end of the decade, Leigh had appeared in major productions including Little Women (1949), alongside Elizabeth Taylor, June Allyson, and Margaret O’Brien, and That Forsyte Woman (1949), featuring Errol Flynn and Greer Garson. The article argues that by 1949, Leigh had evolved from an unexpected discovery into one of MGM’s most promising leading actresses, laying the foundation for the acclaimed performances that would define her career throughout the 1950s and 1960s.