No one who has made the grade in Hollywood can lay claim to being more of a true, unadulterated Cinderella than our Star of the Month for October, Janet Leigh. Janet came into the world humbly in 1927, as a California girl named Jeanette Morrison, arriving with no noticeable talent or destiny dictating her future. Unlike Cindy, she never had to sweep out fireplaces, but neither was her life a cabaret, old chum. She married at 14, was single again within five months, graduated from high school at 15, then married again at 18. But there was no yellow brick road beckoning her to Oz.

All that changed, however, one fateful day in the mid-1940s when MGM's Queen emeritus Norma Shearer, who'd recently retired from films, happened to be skiing in Northern California, staying at a resort where Jeanette's father was working the front desk. Voila! There on his desk was a picture of his daughter. Norma later recalled thinking, "Hmmm, pretty face. Fresh and interesting." Norma, in the best tradition of a fairy godmother, borrowed the photo and took it with her back to Hollywood and eventually dropped it off at the casting office of her old alma mater, MGM. That became another voila! moment.

MGM just happened to be the most important studio in Hollywood and, further, was looking for a fresh and interesting newcomer to play a backwoods ingénue in an important new Van Johnson project called The Romance of Rosy Ridge (1947), set in the Missouri Ozarks just after the Civil War. Every young wannabe in Hollywood under 25 had tested for it; the majority of them, unfortunately, looked as though they had spent far too much time drinking at Ciro's and/or dancing at the Stork. None looked as though they would ever be comfortable on a farm gathering eggs or feeding chickens. Jeanette did.

She was pretty, sweet, sans temperament, made friends easily, had a natural instinct for acting and, a sizeable plus, could convincingly be cast in all those roles that the MGM girls with high vavoom factors couldn't. Elizabeth, Ava, Lana and Esther playing simple homebodies, uncomplicated girlfriends, normal office clerks or believable flight attendants? Fughedaboutit! With Jeanette's name changed to Janet Leigh (Van Johnson got credit for that), in her first three years in Hollywood she was cast in prominent roles in 10 major movies, all leading to a remarkable 58- year career and roles opposite heavyweights from Jimmy Stewart, Robert Mitchum and John Wayne to Paul Newman, Errol Flynn and Kirk Douglas. En route there was also an Academy Award® nomination.

During those years she also morphed, for real, from country girl into classy lady, ending up in many of the landmark films from the late 1940s into the '60s, including Fred Zimmermann's Act of Violence (1948), Anthony Mann's The Naked Spur (1953), Welles' Touch of Evil (1958) and Hitchcock's Psycho (1960, which earned her that Academy nomination), all of which we'll be showing this month, along with 30 others including three of the films she made with her third husband Tony Curtis (1958's The Vikings, 1960's Who Was That Lady? and 1958's The Perfect Furlough, which is a TCM premiere).

It's going to make for great entertainment for all of us this October. Cinderella should have had it so good.

by Robert Osborne