10 Most Notorious Alfred Hitchcock Urban Legends

7. He Bought All Copies Of The Psycho Book So Nobody Would Know How The Film Ended

Verdict: Untrue (though not without trying) Hitchcock went to considerable effort to ensure the various twists and turns of Psycho would not be spoiled for the audience. It's a fact that every cinema showing the film had installed a cardboard cutout of Hitchcock bearing the words: "The manager of this theatre has been instructed at the risk of his life, not to admit to the theatre any persons after the picture starts." Hitchcock also bought the rights to Robert Bloch's Psycho novel, and made an attempt to buy up every copy of the book that he could locate, ensuring no one would know the outcome of his film prior to watching it. The claims that Psycho's director managed to eradicate Bloch's novel off the face of the Earth are, however, objectively false. Finding every Psycho book on the planet, in a pre-internet age? Virtually impossible. Not that that stopped Hitch from trying - he was that determined to disturb people in the cinema aisles, instead of in the comforts of their own homes.