A friend of mine insists that when Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho first opened in Britain, the emotional impact of the most famous murder in cinematic history was slightly diminished. As Norman Bates’s knife came into frame, British audiences of 1960 were still recovering from the shock of a scene they had witnessed a few minutes earlier when they were shown a hotel room that had its own shower.
I can still just remember a time when it was normal to walk along a hotel corridor to take a bath or use the loo. And the folk memory of these regional variations still lingers. I don’t think anyone in Britain still packs loo rolls to take to the continent, but people did. Americans, who first travelled to Europe in large numbers at a time when the transatlantic plumbing divide was widest, still believe all French people stink (a US satirical website claims Lance Armstrong was disqualified from the Tour de France after local investigators detected the presence of the banned substances soap, deodorant and toothpaste).
To a visiting Brit of the 1960s, California seemed like science fiction.
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