Stamps In The Movies (Trivia)

The art of which US stamp appears in the 1960 Hitchcock-directed movie Psycho?

(Feel free to add another stamps-in-the-movies type trivia question, if you have one.)

I ran through the movie and am still stumped. An obvious candidate would be the picture that Norman takes off the wall to spy on Marion, but can't find that image on any stamp.

I'd seen Psycho many times before noticing the stamp art only recently. As a hint. you are on the right track, Oracle.

As a rabid Hitchcock fan, I must say that I am stumped.

I have seen Psycho only a few times, and has been many years since my last viewing. Considering the plot of the movie and the subject matter of stamps to that date, I have a wild guess. Is it the Mothers of America issue of 34-35 depicting Whistler's Mother?

reasonable logic, Ratfish, but as a small hint I can say the US stamp in question was issued after the movie's release

Can't venture a guess on your trivia question… But is a sidebar … whenever I'm watching a movie that has mail of any kind being handled I always see if the stamp on the envelope is the correct time for the movie. Drives my wife crazy! I always make her rewind the movie a couple of times and freeze the frame! You might be surprised how often the stamp is out of its time element.

Yes, I do the same, pause and look at the stamps. Even if a film gets the stamps right for the itme period, the postmark is usually a bad fake. IIRC, relatively speaking, Shawshank Redemption has one of the somewhat more realistic postmarks, perhaps because Red specifically mentions it.

Given that no one has gotten the Psycho stamp, here's a bigger hint, it involves Currier and Ives art. Since that greatly narrows the stamp possibilities, I'll also ask where it is seen in the movie. If no one guesses correctly after 24 more hours, I'll reveal the answers.

Picture on the wall in the motel room and the one that fell on the floor when Norman checked on the bathroom after the shower scene look like they may be similar to Audobon prints later made into stamps

About 3/4 into the movie, the image over the bed in cabin #10 in which Sam and Lila talk after checking in to the motel is Currier and Ives sleigh ride from 1853. This image was also portrayed in a stamp issued in 1974 (Scott 1551).

Thanks for an enjoyable trivia challenge which had me watching the movie again and actually discovering little details I hadn't noticed before (besides the image in question).

As a current resident of Scottsdale, I also note that the city of Phoenix now looks absolutely nothing like the sleepy little town shown in the movie. Back then the population of the Phoenix metro area was a little over 0.5 million; now it's 4.6 million.


BTW, for some reason, when I tried to insert the name of the infamous motel, I kept getting a message saying I was doing something prohibited. Not sure why the name B-A-T-E-S triggers that warning.

Wow - congrats on coming up with that trivia detail! Well done!

We have a winner! Congrats Oracle! And thanks for the screen cap.

Yes, as seen on the Christmas stamp, that's the Currier and Ives print titled Winter Road. It makes me think of the song lyrics "Over the river and through the woods, To (grand)mother's house we go..." which might be what Hitch intended.

This has really been an enjoyable topic. I had not realized that so many stamp collector take note of those movie faux-pars