A Chip Off the Old Bloch:
An Interview with Sally Francy
By Leigh Blackmore
An Interview with Sally Francy
By Leigh Blackmore
“What was it like growing up as the daughter of the man who wrote Psycho?”
One can only guess how often Sally Francy has been asked this question. As she describes it in this exclusive interview with Cemetery Dance, life with the man who created one of horror fiction’s most notorious serial killers was quite…normal. She describes Robert Bloch as a hard-working novelist, short story writer and ad copy man, a doting father who indulged her love of animals and kept her on her toes with his sharp sense of humor. We hope you enjoy this unique peek into the life of one of horror’s true masters, through the eyes of his child.
Leigh Blackmore: You were born Sally Ann Bloch via caesarean on July 28 (the birthday of your paternal grandmother, Stella Loeb Bloch), 1943. This was in Milwaukee, wasn’t it?
Sally Francy: Yes.
CD: Your mother Marion had tuberculosis, eventually diagnosed as tuberculosis of the bone, didn’t she? Do you think her condition made it difficult for her to look after you? Your dad writes in his “unauthorized autobiography” Once Around the Bloch that she was a very devoted mother.
SF: My mother had tuberculosis of the bone when she was nine years old, as I recall her telling me, and she was not able to go to school until she was 12 because of it. She did not have surgery to remove the diseased section of bone (the head of the femur bone) until an aunt and uncle financed her surgery when she was 19 years old. From then on, she wore a built-up shoe which allowed her to walk, albeit with a limp. She was ill much of the time when I was very young, and my father spent a great deal of time helping take care of me when my mother was unable to, and he took care of us both when my mother was having health issues.
My father was good with children and animals too; he was so kind and gentle and soft-spoken that animals were comforted by his demeanor, and he never talked down to children in the condescending or patronizing way adults so often are guilty of doing. He answered questions simply and honestly. I knew I could always get my questions answered truthfully by my father, whatever they might be, and if my mother was uncomfortable answering questions for me or didn’t know the answers, she would say, “Ask your father.”
When I didn’t understand the meaning of a word, my dad would often tell me to look the word up in the dictionary. He would tell me how to spell it and aske me to tell him what it meant, so I learned how to use the dictionary, learned to spell it, and learned the various meanings and origins of the word. As a bonus, I felt that I was also enlightening my dad, which was really quite clever of him.
CD: By the time you were a toddler (around the end of World War II), your dad was broadcasting the radio show he wrote, Stay Tuned for Terror, which sadly appears to have no surviving recordings. You would have been very young, but do you happen to remember hearing episodes of it? Did your mother tune in to it on the radio?
SF: Though I was very young, I remember us sitting around the radio listening to Stay Tuned for Terror. I don’t recall whether I understood that Dad had written the stories at that time; most likely not, but I knew we enjoyed listening to it on the radio in our Maryland Avenue apartment. There was an air of excitement about it which I picked up on from my parents.
CD: When did you become aware that your dad was a writer, novelist, and author of screenplays? Did he show you his published works?
SF: It wasn’t until we moved to Weyauwega that Dad got a typewriter and had his own office in our house. When we lived in Milwaukee, I was oblivious to what Dad did for a living, though I remember going to his office at Gus Marx’s advertising agency a time or two when I was very young, on the weekends.
After we moved from Milwaukee and he was working from home, I understood that he wrote stories and books. I don’t remember my mother reading Dad’s stories, although she probably did, and when I reach my pre-teen and teenage years, I began to ready quite a few things Dad had written.
CD: Your dad’s work was widely published in Weird Tales magazine. Can you remember copies of the magazine being in the family home? Did your dad keep a collection of this and other magazines where his stories had appeared?
SF: Yes. Dad kept a collection of the magazines and books in which his stories appeared. He had floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in our house in Weyauwega and also after we moved to California.
CD: Your dad’s first book, the short story collection The Opener of the Way, was published in 1945 by Arkham House. Did he show it to you, and did you ever read it?
SF: Yes, I’ve read The Opener of the Way, and have several copies of it, one of which is autographed to me. It goes without saying I didn’t read it in 1945, as I was only two years old at that time.
CD: Were your school friends aware that your dad was a writer? What did they think of this occupation?
SF: My friends were aware that Dad was a writer, but they didn’t consider that an “occupation.” However, he was very popular with my friends, one in particular whose relationship with her parents left a lot to be desired, and Dad was very kind to her. She was envious of the great relationship I had with my father, as she had a terrible relationship with hers. Dad always joked with her and made her laugh, which was so unlike her own parents, and I think it made a difference in her life as she was growing up. We are still close friends to this day, and she has fond recollections of Dad.
CD: Did he spend long hours at the typewriter in addition to his full-time work at the Gustav Marx Advertising Agency?
SF: No. After we moved away from Milwaukee, Dad’s full-time work was done from home, so from then on, he did spend much of his time at work in his office.
CD: What memories do you have of being taken out on weekends by your parents as you were growing up?
SF: When we lived on the second story of the four-family apartment house in Milwaukee, my mother was on crutches for a long time, which kept her house-bound. Perhaps it wasn’t as long as it felt like to my young psyche, but it was certainly months, if not a year or more.
My father took me to the zoo and museums and to parks when I was little and occasionally friends and relatives would drive us places. I remember going to one circus that my mother was able to attend when I was quite small. My father took me to other circuses when my mother was not able to join us, and we always went to see the elephants before the performance. He loved elephants and the “big cats,” especially tigers. I liked the elephants and tigers too, but my favorite animals were the horses.
When we lived in Weyauwega, we occasionally went to “the beach,” which was the Waupaca River, and we had friends who had rowboats or motorboats and we used to row on the lakes occasionally in their boats. We had some friends from Milwaukee who owned a cottage along the lake for a while, and they used to come pick us up so my mother could go too.
My parents had a large group of friends when we still lived in Milwaukee who used to get together often to play cards, and they also used to have costume parties which I have years’ worth of photos of. I don’t remember if they were Halloween parties or New Years’ Even parties, or just an excused to dress up in amusing costumes. They had a lot of fun, and between Dad’s friend, Harold Gauer, and his boss (and friend), Gus Marx, both of whom were very competent photographers, these events were documented with plentiful photos over the years. They enjoyed staging silly or ridiculous scenes and photographing them as if they were “real” events, such as Dad in a dentist’s chair, for example. Harold Gauer kept a “history” of their times from high school days, which he later published in three separate volumes, complete with most of the photos he had taken over the years. They are quite entertaining. Dad and Harold and their buddies were a bunch of characters and were all very funny when they got together. Those costume events were “grown up” parties, so the children only shared in the fun vicariously, by looking at the pictures of their shenanigans after the fact.
CD: In 1959, when you were aged 16, your dad moved to Hollywood to write for television and movies. Do you recall seeing any of the shows he wrote for, such as Alfred Hitchcock Presents? What was your experience of his protracted absences?
SF: For the year plus that Dad was in Hollywood writing for television and movies, my mother and I missed him terribly. My mother had her family close by and kept busy. I did too, but we wrote letters and he called often. We watched Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and after we moved out to California, we watched everything we could that he wrote for television: Thriller, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, I Spy, Star Trek, Night Gallery, Tales from the Darkside, and some of his movies: Psycho, The Couch, Strait-Jacket. I don’t remember seeing The House That Dripped Blood or Torture Garden or Asylum, for whatever reason.
CD: Regarding Psycho, what were your feelings at seeing a movie based on a book that your dad had written?
SF: We went to the screening of Psycho and sat right behind Janet Leigh. I was very excited about that, and of course, proud of my dad. Janet Leigh was very nice, and she later sent me an autographed picture.
Dad was pleased that the movie so closely followed the book. It’s too bad that he was contractually obligated on another project when Hitchcock was looking for a screenwriter for the movie, but Dad was not unhappy with what Joe Stefano did with it. Though Dad was not monetarily compensated for the movie rights as fairly as he should have been, he was always grateful for what the movie’s popularity did for his name recognition and his career going forward.
Dad and I went to lunch with Joan Crawford when Crawford was working on Strait-Jacket. People kept coming over to our table asking for her autograph. She was a very tiny woman, but her persona was huge, and I was intimidated by her. Later, when we went to the screening of Strait-Jacket, I mostly remember people congratulating Diane Baker afterwards, who was in the movie with Crawford, and I’ve always felt bad that I was so shy and star-struck that I did not chime in with everyone else to tell her what a good job she did. I can still remember her looking at me, looking so insecure, not realizing that I was too shy to offer praise. I felt like I was “just a kid,” but she was only about five years older than I was. I’ve always regretted not having had the courage to speak up because she definitely did a great job, though I’m sure she was not permanently wounded by my lack of endorsement. She quickly went on to well-deserved acclaim during the course of her career. It’s just one of those moments in one’s life that I wish I could “do over.” Perhaps on the plus side, I never hesitate to compliment or encourage deserving people as a result of that experience, so without knowing it, Diane Baker helped me with my growth.
CD: Your mother was unhappy in Hollywood. Were you also unhappy, or did it suit you?
SF: Coming from a little farming community into “the big city” was difficult for me but much more so for my mother. She was not confident meeting the Hollywood businesspeople my father’s work put us in contact with socially. She never really did adjust to it, and she began using alcohol as a coping mechanism not too long after we moved to California. She really missed her family back in Wisconsin. For our first year in Hollywood I missed my Wisconsin friends terribly, but I made friends quickly and I was not unhappy. However, it was a very difficult time for my mother.
CD: It seems there was a growing tension between your parents at that time, leading to their eventual divorce. How aware were you of this tension?
SF: I was very aware of the fact that my mother felt lost without the support of her family, with whom she had always been very closed, and she began drinking more and more, and that was difficult for my father and for me. She was not a “happy drunk.”
CD: Did your dad really have “the heart of a small boy…in a jar on his desk?” Of course he didn’t but it was one of his great lines, along with “I haven’t had so much fun since the rats at my baby sister.” How would Bob’s humor express itself in your daily life together? Did you like his sense of humor, which could often be blackly comical?
SF: My dad kept me in hysterics throughout his life. I understood his humor and had a similar sense of humor (as does my son, it turns out), and I could generally anticipate what he was about to say before he finished his thought. My mother used to say, “You’re just like your father!” Frankly, nobody can say anything nicer than that to me. I can’t imagine having a better father than the one I was fortunate enough to have. I loved it when he called me “a chip off the old Bloch,” or when he referred to me as “his best work.”
CD: It seems your dad wrote letters to you only from around 1972, when you would have been aged around 30. His letters to you continued up until he passed away in 1994. Was there some reason he was not in the habit of writing you more often while you were in your twenties?
SF: He did not write to me when I was in my 20s because we lived in Southern California very close to where Dad and Elly (Eleanor Alexander, whom Bloch married after divorcing Marion) lived, and saw them frequently when we were there. When we moved north (when I was 28), we began writing frequently (as well as phoning), and they came to visit us, and we went down there to visit them, but it was a long drive so we did not go back and forth as much as we all would have liked.
CD: Have you read all of your dad’s work? If so, what are your favorites amongst his novels and stories? Or do you prefer not to read the sort of stories he wrote?
SF: I have not read all of Dad’s work, but I’ve read much of it. I have to confess that I like everything he wrote, but then, I’m a bit biased. His sense of humor always makes me laugh at his plays on words or punch lines. He was an entertaining man, and his quiet, dry wit made his humor all the more unexpected to those who didn’t know him. He was so funny. I miss him.
CD: Do you have many fans of Robert Bloch and his writings contacting you? Or do you prefer enquiries to go to his literary and film agents? Do you oversee new deals on his work yourself?
SF: Quite a few fans have contacted me over the past few years. I do refer some inquiries to his literary and film agents, but I have the final say in new deals, though I rely on my agents to give me the benefit of their judgement.
CD: Do many of your dad’s old literary colleagues keep in touch with you?
SF: Many of Dad’s literary colleagues have passed on and are perhaps once again enjoying one another’s company, maybe collaborating on one last hoped-for bestseller “beyond the veil”—a ghost story perhaps?
As for those still among us, I babysat for Richard Matheson’s kids and rode horseback with their older daughter before I got married, when I boarded my horse and rented a small cottage in the same development where the Mathesons lived (and Ruth still does, as far as I know.)
I am in occasional contact with Harlan and Susan Ellison. I remember Harlan coming to visit us when we still lived in Weyauwega. He was just a kid then, as was I. Harlan was helpful to me when Dad was ill and after, as was Rich Matheson.
I established a friendship with Chelsea Quinn Yarbro when Dad put us in touch with one another when Quinn had a horse some years ago. We enjoyed getting together for lunch on occasion and she drove down to Los Angeles with me when Dad was ill, so see him before he passed.
I have enjoyed getting to know Randall D. Larson, one of Dad’s bibliographers, since Dad’s passing. We’ve had several visits together here, in person, as he has worked on updating Dad’s bibliography and I am very grateful to him for what he has done, and beyond that, he’s a very nice guy. I know Dad was very fond of him and grateful for his work, as well.
CD: There must be some amongst your acquaintances and friends who know you mainly as “the daughter for the man who wrote Psycho.” Have you ever wished to distance yourself from the association with your dad’s fame and simply be recognized for who you are and for your own achievements?
SF: I’m very proud of Dad and I don’t ever wish to distance myself from the association with him in any way. I could not have asked for a better father, and I hope I can keep his legacy alive for as long as I am alive, and hopefully beyond.
My own achievements are not particularly worthy of recognition. I consider myself truly fortunate to have had “the man who wrote Psycho” as my father, and it has been fun to flesh out a broader picture of him for those fans who might be interested in his day-to-day life from his daughter’s perspective.
Thank you for this opportunity. I’ve enjoyed doing it, and I hope Dad’s fans enjoy reading it and seeing other sides of “The Author of Psycho” to let them see that truly, like Norman, the now famous character we all know, “he wouldn’t even harm a fly.”
This interview originally appeared in Cemetery Dance magazine, issue #77 (2019) and is reproduced here with the kind permission of both the author and publisher.
One can only guess how often Sally Francy has been asked this question. As she describes it in this exclusive interview with Cemetery Dance, life with the man who created one of horror fiction’s most notorious serial killers was quite…normal. She describes Robert Bloch as a hard-working novelist, short story writer and ad copy man, a doting father who indulged her love of animals and kept her on her toes with his sharp sense of humor. We hope you enjoy this unique peek into the life of one of horror’s true masters, through the eyes of his child.
Leigh Blackmore: You were born Sally Ann Bloch via caesarean on July 28 (the birthday of your paternal grandmother, Stella Loeb Bloch), 1943. This was in Milwaukee, wasn’t it?
Sally Francy: Yes.
CD: Your mother Marion had tuberculosis, eventually diagnosed as tuberculosis of the bone, didn’t she? Do you think her condition made it difficult for her to look after you? Your dad writes in his “unauthorized autobiography” Once Around the Bloch that she was a very devoted mother.
SF: My mother had tuberculosis of the bone when she was nine years old, as I recall her telling me, and she was not able to go to school until she was 12 because of it. She did not have surgery to remove the diseased section of bone (the head of the femur bone) until an aunt and uncle financed her surgery when she was 19 years old. From then on, she wore a built-up shoe which allowed her to walk, albeit with a limp. She was ill much of the time when I was very young, and my father spent a great deal of time helping take care of me when my mother was unable to, and he took care of us both when my mother was having health issues.
My father was good with children and animals too; he was so kind and gentle and soft-spoken that animals were comforted by his demeanor, and he never talked down to children in the condescending or patronizing way adults so often are guilty of doing. He answered questions simply and honestly. I knew I could always get my questions answered truthfully by my father, whatever they might be, and if my mother was uncomfortable answering questions for me or didn’t know the answers, she would say, “Ask your father.”
When I didn’t understand the meaning of a word, my dad would often tell me to look the word up in the dictionary. He would tell me how to spell it and aske me to tell him what it meant, so I learned how to use the dictionary, learned to spell it, and learned the various meanings and origins of the word. As a bonus, I felt that I was also enlightening my dad, which was really quite clever of him.
CD: By the time you were a toddler (around the end of World War II), your dad was broadcasting the radio show he wrote, Stay Tuned for Terror, which sadly appears to have no surviving recordings. You would have been very young, but do you happen to remember hearing episodes of it? Did your mother tune in to it on the radio?
SF: Though I was very young, I remember us sitting around the radio listening to Stay Tuned for Terror. I don’t recall whether I understood that Dad had written the stories at that time; most likely not, but I knew we enjoyed listening to it on the radio in our Maryland Avenue apartment. There was an air of excitement about it which I picked up on from my parents.
CD: When did you become aware that your dad was a writer, novelist, and author of screenplays? Did he show you his published works?
SF: It wasn’t until we moved to Weyauwega that Dad got a typewriter and had his own office in our house. When we lived in Milwaukee, I was oblivious to what Dad did for a living, though I remember going to his office at Gus Marx’s advertising agency a time or two when I was very young, on the weekends.
After we moved from Milwaukee and he was working from home, I understood that he wrote stories and books. I don’t remember my mother reading Dad’s stories, although she probably did, and when I reach my pre-teen and teenage years, I began to ready quite a few things Dad had written.
CD: Your dad’s work was widely published in Weird Tales magazine. Can you remember copies of the magazine being in the family home? Did your dad keep a collection of this and other magazines where his stories had appeared?
SF: Yes. Dad kept a collection of the magazines and books in which his stories appeared. He had floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in our house in Weyauwega and also after we moved to California.
CD: Your dad’s first book, the short story collection The Opener of the Way, was published in 1945 by Arkham House. Did he show it to you, and did you ever read it?
SF: Yes, I’ve read The Opener of the Way, and have several copies of it, one of which is autographed to me. It goes without saying I didn’t read it in 1945, as I was only two years old at that time.
CD: Were your school friends aware that your dad was a writer? What did they think of this occupation?
SF: My friends were aware that Dad was a writer, but they didn’t consider that an “occupation.” However, he was very popular with my friends, one in particular whose relationship with her parents left a lot to be desired, and Dad was very kind to her. She was envious of the great relationship I had with my father, as she had a terrible relationship with hers. Dad always joked with her and made her laugh, which was so unlike her own parents, and I think it made a difference in her life as she was growing up. We are still close friends to this day, and she has fond recollections of Dad.
CD: Did he spend long hours at the typewriter in addition to his full-time work at the Gustav Marx Advertising Agency?
SF: No. After we moved away from Milwaukee, Dad’s full-time work was done from home, so from then on, he did spend much of his time at work in his office.
CD: What memories do you have of being taken out on weekends by your parents as you were growing up?
SF: When we lived on the second story of the four-family apartment house in Milwaukee, my mother was on crutches for a long time, which kept her house-bound. Perhaps it wasn’t as long as it felt like to my young psyche, but it was certainly months, if not a year or more.
My father took me to the zoo and museums and to parks when I was little and occasionally friends and relatives would drive us places. I remember going to one circus that my mother was able to attend when I was quite small. My father took me to other circuses when my mother was not able to join us, and we always went to see the elephants before the performance. He loved elephants and the “big cats,” especially tigers. I liked the elephants and tigers too, but my favorite animals were the horses.
When we lived in Weyauwega, we occasionally went to “the beach,” which was the Waupaca River, and we had friends who had rowboats or motorboats and we used to row on the lakes occasionally in their boats. We had some friends from Milwaukee who owned a cottage along the lake for a while, and they used to come pick us up so my mother could go too.
My parents had a large group of friends when we still lived in Milwaukee who used to get together often to play cards, and they also used to have costume parties which I have years’ worth of photos of. I don’t remember if they were Halloween parties or New Years’ Even parties, or just an excused to dress up in amusing costumes. They had a lot of fun, and between Dad’s friend, Harold Gauer, and his boss (and friend), Gus Marx, both of whom were very competent photographers, these events were documented with plentiful photos over the years. They enjoyed staging silly or ridiculous scenes and photographing them as if they were “real” events, such as Dad in a dentist’s chair, for example. Harold Gauer kept a “history” of their times from high school days, which he later published in three separate volumes, complete with most of the photos he had taken over the years. They are quite entertaining. Dad and Harold and their buddies were a bunch of characters and were all very funny when they got together. Those costume events were “grown up” parties, so the children only shared in the fun vicariously, by looking at the pictures of their shenanigans after the fact.
CD: In 1959, when you were aged 16, your dad moved to Hollywood to write for television and movies. Do you recall seeing any of the shows he wrote for, such as Alfred Hitchcock Presents? What was your experience of his protracted absences?
SF: For the year plus that Dad was in Hollywood writing for television and movies, my mother and I missed him terribly. My mother had her family close by and kept busy. I did too, but we wrote letters and he called often. We watched Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and after we moved out to California, we watched everything we could that he wrote for television: Thriller, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, I Spy, Star Trek, Night Gallery, Tales from the Darkside, and some of his movies: Psycho, The Couch, Strait-Jacket. I don’t remember seeing The House That Dripped Blood or Torture Garden or Asylum, for whatever reason.
CD: Regarding Psycho, what were your feelings at seeing a movie based on a book that your dad had written?
SF: We went to the screening of Psycho and sat right behind Janet Leigh. I was very excited about that, and of course, proud of my dad. Janet Leigh was very nice, and she later sent me an autographed picture.
Dad was pleased that the movie so closely followed the book. It’s too bad that he was contractually obligated on another project when Hitchcock was looking for a screenwriter for the movie, but Dad was not unhappy with what Joe Stefano did with it. Though Dad was not monetarily compensated for the movie rights as fairly as he should have been, he was always grateful for what the movie’s popularity did for his name recognition and his career going forward.
Dad and I went to lunch with Joan Crawford when Crawford was working on Strait-Jacket. People kept coming over to our table asking for her autograph. She was a very tiny woman, but her persona was huge, and I was intimidated by her. Later, when we went to the screening of Strait-Jacket, I mostly remember people congratulating Diane Baker afterwards, who was in the movie with Crawford, and I’ve always felt bad that I was so shy and star-struck that I did not chime in with everyone else to tell her what a good job she did. I can still remember her looking at me, looking so insecure, not realizing that I was too shy to offer praise. I felt like I was “just a kid,” but she was only about five years older than I was. I’ve always regretted not having had the courage to speak up because she definitely did a great job, though I’m sure she was not permanently wounded by my lack of endorsement. She quickly went on to well-deserved acclaim during the course of her career. It’s just one of those moments in one’s life that I wish I could “do over.” Perhaps on the plus side, I never hesitate to compliment or encourage deserving people as a result of that experience, so without knowing it, Diane Baker helped me with my growth.
CD: Your mother was unhappy in Hollywood. Were you also unhappy, or did it suit you?
SF: Coming from a little farming community into “the big city” was difficult for me but much more so for my mother. She was not confident meeting the Hollywood businesspeople my father’s work put us in contact with socially. She never really did adjust to it, and she began using alcohol as a coping mechanism not too long after we moved to California. She really missed her family back in Wisconsin. For our first year in Hollywood I missed my Wisconsin friends terribly, but I made friends quickly and I was not unhappy. However, it was a very difficult time for my mother.
CD: It seems there was a growing tension between your parents at that time, leading to their eventual divorce. How aware were you of this tension?
SF: I was very aware of the fact that my mother felt lost without the support of her family, with whom she had always been very closed, and she began drinking more and more, and that was difficult for my father and for me. She was not a “happy drunk.”
CD: Did your dad really have “the heart of a small boy…in a jar on his desk?” Of course he didn’t but it was one of his great lines, along with “I haven’t had so much fun since the rats at my baby sister.” How would Bob’s humor express itself in your daily life together? Did you like his sense of humor, which could often be blackly comical?
SF: My dad kept me in hysterics throughout his life. I understood his humor and had a similar sense of humor (as does my son, it turns out), and I could generally anticipate what he was about to say before he finished his thought. My mother used to say, “You’re just like your father!” Frankly, nobody can say anything nicer than that to me. I can’t imagine having a better father than the one I was fortunate enough to have. I loved it when he called me “a chip off the old Bloch,” or when he referred to me as “his best work.”
CD: It seems your dad wrote letters to you only from around 1972, when you would have been aged around 30. His letters to you continued up until he passed away in 1994. Was there some reason he was not in the habit of writing you more often while you were in your twenties?
SF: He did not write to me when I was in my 20s because we lived in Southern California very close to where Dad and Elly (Eleanor Alexander, whom Bloch married after divorcing Marion) lived, and saw them frequently when we were there. When we moved north (when I was 28), we began writing frequently (as well as phoning), and they came to visit us, and we went down there to visit them, but it was a long drive so we did not go back and forth as much as we all would have liked.
CD: Have you read all of your dad’s work? If so, what are your favorites amongst his novels and stories? Or do you prefer not to read the sort of stories he wrote?
SF: I have not read all of Dad’s work, but I’ve read much of it. I have to confess that I like everything he wrote, but then, I’m a bit biased. His sense of humor always makes me laugh at his plays on words or punch lines. He was an entertaining man, and his quiet, dry wit made his humor all the more unexpected to those who didn’t know him. He was so funny. I miss him.
CD: Do you have many fans of Robert Bloch and his writings contacting you? Or do you prefer enquiries to go to his literary and film agents? Do you oversee new deals on his work yourself?
SF: Quite a few fans have contacted me over the past few years. I do refer some inquiries to his literary and film agents, but I have the final say in new deals, though I rely on my agents to give me the benefit of their judgement.
CD: Do many of your dad’s old literary colleagues keep in touch with you?
SF: Many of Dad’s literary colleagues have passed on and are perhaps once again enjoying one another’s company, maybe collaborating on one last hoped-for bestseller “beyond the veil”—a ghost story perhaps?
As for those still among us, I babysat for Richard Matheson’s kids and rode horseback with their older daughter before I got married, when I boarded my horse and rented a small cottage in the same development where the Mathesons lived (and Ruth still does, as far as I know.)
I am in occasional contact with Harlan and Susan Ellison. I remember Harlan coming to visit us when we still lived in Weyauwega. He was just a kid then, as was I. Harlan was helpful to me when Dad was ill and after, as was Rich Matheson.
I established a friendship with Chelsea Quinn Yarbro when Dad put us in touch with one another when Quinn had a horse some years ago. We enjoyed getting together for lunch on occasion and she drove down to Los Angeles with me when Dad was ill, so see him before he passed.
I have enjoyed getting to know Randall D. Larson, one of Dad’s bibliographers, since Dad’s passing. We’ve had several visits together here, in person, as he has worked on updating Dad’s bibliography and I am very grateful to him for what he has done, and beyond that, he’s a very nice guy. I know Dad was very fond of him and grateful for his work, as well.
CD: There must be some amongst your acquaintances and friends who know you mainly as “the daughter for the man who wrote Psycho.” Have you ever wished to distance yourself from the association with your dad’s fame and simply be recognized for who you are and for your own achievements?
SF: I’m very proud of Dad and I don’t ever wish to distance myself from the association with him in any way. I could not have asked for a better father, and I hope I can keep his legacy alive for as long as I am alive, and hopefully beyond.
My own achievements are not particularly worthy of recognition. I consider myself truly fortunate to have had “the man who wrote Psycho” as my father, and it has been fun to flesh out a broader picture of him for those fans who might be interested in his day-to-day life from his daughter’s perspective.
Thank you for this opportunity. I’ve enjoyed doing it, and I hope Dad’s fans enjoy reading it and seeing other sides of “The Author of Psycho” to let them see that truly, like Norman, the now famous character we all know, “he wouldn’t even harm a fly.”
This interview originally appeared in Cemetery Dance magazine, issue #77 (2019) and is reproduced here with the kind permission of both the author and publisher.