The censors balked at what they perceived as nudity in the shower sequence. The film also rattled the censors who executed Hollywood’s slackening Motion Picture Production Code, also known as the Hays Code, which was in effect from 1934 to 1968. So Hitchcock financed its budget himself, against the advice of his own producers. Paramount, the studio that had produced several of the director’s 1950s successes, refused to bankroll it. Psycho became Hitchcock’s most successful film at the time-its box-office take, $32 million, was the second best of 1960, after Spartacus.
