BOOK REVIEW / NONFICTION : The Making of a Hollywood Classic--From an Insider’s Point of View : PSYCHO: Behind the Scenes of the Classic Thriller, <i> by Janet Leigh with Christopher Nickens</i> , Harmony Books, $22, 197 pages

I always thought that the New Yorker’s Lillian Ross set the standard for movie journalism with “Picture,” her fly-on-the-wall look at the making of “The Red Badge of Courage.” Then, years later, ex-New York Times Hollywood reporter Aljean Harmetz figured out how to retrospectively watch a movie being made with “The Making of the Wizard of Oz.”

It is journalism of a particular sort, the painstaking re-creation (or in Ross’ case, observation) of minute detail upon minute detail, the incremental construction of an entire universe. For a movie fan there is little better. The Wicked Witch is plenty of fun, but the Wicked Witch between takes sipping nutrients through a straw is sublime.

Actress Janet Leigh was as there as there can be for the making of Alfred Hitchcock’s classic film “Psycho,” and now, 35 years after the fact, she has taken herself a co-writer to set down her reminiscences about the film that set the solitary shower back decades.

It stands in stark counterpart to the subject--a casual, conversational memoir, peppered with a handful of interviews, about one of the most carefully plotted projects imaginable. Leigh is anecdotal and lighthearted; Hitchcock was premeditated and controlling. They are truly an odd couple.

Leigh was as nobody as can be when Hollywood discovered her, all because Norma Shearer spied her photograph on her doting father’s desk, and about two hiccups later she had the leading role in what was to become a film classic. At the time, though, it was a low-budget black-and-white adaptation of a Robert Bloch novel about a guy who liked to hack up women--an ugly, unkempt slob of a guy, about as far from Anthony Perkins as a human being could be.

But by the time Hitchcock went into production, the story had been transformed into a sleek little horror tale about a good woman almost gone bad, a woman who stole from her boss to buy herself and her lover a life, and then, full of remorse, got lost on her way back home and stumbled upon the Bates Motel.

This is not journalism; do not buy this book expecting the equivalent of Harmetz’s exhaustive reporting or Ross’ eagle eye. This is affectionate memory, plumped nicely with material gathered from friends and co-workers, but memory nonetheless. Leigh has no problem prefacing a quote with the words, “In essence he explained,” which I take to mean that the words that follow are not a direct quote at all, despite the quotation marks. She tells us, “It is strange to pucker up with fifty or so onlookers,” not quite a groundbreaking observation.

And ironically, she talks about the implied sexuality in Hitchcock’s films, and observes, “The audience has been robbed of their inventiveness. Today they would just show the two actually copulating.” Or maybe Jamie Lee Curtis’ striptease in “True Lies.”

Still, this is a charming trip down memory lane, if a bit too zippy to see all of the scenery. There is additional fanzine information about Leigh, in case you want to know why she is uncomfortable in the water and how many water scenes she’s played besides the “Psycho” shower. (She’s a Cancer, which is a water sign; really, there’s a connection here.) There are tidbits about Hitchcock, Perkins, John Gavin, Vera Miles, Martin Balsam--everyone who was anyone on the “Psycho” set.

And no, she doesn’t take showers. Used to, before she saw the finished film. Now Leigh emphatically prefers the bath (and if stuck in a hotel with only a shower, will lock the doors and windows first). Perhaps that’s the most telling detail about the impact of “Psycho.” Not even the woman who starred in it can quite convince herself that it was make-believe.