Janet Leigh’s jinxed hotel suite

• Posted By: Scott Harrison
• Posted On: 12:52 a.m. | April 19, 2012

April 1, 1962. Following her arrival in Los Angeles, Janet Leigh tells a press conference of a black eye – her right eye – received when she was knocked unconscious in a bathroom fall in her New York hotel.

The next morning, the Los Angeles Times reported:

Actress Janet Leigh returned here Sunday from New York sporting a full-length champagne mink coat and a fading black eye.

The coat she had for some time. But the shiner was fairly new – the result of a fall in a “jinxed” New York hotel suite.

“We arrived March 22, I fell the next night, spent a couple days in the hospital, had a fire in the hotel room wastebasket and just before leaving New York today I lit a match and the head flew into my eye.

“It’s been an oh-so-marvelous trip,” the 35-year-old actress laughed during an interview at International Airport.

This photo, by staff photographer Bill Murphy, and previous story were published April 2, 1962, on the LA Times local section front. This photo also appears in the 1999 Los Angeles Times book, “High Exposure: Hollywood Lives — Found Photos From the Archives of the Los Angeles Times.”