![]() The situation worsened during the filming of Hitchcock’s next movie, Marnie, in which Hedren took the title role, originally intended for Grace Kelly. Hitchcock inserted himself into Hedren’s life in ways she could not accept. “It was an awful, awful moment I’ll always wish I could erase from my memory.” Hedren says the incident was never mentioned by either of them for the rest of the production. Worst of all, she alleges that one afternoon Hitchcock “threw himself on top of me and tried to kiss me” in the back of a limo directly outside their hotel. When alone, he told her dirty stories and jokes, likely the same ones he told Grace Kelly and Ingrid Bergman, though Hedren wasn’t anywhere near as amused as those two women appeared to have been. ![]() He left food he wanted her to eat outside her front door, sent her a peculiar Valentine’s message, and peppered her with requests for her to join him for dinners, lunches, and drinks. The minute attentions paid to her acting and the creation of her public persona elicited no complaints from Hedren: “He was not only my director, he was my drama coach, which was fabulous.” The problem was that the ‘Tippi’ project strayed beyond the film set Hitchcock inserted himself into Hedren’s life in ways she could not accept. Even when Hedren spoke to America’s teenage girls through the pages of Seventeen magazine, Hitchcock was with her to explain to the interviewer Edwin Miller how seriously he took building a character and, in this case, the actress cast to play her. Hedren was introduced to journalists with a brief biography and details of the exacting tutelage that Hitchcock had provided, including the twenty-five thousand dollars that had been spent on her screen tests, conducted with the exactitude of a real Hitchcock shoot. In the publicity for the film, Hitchcock boasted about the way he had invented ‘Tippi,’ insisting-without explanation-that her name from now on be held between inverted commas. He wouldn’t come out of his office until we were absolutely ready to shoot because he couldn’t stand to watch it.” However, she now suggests that the episode was part of Hitchcock’s effort to dominate her. ![]() In 1980, Hedren said it was “very hard for Hitch at this time, too. The crew members who have spoken about it over the years attest that they all, Hitchcock included, felt bad about the situation. “It was brutal and ugly and relentless,” she says of the five days she spent on the floor of the set while birds were thrown at her head. But as the day approached, it became obvious to Hitchcock and his team that it would be impossible to capture the realism and intensity they were after without the use of real animals.Īs Hedren remembers, she found out about the change of plan on the morning of the shoot. Before filming had begun, she had been assured that no live birds would be involved in the action the most terrifying thing she’d have to contend with were a few mechanical ravens. But in the infamous scene in which Melanie Daniels is savaged by birds in an attic, Hedren experienced genuine trauma. Having been led by Hitchcock step by painstaking step through the entire script, Tippi Hedren navigated the filming well, and produced a remarkably accomplished debut performance in a film that migrates from romantic comedy to shrieking horror. ![]() Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds was a vast logistical undertaking, the most formidable production of his career, exacerbated by the fact that he had cast an acting novice in the lead role.
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