Birds of Prey: Hitchcock gave Tipi Hedren a nightmare on set

On Friday, October 13, 1961, Tippi Hedren received a phone call from Universal Studios, offering him a secret audition. The actor, who has just arrived in Hollywood, finds out on the spot that it is Alfred Hitchcock who wants to work with him on an unknown project. Hedren has no film experience and imagines it is an episode of the popular Alfred Hitchcock Presents series.

The filmmaker’s favorite crew was assembled (Robert Boyle on set, Edith Head for costumes) so Hedren auditioned over three days, playing excerpts from Rebecca, Les Enchainés and La Main au collet while answering Martin Balsam. (who just did Psycho). An expensive device that the director, the king of the box office, easily charged the studio.

After a television commercial, Tippy Haden caught the eye of film director Alfred Hitchcock. This ad features the Sego brand, a dietary supplement, and focuses on the actor’s hourglass figure, as you can see below. This ad also inspired Hitchcock for the opening sequence of The Birds:

After several interviews with the producers, Hedren meets Hitchcock and his wife Alma, accompanied by agent Lou Wasserman. A filmmaker presents the actress with a pearl and gold brooch of three birds to offer her the lead role in his next feature film, Birds.

It’s a major milestone in the career of Hedren, who has only filmed commercials and an unreleased appearance in The Scandalous Ingenue for more than a decade. By agreeing to work with Hitchcock, he finds himself in front of the stage.

Hitchcock involved him in every stage of the film’s production, from costumes to the script to the director of photography. Hedren learns a lot about the behind-the-scenes of filmmaking with him and builds on the experience.

The filming of the birds begins and the actor begins to notice something:

He was staring at me on the set, it was impossible not to notice. Wherever he was and whenever he was talking to other people, his eyes were on me.

One day, after a long day of filming. Hedren and Hitchcock are in the car and are being driven back to the hotel. As usual, the director speaks a monologue and a tired Hedren stares into space. The car stops at the entrance of the hotel, where guests and team members are gathered.

In the car, Hitchcock suddenly runs up to Tippi Hedren and tries to kiss her. Quoted in the documentary The Actress Tippi Hedren: From Cursed Birds to Wild Beasts (airing after tonight’s film), the actress recalls:

I shouted, “But finally!” I threw him out, jumped out of the car and ran back to the hotel.

The next day, filming resumes, and Hedren acts as if nothing happened, remaining “insulted” and “shocked” by the sexual assault. The actor has to film a scene in which Melanie, her character, is locked in a phone booth, attacked by a mechanical bird that bangs on the booth’s glass.

Tippi Hedren is told that it’s safety glass (shock resistant) but it’s not, it’s classic glass and in shock, she gets glass shards in her face. Later, six months into filming, the bird attack scene takes a week to avoid shooting birds in the face, risking blindness.

After this grueling shoot, Hedren honors his contract and continues with the same director’s Pas de Printemps pour Marnie, where he also goes through very difficult situations and tries to break his contract with Alfred before making the film. with Hitchcock. In her 2016 memoir, the actress recalls her inability to assert her rights and denounced her assailant at the time:

“He was Alfred Hitchcock, one of Universal’s stars, and I was the lucky little blonde model he rescued from total anonymity. Who was more valuable to the studio, him or me?”

Note that for the purposes of the 1994 TV movie, Tippi Hedren appears in The Birds II, which, as its name suggests, is not a sequel to The Birds, but a remake.