Tippi: A Memoir

by Tippi Hedren

  So on rare occasions I would have cocktails or dinner with Hitchcock. Sometimes Alma would join us. Sometimes she wouldn’t. Whether she was there or not, he’d be on his best behavior, that charming, dry-witted man I’d met in his office that first day. I’d hold up my end of the conversation and perform my way through it, torn and in an impossible situation myself.

  On one hand, I was loving making The Birds. I loved playing Melanie Daniels. I loved the work itself, and my castmates and coworkers, and the totally committed focus it required of me. I never lost sight of the incredible opportunity and responsibility I’d been given, and I treasured it. How dare Hitchcock inflict his apparent obsession on me like this, force this oppressive situation on me that I didn’t ask for, didn’t deserve, and did nothing to encourage, and run the risk of shattering the concentration on this movie I was fighting so hard to maintain?

  At the same time, it was Hitchcock who’d given me this incredible opportunity in the first place. He was presenting me to Universal, as well as to the film industry and audiences in general, as someone I really wasn’t—a full-fledged movie star. Because of him I was being given special treatment all over town, with invitations to every gala, every exclusive dinner and event. I was a movie star, not because I’d proven myself yet but because none other than Alfred Hitchcock said I was. And he hadn’t just given me this opportunity, he’d personally seen to it that I could take it and run with it. He’d literally taught me everything I knew about acting. He’d seen to it that the very best Universal Studios had to offer was at my disposal. He’d believed in me so much that he’d fought for me against all those executives who thought he was crazy for choosing me, a totally unknown novice, to star in this movie.

  He also happened to be a brilliant, brilliant filmmaker.

  I owed him.

  I owed him 100 percent of the dedication, concentration, and talent I had to give to The Birds, and I owed him the professional respect any actor owed their director.

  I didn’t owe him my dignity, or an abandonment of the values I’d been taught as a child and believed in wholeheartedly. I didn’t owe him my body or my soul.

  I’ve always been much more independent than ambitious. To me, ambition implies wanting something so badly that you’ll compromise yourself here and there along the way to get it. I don’t have that in me. I never have and never will. I don’t believe you can put a price on being able to look at yourself in the mirror and respect the person looking back at you.

  So yes, there were many things I owed Alfred Hitchcock. I even owed him my refusal to let him break me, no matter how hard he tried.

  And he wasn’t done trying yet.

  Everything was building toward the famous “bedroom scene,” the scene in which Melanie (still inexplicably as far as I’m concerned) goes up the stairs alone, steps into the bedroom, closes the door, and suffers the most vicious on-camera attack by the birds in the whole film. Some critics and Hitchcock buffs have compared it to the legendary shower scene in Psycho.

  Hitchcock had outlined it for me in great detail. It would be just me and a flock of relentless, homicidal mechanical birds. I’d have no way to escape, and I would end up on the floor, completely terrorized and almost mortally wounded.

  He lied.

  It was a Monday morning, the day we were shooting the bedroom scene, when our assistant director, my good friend James H. Brown, came to see me in my dressing room. Jim had always been wonderful to me, and we’d become friends. But for some reason, that morning he couldn’t look at me. His eyes were all over the place—the floor, the ceiling, the walls, everywhere but on me, and he wasn’t saying a word. We knew each other too well for this, and I finally broke the silence.

  “Jim, what’s going on? What’s wrong?”

  It was last thing in the world he wanted to say, so he just blurted it out to get it over with.

  “The mechanical birds aren’t working, so we’re going to have to use live ones.”

  Then he bolted out the door.

  It took me several seconds to pick my jaw up off the floor. They were using live birds for this final apocalyptic scene?! I trusted the expertise of our trainer Ray Berwick 100 percent, but not even the greatest trainer in the world could control every move an animal makes, especially when it’s under stress.

  Resigned and determined, I finished getting ready and walked out on the set to find a cage built around the bedroom door. All around the inside of the cage were huge cartons of ravens, doves, and a few pigeons. I refused to look at Hitchcock as I crossed the set to my mark inside the door and braced myself for whatever was in store for me.

  I heard Hitchcock yell, “Action!” and right on cue, the handlers began hurling those live birds at me. It was brutal and ugly and relentless. Cary Grant, one of Hitch’s favorite leading men, happened to be visiting the set that day and told me between takes, “You’re the bravest woman I’ve ever seen.” I was never frightened, I was just overwhelmed and in some form of shock, and I just kept saying to myself over and over again, “I won’t let him break me. I won’t let him break me.”

  The bedroom scene lasted about a minute in the final cut of The Birds.

  Hitchcock spent five days filming it before he finally decided he had all he wanted.

  On that Friday, the fifth and final day, when I arrived at the studio, on the verge of collapse, my dresser wrapped bands of fabric around me with small lengths of elastic attached to them. Then I put on my dress and she pulled the elastic through the tears in it. I lay down on the set in front of the door and stayed very still while they loosely tied the feet of a few of the trained birds to the elastic. By then I was barely coherent, not sure how much more of this I could possibly take.

  “Action!” again, and I was pelted with still more live, screaming, frantic birds, while the birds that were tied to me began pecking me as they’d been trained to do. I was too focused on my own survival to notice, but I was told later that it was even more horrifying and heartbreaking for the crew to watch than the previous four days had been, and there wasn’t a thing anyone but Hitchcock could do to put a stop to it.

  It was midafternoon, after hours of filming, when the bird that was tied to my shoulder pecked me too close to my eye, and I finally snapped.

  “I’m done,” I said, with what little of my voice was left.

  Hitchcock yelled, “Cut.” The birds were untied from me, and I just sat there on the floor, unable to move, and began sobbing from sheer exhaustion.

  Minutes passed before I looked up to discover that everyone had just left me there in the middle of that vast, silent soundstage, completely spent, empty, and alone.

  Afterward, I met a doctor friend from New York in the Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and he told me he’d never seen anyone so exhausted in his life. I wish I could say I spent that weekend taking care of Melanie, but I’m sure it was more a case of her taking care of me.

  I fell sound asleep in the backyard while she was playing. She was worried about me because I hadn’t moved in quite some time, and she shook me to try to wake me up and make sure I was okay. It startled me and I woke up flailing my arms, yelling, “No!” at the top of my lungs, before I fully came to and realized it was her and I was safe. It frightened my little five-year-old girl terribly. I held her for a long time, hating what all this must be doing to her.

  I vaguely remembered waking up that Monday morning. I didn’t remember driving to the studio or walking to my dressing room or lying down on the chaise. Then I was completely out cold. My makeup man Howard Smits couldn’t wake me. My hairdresser Virginia Darcy couldn’t wake me.

  When I did wake up I was at home in bed, fully clothed, with no idea how I got there.

  Our nanny Josephine called my doctor, who came to the house right away. Hitchcock showed up as well. After he examined me, my doctor turned to Hitchcock and told him I had to have the week off for some intensive rest.

  “She can’t,” Hitchcock said. “We have nothing els
e to shoot but her.”

  To which my doctor incredulously replied, “What are you doing? Are you trying to kill her?”

  I got the week off.

  I spent that week either asleep or only semiconscious and so grateful that Melanie had Josephine and my parents to help when I was just plain physically incapable of it.

  I was also mentally incapable of processing anything with any clarity at all, so I didn’t even try. There was only one thing I knew with absolute clarity: My castmates, the crew, and I had worked too hard for too long for The Birds to go unfinished, and it all came down to me. I was sure they must be wondering when, or even if, I’d be back. It didn’t matter that they’d seen it happen, what I’d been through, and they probably wouldn’t have blamed me if I’d walked away. I could never and would never do that to them or to myself. It was a rough week for me as I recovered, but it had to have been a rough week for them, too.

  So that next Monday morning, to make the statement I thought we all needed, I made an entrance. They opened the soundstage door to find me in my Edith Head finest, hair and makeup done to perfection, right arm extended with my raven pal Buddy perched on it. I marched in with Buddy to a deafening round of applause and cheering from the cast and crew, silently announcing, “I’m back. Let’s finish this movie.”

  Hitchcock was there, but I can’t tell you what his reaction was. I didn’t so much as glance in his direction.

  We did finish that movie, of course, and a festive, triumphant mood prevailed at the wrap party. We’d done it. It wasn’t easy, to say the least, but we’d actually done it. I still remember that dear Suzanne Pleshette giving me an especially long hug that night. She was a good, supportive friend, and it meant the world to me.

  I’ll always be so grateful that Rod Taylor and I stayed in touch and that I saw him shortly before he died of a heart attack in early 2015. I went to his home in Beverly Hills, and he was so weak by then that he had to go up and down the stairs by sitting on each step one at a time as he went. He and his beautiful wife Carol and I sat at their kitchen table and had the loveliest visit. What a wonderful, handsome, virile man he was, and what a blessing that he was cast as my leading man on The Birds and was there for me in every way when I needed him.

  I was proud and happy to publicize The Birds at every opportunity when it was released, and it was a nonstop whirlwind of press, galas, and awards shows. I was on Hitchcock’s arm to walk the red carpet when The Birds was chosen to lead off the Cannes Film Festival, while Alma cheered from among the crowd behind the velvet ropes.

  I was by his side for countless interviews.

  I was at the Golden Globes and overwhelmed to win the award for Best Newcomer.

  I was at the Academy Awards to cheer on Ub Iwerks, who was deservedly nominated for Best Visual Effects.

  I was anywhere and everywhere the studio wanted me to be, and given A-list treatment by everyone in town.

  It was a thrilling, amazing time. I never forgot for one moment that it was all happening because of Alfred Hitchcock, and I never forgot for one moment that I’d earned it. I didn’t feel like a smoke-and-mirrors Hitchcock illusion anymore. I felt like a full-fledged movie star who’d worked hard for the privilege.

  And once the excitement died down, I buckled up to prepare for what was coming next according to the ironclad contract I’d signed—my second Hitchcock movie, a film called Marnie.

  Five

  I’d actually first heard of Marnie, which was slated to be Hitchcock’s next film, while we were still filming The Birds. Rod Taylor and I had just finished shooting the scene on the bluff in The Birds in which they talk about their respective mothers when Lew Wasserman arrived on the set and took me aside.

  “Congratulations, Tippi,” he said, with that wide, friendly smile of his. “You’re going to be our Marnie.”

  Marnie was based on a Winston Graham novel of the same name, and Hitchcock had been working with writer Joseph Stefano on a screen adaptation since 1961. His intention was that Grace Kelly would play the title role. But by then she’d married Prince Rainier of Monaco, and Her Serene Highness declined and retired from acting entirely, so Hitchcock tabled Marnie and focused on The Birds instead.

  When The Birds was completed, work resumed on the Marnie script, first with Evan Hunter, who wrote The Birds screenplay, and then with writer Jay Presson Allen. In the meantime, actresses all over town, from Eva Marie Saint to Vera Miles and Claire Griswold, who were also under contract to Hitchcock, had been vying for the role of Marnie Edgar since the moment Grace Kelly turned it down.

  I still remember Hitchcock, with a self-satisfied smile on his face, announcing to me one day, early in our filming of The Birds, that he’d put a new actress under contract.

  I asked who it was.

  “Claire Griswold,” he said.

  I was delighted. “Claire Griswold? I love Claire Griswold! We modeled in New York together!”

  His face turned to stone, and after a quick, lethal glare at me, he turned his back and stormed away. It hadn’t occurred to me until I saw his reaction that he’d expected me to fly into a jealous rage. Oh, please.

  One day Claire, who’d done two episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour by then, had a lunch with Hitchcock’s secretary Peggy. Claire and her husband, Sydney Pollack, already had a beautiful son Steven, and she told Peggy that in the coming year they were hoping to expand their family. Peggy, in her usual impossible position of being sympathetic toward Hitchcock’s actresses and loyal to her boss as well, explained to Claire that for the duration of her seven-year contractual commitment to Hitchcock, he would expect her to be immediately available for any role at any time—i.e., not pregnant, not giving birth, not needing to be home with a newborn. Not long after that, Mr. and Mrs. Sydney Pollack excitedly announced that they were expecting a second child.

  The contract between Claire and Hitchcock was terminated, and Claire went right on with her life as a happy wife and mother of three.

  Despite all the problems I’d had with Hitchcock’s obsessive, often embarrassingly ardent, often cruel behavior toward me, I was quite excited to be cast as the lead in Marnie. I was still under contract, so turning it down wasn’t an option anyway, but it was an extraordinary role, a psychological thriller that would present me with a spectacular acting challenge. God knows Hitchcock loved flawed, emotionally complex characters, and Marnie was filled with them.

  I was determined to thoroughly and legitimately explore the internal journey of Margaret Marnie Edgar rather than playing her at face value as written, so in addition to studying the script, I spent a lot of hours with some skilled psychologists, asking them to explore that journey with me and describe Marnie’s realistic reactions to what she’s been through. I didn’t want there to be a single false beat in my performance as I acted out her story:

  When we first meet Marnie, she’s just stolen $10,000 from her employer, tax consultant Sidney Strutt, whom she’d charmed into hiring her with no references and no traceable resume. She changes her identity and her appearance and leaves town. After a brief stop in Virginia to visit the stables where her beloved horse Florio is being boarded, she heads on to Baltimore to pay her mother Bernice a surprise visit. Bernice is more attentive to Jessie, a young neighbor girl, than she is to Marnie, but Marnie lovingly gives her money before she leaves.

  Publisher Mark Rutland, a wealthy widower, has a business meeting with Sidney Strutt, who tells him about Marnie’s recent theft. Mark remembers Marnie from a previous trip to Strutt’s office.

  Marnie applies for a secretarial job at Mark’s publishing company, unaware that Mark knows who she is and what she’s done. Mark, intrigued, hires her and begins taking her out. Marnie is plagued by nightmares and pathological fears of the color red and of thunderstorms.

  Marnie’s compulsive thievery recurs at Mark’s office. She steals a large amount of money from the safe and disappears. Mark manages to track her down at the stables, where she’s gone to see Florio.
Rather than turning her over to the police, he blackmails her into marrying him.

  It’s on their honeymoon cruise that Mark learns of Marnie’s pathological revulsion at being touched by a man. At first Mark is sympathetic, but he finally forces himself on her and has sex with her. The next morning when Mark wakes up to discover that she’s not in their cabin, he searches the ship and pulls her out of the swimming pool, where she’s attempting to commit suicide by drowning herself.

  Lil, the sister of Mark’s late wife, has wanted him ever since her sister passed away, and the news that Mark has actually married Marnie enrages her. Lil decides to create as much discomfort as possible for Marnie and invites Strutt to a party at Mark’s house. Strutt recognizes Marnie, of course, and immediately wants to turn her in, but Mark stops him by threatening to take his business accounts elsewhere.

  Another of Marnie’s many lies to Mark is that her mother has died. Mark finds out that it’s not true, and he hires a private investigator to track the woman down.

  Marnie finally confesses to several more robberies in her past, and Mark promises to reimburse all her victims to keep her from being prosecuted.

  She and Florio are invited to participate in a fox hunt. She’s enjoying herself until the hounds corner the fox, which upsets her, and her panic is exacerbated when a fellow rider appears wearing a traditional red riding jacket. She urges Florio into a full, frightened gallop, causing him to fall while trying to jump over a fence and severely injure himself. Marnie has to mercifully shoot her beloved horse, after which she goes into a shock that seems to echo some incident from her past as she murmurs a compassionate “There. There now,” over Florio’s still, silent body.

  Marnie catatonically goes to Mark’s office, intending to rob him again and surprised to find that she can’t bring herself to do it. Even when Mark finds her and dares her to go ahead and take the money, she backs away instead, leaving the money in the safe where she found it.