Remember Hitchcock’s The Birds? Scary film, even for an old one. Tonight Tippi Hedron gets to tell her story. She was the dainty blonde girl who was tortured and nearly pecked to death by demonic birds in a coastal town, At 82, Hedron tells us that despite the fact he was evil, Hitchcock ruined her career but not her life:
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) — After a private screening of HBO’s “The Girl” held for Tippi Hedren, her friends and family, including daughter Melanie Griffith, the reaction was silence.
Make that stunned silence, as the room took in the film’s depiction of a scorned, vindictive Alfred Hitchcock physically and emotionally abusing Hedren during production of “The Birds.”
“I’ve never been in a screening room where nobody moved, nobody said anything,” Hedren recounted. “Until my daughter jumped up and said, ‘Well, now I have to go back into therapy.'”
Hedren, 82, as polished and lovely as she was taking her turn as a rarified “Hitchcock blonde” in “The Birds” (1963) and “Marnie” (1964), tells the story with a casual smile.
Tonight HBO premiers The Girl which is the story of Hedron’s life with Hitchcock. it runs from 8:10-9:45 and then is repeated on the various stations throughout the evening.
So many of those with special talents and gifts like Alfred Hitchcock seemed so twisted.
“It’s no surprise to learn that a filmmaker whose art is devoted to pain, fear, control, and sexual obsession also experienced and inflicted them in life.” Richard Brody, The New Yorker
Hitchcock now stands as the poster child for on the job sexual harassment.
What a well-made documentary.
Tippi Hedron is to be commended for standing firm against this kind of harassment and not letting it consume her.
Hitchcock fans have heard these stories for years. Roman Polanski is another case in point. Hugs for abuse victims like Ms. Hedren.
Roman Polanski really is a pig, isn’t he. Shudder. No wonder he was under suspicion over the Mansion murders!
I had never heard anything about Hitchcock. His own wife was also at least emotionally abused.
I suppose this begs the question of why his peers tolerated him. Were they all pigs like he was?
Two words.
Casting couch.
🙂
Yeah I do have a lot of respect for Hedrin because she told people about this stuff at the time. there was no market for hearing about this kind of stuff, but she told people anyway.
Hitchcock in his later years, when he was unable to even walk, was sued by a nurse I think about similar sexual harassment of a bizarre nature.
He was a mess. But as to ‘why was he tolerated”? He was a great filmmaker. Note that Hedrin herself tolerated the guy well enough to do a second film with him. Hitchcock presumably built up to this grandiose level of harassment; he did not treat most people or actresses this way.
Polanski is on a different level.
An aspect of this that was part of the equation is that Hedrin was a horrible actress. Bad in “The Birds” ( very stupid film) and bad in “marnie” (decent film). Hitchcock presumably was keen to make her his “it’ thinking he could/would control her.
She was pretty. Watching that film in the past 5 years rather than as a kid, she really wasn’t a very good actress. As a kid, I didnt notice.
“The Birds” is a very stupid film. It is an attempt by Hitchcock to imitate the films of Michaelangelo Antonioni, especially “L’Aventura”. In that film an important event (a man’s wife disappearing) is geadually ignored as the film becomes more and more about trivial day-to-day events and pleasures in a modern, disconnected life. In Hitchcock’s film we inexplicably watch a bunch of trivial stuff and interpersonal stuff happen in the foireground while birds and impending doom gather – no one notices. If you’ve suffered through Antonioni’s excruciatingly static films, you can see that Hitchcock is trying to do the same thing. I can’t see why anyone liked that film.