Part Two: Alfred Hitchcock: The Director Who Randomly Tortured People

In Part Two. Robert is joined by Abed Geith to finish discussing Alfred Hitchcock.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
M hm, are we all kicking? Hello? Friends? Whoa Sophie?
You talked over me while I introduced. We're leaving this in.
We're leaving the We're leaving this in. You did in

(00:22):
Orsten Wells kind of hello friends, Hello friends, We're leaving
this in. And I'm Robert Evans. This is Behind the Bastards.
The show we tell you everything you don't know about
the very worst people in all of history, one of
whom is my producer Sophie, who is flipping me the
bird right now. Because I demand honesty in my podcast,
which means we leave in the twenty seconds before I
introduced the show, when we're just talking over each other,

(00:44):
that's because we're professionals. I'm Robert Evans. This is Behind
the Bastards. We talked about bad people to hey, we're
continuing to talk about Alfred Hitchcock. My guest ed, Keith,
how are you doing? Hi? Hi? Hi? I over up
your No, it's fine as long as we leave it
in because it's honest. Yeah, yeah, don't edit that out

(01:05):
because that was perfectly timed. This is the audio equivalent
of cinema verity. Yeah. I don't know what that is.
It's a style of filmmaking. Yeah, so I used it right, Yeah,
you did fantastic even said it right, fantastic. I love
saying things right. When people say Cinema Variety, I get mad. No,
that's the shows that are talked about on the Fames

(01:26):
magazine variety. Yeah right, yeah, right right, I think so. Yeah,
they did that terrible list of the best horror movies
that had World war Z on its World war Z.
It's got Brad Pitt and it it's not a horror movie.
I don't know seven, although he was. I just saw
him on Growing Pains and he was pretty good. Growing
Pains been a while ago. Yeah, I think that was

(01:47):
his first gig. Good for him, kind of like how
what was his name? The guy the Batman that people
don't like? Michael Oh oh oh you mean Val Kilmer. No, No,
the New One Batman or the Batman Christian Bale or
no Ben Affleck Afflete. You got to Christian Bale before
you get to Ben Affleck. People don't people don't like him,
That's true. Every Batman has his his lovers and his haters. Yeah.

(02:08):
I think my brother is not a Christian Bale fan.
That's fair. But Ben Affleck was on that Voyage of
the Mimi thing that we had to watch in high
school before he was Ben Affleck, oh ship where he says,
holy chickens, that's all peanut butter, which is still my
favorite line. Wait wasn't that? Oh I remember that show,
but I don't think I ever watched All the Men
have to Huddle naked together for warmth and everybody in

(02:28):
your high school class laughs. Wait was that a movie?
Oh no, it was like it was like a TV
series type thing we had to watch in class to
learn about the sea that Ben Affleck take you on
the waves. Well, he was like nine. He was like
the show's Wesley Crusher. Oh god, I know he was.
Just imagine Wesley Crusher. Wasn't a great pick for Wesley Crusher? No, no,

(02:50):
not really. He had his moments. He had his moments.
Speaking of people who had their moments, Alfred Hitchcock, he
had actually a lot of moments, very influential direct he
So when we last walked here, we talked about his
early life, his his armor of fat, his controlling mom,
his kind of dangerous bordering on torturous, love of pranks
sometimes uh women women, his pretty good sense of humor

(03:14):
when it didn't get mean. Um, he's a complicated man.
And one of the more important things about sort of
his life is he had this sort of desire to
create the perfect actress. He wanted to mold and so like.
He worked with a lot of great actresses, but the
most of them didn't quite fit that bill because they
were already well established and they moved on after him.
You know, most actors who don't want to work with

(03:36):
one guy forever. You want to do cool stuff, you don't.
You want to do a bunch of stuff unless you
marry them, like Helen Bonham Carter or like Sarah Connor. Yeah. Yeah,
although she's about to be in another one of those movies.
I think she's really good. She's I mean, she's one
of the few actresses that actually topped the star. Yeah,
like I thought in T two she was better than
Arnold and she's she's a way more impressive action star

(03:57):
in that movie I've seen when she breaks down is
the best. In the scene when she is just taking
a part that mental hospital like and just destroying those men.
Oh that's the best. It's so good. I love that movie.
Let's talk about the opposite of that. Alfred Hitchcock's career
with Tippy Hedron. So Alfred Hitchcock first saw Tippy Hedron
in nineteen sixty one when she appeared in a commercial

(04:19):
that he watched for like a weight loss supplement thing.
Hedron was a veteran model and at thirty two and mother,
but she had no real experience in the film industry.
She in fact, had no particular ambition to be an actress.
But Hitchcock saw her real and wasn't chanted by her.
He offered her a three year contract, and even though
the contract was for less money than she had been
making modeling, she considered, you know, three years of guaranteed

(04:40):
income a more stable move than continuing to act in commercials.
And you know, she's a mom. So she's like, okay, well,
it's the natural progression, natural progression. This seems smart. I'm
gonna do this. So she agreed to meet hitch and
talk about the job. During that first meeting, Hitchcock basically
just brake to her about his own life, talking about
the great restaurants he eat in that in cities around
the world. He offered her the gig, and she took it,
thinking that he'd be using her as a recurring actress

(05:02):
on his TV show, Alfred Hitchcock Present. I used to
watch that as a kid. Great show. So she started
to realize that Hitchcock's plans for her and were much
more involved when he sent her to Edith Head, the
famed fashion designer. And she was very talented. Yes, and
the incredible is the little lady who makes the costumes
for the characters based on she died recently, right, maybe
I'm not sure, but I love old movies. You always

(05:23):
see her name in the credit. She was She's one
of those like she was like on every film, foundational
and sort of golden era Hollywood. So Edith had crafted
a whole wardrobe specifically for Tippy Hedrid, and in fact,
she made two wardrobes, one set for screen tests and
another set for her to wear out in the world.
So kind of a nice gift, you know you're having,
but also kind of controlling, because this is Hitchcock being like,

(05:47):
I'm not just going to pick out what you'll wear
when you're doing screen tests and whatnot. I want to
pick out what you wear when people see you. Again,
not the kind of thing you'd immediately if you're Tippy
you'd pick out as weird because like you might be like, oh, this,
this guy's gonna pay to have the greatest designer in
the world make me. You're blinded by the fashion coolness
of but something a little bit weird there. Yeah, Like

(06:08):
there's a sliver of there's a sliver of like that's strange.
It's almost like a Hitchcock movie. You know that first
thing that you get from Norman where you're like, oh,
maybe there's something like that scene when they're eating the sandwiches,
and you get a couple of moments where you're like something, yeah, yeah,
something's a little bit off, just like that. Now, as
soon as Tippy Hedren signed on the dotted line to
work with Alfred Hitchcock, he believed he owned her. She

(06:30):
was not like Ingrid Bergmann or Grace Kelly, an independent
star who might have had a deal with a specific
studio but was generally able to pick her own roles.
Hedron's contract made her Hitchcock's actress, and in hitch his mind,
this made her his property. Well. Hitchcock in the studio
worked on doing the rest of the casting and prep
work for We Become nineteen sixty three's The birds. Tippy
basically had a couple of months off with pay to

(06:51):
move into Los Angeles and get used to being in California.
Hitchcock ordered her to gain weight during this time. He
thought she was too skinny, so he sent her several
bushel of potatoes over to her house, with a note
reminding her that insufficient amounts. They had a lot of calories.
He sent her, don't pairing you on on Christmas, even
a telegram on Christmas. So far. Yeah, he's a nice guy.
Nice guy. Sending a bunch of potatoes over to potatoes

(07:14):
is a weird, a little weird, little weird. It's not
like fancy food. It's like she's probably making enough money
for potatoes then, being the basic food stuff. Well unless
he sends them overmashed. No, I think it was like
sending her potatoes. Okay, they were just raw. That is weird.
Raw potatoes is a weird gift. Now, in the new year,
Alfred decided to change Tippy's name sort of. She'd gone

(07:36):
by Tippy for so long that it had replaced her
birth name, Natalie, but it wasn't her original name. Hitchcock
decided that from now on, whenever her name was printed
in films. It had to be surrounded by single quotation marks. Uh.
He just wanted it to be clear that it was
a nickname. He thought that would be better for her mystique,
her career or whatever. I will give him that because
Tippy is very memorable. It is a memorable name. Um.

(07:57):
Kind of a weird choice, but you know, I'm not
again so far, Okay, Yeah, it's not so suspicious. He's
getting really involved in this lady. He's getting involved, but
I mean he's probably just he cares. He cares. He
just cares. Right next, he ordered two members of his
crew to watch miss Hedron whenever she left the set
and make notes on what she was doing that she went,
who she saw, what she did when she wasn't working,

(08:17):
like an investigator kind around like yeah, like yeah. He
had two people basically follow her around everywhere and keeping
on to these guys credit. After a few days of this,
they realized it was weird and just started lying to
Hitchcock stopped following her. So they're not bastards. They did
the right thing. Keep taking the money, just don't do
the job. That's the right thing, because otherwise he would

(08:38):
have just hired a private investigator. You lie to the
guy smart. Hitchcock ordered other members of the cast to
avoid touching or even talking to Tippy Hedron. Rod Taylor,
her co star, and the Birds recalled she was like
a precious piece of jewelry he owned. Little by little.
No one was permitted to come close to her during
the production. Don't touch the girl after I call cut,
he said to me, repeatedly, getting a weirder. Yeah, he's

(09:01):
treating her like she's like an object. Yeah, exactly. Now.
Early on in the production, Hitchcock sent a basket of
bread to Tippy Hedron's house. It came with a note
that said eat me. Tippy later stated he was developing
this obsession, and I began to feel uncomfortable because I
had no control. I had to be very careful. He
tried to control everything, what I wore, ate and drank.

(09:21):
So this progresses, Yeah, it progresses. This stuff i'm familiar with,
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. And we're about to get Oh.
I guess we'll see how much you're you're familiar with
as we get Oh. I know one thing that's pretty crazy.
Oh yeah, yeah, it's a coming. It's a coming. Now.
According to a right up in the Express quote. Not
long after writing in a limo, Hitchcock attempted to embrace
Hedron just before the door opened. In front of a

(09:43):
crowded hotel, Hedron approached Almah, Hitchcock's wife, asking for help.
Her exact words were tippy, I'm so sorry you have
to go through with this, Hedron remembers. I looked at
her and said, but Alma, you could stop it, and
her eyes sort of glazed over and she walked away.
That's not great. It's like he had his wife in check. Yeah, yeah,
it is. And it's it's a little bit you see

(10:03):
shades of the Weinstein stuff here a little people see
some messed up stuff going on, but nobody's quite nobody's anything.
But also see back then it was different. It's not
like now. It's like, you know, people kind of just
didn't gossip. Yeah, and women had a lot less power
in the workplace period, you know, you know, Hollywood was
actually probably more progressive than most places in terms of

(10:24):
that just because like you've got a little more marketability
when you're but even then, like but also Hitchcock was
like super famous. Hitchcock was fucking Hitchcock. Yea so it's
like no one wanted to really fux Psycho had come out.
He'd invented the slasher John Like. He was big. He
was big. He was as big as a director's ever been,
literally and figuratively. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Mean there's no
Dream Warriors without Psycho. That's true. That's true. My favorite

(10:48):
nightmare on Elm Street movie. It's easily of the Nightmare
on Elm Street Movie, but one with the best rap.
It's yeah, absolutely, And Dawkins is on the soundtrack. Dawkins
on the soundtrack. I mean, what more do you want?
I was I was in Big Bear, California recently, and
I was at like a random cafe and Big Bear,
and they were advertising that Docin had been there three
days earlier. And I had the same thought that I

(11:10):
think everyone has when they hear about Dockin playing somewhere,
which is, oh, they're alive. I would have assumed the
coke would have gotten them years ago. Right, Good on you,
doc and nice livers. Really impressive. Now. Most of the
cast and crew seemed to have been well aware that
something sketchy was going on between the director and his
leading lady, but no one actually took any action to

(11:30):
defend her or tell Hitchcock that he was being a
total creep, And so as they continued to film, Hitchcock
grew more obsessed and even bolder. Here's the dark side
of genius. He began to take unusual care in the
rehearsal and preparation of every shot, directing her down to
the movement of an eye and every turn of my
head she remembered, and he also started to take her
aside for longer story conferences about the film, which made

(11:50):
her increasingly uncomfortable and off the set. He was always
staring at her as she and others vividly recalled. So
by the time they got well into shooting The Birds,
Hitchcock was in full blown creepy, abusive boyfriend mode with
the woman he was not dating, who was roughly thirty
years as junior. Not that any of this would have
been cool if they were dating in the same age,
but you catch my meetings, it's weird. The fact that
this guy was her boss makes it weirder. Now, if

(12:12):
you've seen The Birds, you know that it's a movie
that involves a lot of birds. These animals were scrupulously
cared for crewmen and assistance were scratched impact with regularity,
like you'd expect with the movie that uses a bunch
of birds. But the Humane Society was on set and
they made sure that all the animals were well fed
and never forced to work for too long, so the
animals retreated very well on the set of The Birds.
The film's leading lady was a little bit of a

(12:35):
different matter. During her twenty weeks of shooting, Tippy Hedren
had only one day free during the entire production. She
was not actually needed on set the entire time, but
Hitchcock was insistent that her presence was necessary. Now, this
was not entirely a bad thing. Tippy herself even recalled quote,
he gave me the best education an actor could have.
With any other director, it would have taken fifteen years,
but he had me involved in every part of the film, script, completion,

(12:57):
wardrobe design, special effects work, dubbing. It was his film
from start to finish, and he wanted me to learn
how to put it together. So he's taking it seriously,
this idea of crafting the perfect artist. He's diligent about it.
It's not all creepy, which probably makes it more difficult.
From Tippy side, because she's getting this incredible inpuction. It's like,
that's the tradeoff. Yeah, that's the trade off. You get
to meet this master and work really closely. Is he

(13:17):
you know? The Birds is one of the great masterpieces
of horror film still to this day, it's very influential. Yeah,
and so having that opportunity, I can see how that
would make it easy to not push back more at
the weird stuff. You've got this incredible Nobody gets this chance.
I mean, he's also giving her her career. Well, that's
what he saw it as, although her she would argue,

(13:38):
this has never been my ambition so anyway, but he
does believe, you know, I'm giving her her career. So
the other members of the cast and crew were very
supportive of Headrihine, and even they wouldn't push back against Hitchcock,
and so she soldiered on. But as things went on,
Hitchcock began to push for more and more control over
the life of the film's leading lady. He started telling
me what I should wear on my own time, what
I should be eating, and what my friends and I

(13:59):
should be seeing. He suggested that such and such a
person was not good enough for my company. Or that
someone I might have a social engagement with was not
right and he became angry and hurt if I didn't
ask his permission to visit friends in the evening or
on a weekend. That's well out of bounds for a boss.
It's almost like he's like an overbearing father. Yeah, he
And I think that's his attitude because he's saying like
I'm making you, I'm building You think that comes from

(14:21):
his mother and his relationship in a way. I think
it might. Yeah, I think this because he's If I'm
a therapist, I'd say it stems from that and control thing.
And I'm a therapist with the information I have right now,
and and me not being a therapist. Also, if I'm
pretending to be a therapist, let's put on our therapy hand,
let's put on our therapy hat. I definitely draw a
line between those two things. Therapists hit us up on

(14:44):
Twitter if we're wrong about this and you think we're
being irresponsible. Our Twitter name is at Bastard's Pod, So therapists,
you know, hit us up, get at us, get at us. Yeah,
slide into our d M s. Is that that's the
kids say? So? If he's giving me the thumbs up.
She wouldn't give me bad advice. Now, when Tippy would
express her totally understandable discomfort at some of the creepiness

(15:07):
that was coming out of Hitchcock, the director would respond
with anger, telling her that he had pulled her out
of the trash heap. It was one of the ways
he'd phrase it. He had made her into a star,
so she should just be happy to do what he
told her to do. He repeatedly told her that thousands
of girls could have replaced her, which you know Tippy
would have been fine with. She never really wanted this life,
but now she was under contract, so there was nothing
to do with the job she'd signed up for. Quote,

(15:28):
he could be two different men. He was a meticulous
and sensitive director who gave so much to each scene
and who got so much emotion into it, and he
was a man who would do anything to get a
reaction from me. Now, one of Hitchcock's favorite ways to
get a reaction from Tippy was to whisper something obscene
or pornographic to her the instant before calling action. And
this is something he did his entire career, particularly to

(15:48):
the women he worked with. Is he would whisper something
sexual to them right before yelling action. Um, just because
he wanted to get them off balance and stuff that.
There's another director that did that. I can't remember who
it is, but it wasn't as sketchy. Yeah, and it's
the kind of just a way to throw the person
off and the reaction you want. I can see the
artistic justification for it. I can also see that crossing

(16:10):
the line into sexual harassment very easily. Oh that I
mean that is sexual. Yeah, it is sexual harassment because
it's unwanted sexual exactly. Anyway, Alfred Hitchcock considered this is
his prerogative as a director. Um like the the you know,
getting the sort of reaction of somebody. Thought it was
his duty, or at least that's how he would have
justified it. He also took to trying to force Tippy

(16:31):
to drink Martini's during rehearsals. Tippy, who herself was a
Hitchcock fan before this point, saw a similarity and how
the great director treated her and how he treated the
women in his films. I had always heard that his
idea was to take a woman, usually a blonde, and
break her apart, to see her shyness and reserve broken down.
But I thought this was only in the plots of
his films. Now, one of the most iconic scenes in

(16:53):
The Birds and in all of horror cinema, comes when
miss Hedren's character is brutally attacked on screen by a
horde of birds. Still a really commuted it's terrifying. We're
going to talk about that scene in a little bit
and how it was even more horrifying behind the scenes. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
this is probably the most well known Hitchcock story. We're
gonna get very granular, but I'm gonna tell you right now,

(17:15):
not the most fucked up thing. He does. Know. There's
something worse. There's there's a couple of things worse. Yeah. Yeah,
So we're gonna get into that, uh and a whole
lot more. But first, do you love products and services?
I already ask you this question, but you're gonna answer again.
Uh yeah, I still do. Well. Before we break two
products and services, I'm going to yell something obscene and

(17:37):
sexual into your ear to provoke a good reaction from you. Moist.
That was a good facial reaction. Sophie had a good
one too. I don't like that word nobody likes that word.
That's why it provokes a good reaction. I'm just a
genius trying to do a good lead in to these ads. Well,

(17:58):
this will be good for our movie. Yeah, this will
be good in the movie that we're filming right now,
buy stuff, We're back. Sophie is telling me that she
is not bothered by the word moist, which if Dan O'Brien,
my old boss, is listening right now, he's not listening
anymore because he hates that word. Um. But yeah, you know,

(18:20):
it's not a good word. It's not a great word.
Not my least favorite word. No, there's worse. Yeah, yeah,
there's worse words. I don't like milk, the word milk,
milk because the way you say it, you go milk,
It bothers me. Milk. Yeah, yeah, it doesn't sound right. Milk. Okay,
Milk is uncomfortable when I say it. It's like when

(18:41):
people say they go milk, and it's like it creeps
me out. I don't know why they used to call
it white meat. Oh that's worse. Yeah, I just don't know.
Because it's very, it's very it's got a lot of
nutrition in protein. It's not if you're like a poor
peasant in the eighteen hundreds. It's like it's it's like
a meat right, it'll keep alive, like fair enough. You know,

(19:03):
you have no no dog in this fight. If he
doesn't like it. When I talk about dog fights, I
said I didn't have a dog in this fight. That
makes me a hero. You're given me a look. You
give me a look, and you're you're you're you're feeding
your dog a dog treat. She probably didn't like that
scene in the Wire when method Man's dog dies. That's

(19:25):
a rough scene. It's yeah, poor method Man, Poor method Man.
Anderson would do good in the fight. Anderson is a
good name, good name for a dog. I got him
a switch blade for Christmas. You can a dog fight.
Where do you buy a switchblade, a dog size switch
blade from the dog switchblade store? Okay, yeah, yeah, dog
switchblades dot com? Wait is it? Is it something else?

(19:48):
It's not really a knife? No, no, it's a knife. No, No,
you've got a dog switchblades dot Com. They'll give you. Actually,
they have a box program where you get a different
dog switchblade every month. Geez, there's like everything now, Yeah,
there's a lot of different that's my favorite of the
box subscriptions. Switchblades are so cool. They're great. They're great,
especially when they're wielded by dogs. I used to have
a comb one. Yeah, that's a great way to comb

(20:09):
your hair. Great way to comb your hair and get
mistaken as having a knife by police officers. Yeah, I'm
sure to do that. Now we're talking about Hitchcock. We're
talking about the filming of the Birds and one of
the most iconic scenes in all of horror cinema, when
miss Headron's character is attacked on screen by a horde
of vicious birds. They tear into her flesh, nearly and

(20:31):
killing her. If you watch the scene today, it's remarkable
for how realistic it looks, how compellingly terrified that woman seems.
This is because everything happening in the scene was more
or less real. Didn't he like not tell her? Oh,
he did a bunch of stuff getting into Hitchcock's well
established pattern of fucking with leading ladies might be part
of why no one really stood up to for Hippy
Tippy Headron. At the time, he was certainly more obsessed

(20:53):
with her than he'd been with his other actresses, but
nothing about his behavior stood out until the point when
it became time to film the misclimax of this movie quote.
The final great attack of the Birds was to involve
the leading lady herself. She would be caught in a
room full of crows and goals and ravens that would
tear at her until she collapsed in a state of shock.
Tippy Hedrin had been told before the week shooting began that,

(21:13):
of course mechanical birds would be used for the scene,
since anything else would be practically impossible, But when she
arrived on the set that Monday morning in June, the
assistant director James Brown informed her that mechanical birds would
not be used because it had been determined that on
film they would look like artificial props. An hour later,
the new approach began. Did that guy slip up? Oh no,
oh no no. It was Hitchcock's plan for this to

(21:34):
be a surprise to her, for them to be like,
this is gonna be fake birds, fake birds, fake birds,
and then she shows up the day they're filming and
actually it's gonna be real birds. And the way they
filmed it is they just had two guys with like
huge protective gloves and huge boxes filled with birds position
on one side of the camera, one on each side
of the camera facing the actress, and Tippy, you know,

(21:55):
was stood with her back to a wall, and the
whole set was in a cage. So vse pople are
all in a cage with the birds, and while Hedn
panics and waves her arms, live birds are thrown at her.
These men are just chucking live animals at her. She
stands there. I cannot imagine what that was like. So
there's obviously a step behind making someone stand in a

(22:17):
shower for six days or handcuffing someone for a few hours.
Hitchcock was literally having this woman assaulted with birds. Tippy
later said there was no precedent for anything like this,
and no one knew what to expect. All of us
thought it could be done very quickly, and no one
hoped so more than I. We thought maybe after one
or two takes they'd have all the film they'd need.
It went on the entire day. Tippy would endure birds

(22:38):
being thrown at her, they'd reset the scene, and then
they'd fling more birds on her, over and over again
for hours. At the end of the first day, they
still weren't done do you want to guess how many
how many days it took him to get the shot,
like four, five, five, five full days of having birds
thrown at I mean after day three, if like you

(23:00):
got all the shots you need done, I think we
got enough what we got there for five days they're
doing nothing but throwing birds. Now, the close up eight
hours a day, the different angles they need to use,
less and less stage makeup as the days go on,
because her face is now covered with like real scratches
and real blood. She's got scars on her face. Still

(23:22):
like they're just throwing birds at her. Carrie Grant was
reportedly stunned by Hedran's courage. People on set began to whisper,
a stunned, I am stunned. I'm carry Grant, which you
are amazing. I never throwing birds and a woman, birds
and a woman. I've heard of throwing glasses at a
woman because it's the sixties. But birds, birds, Wow, I

(23:44):
love doing impressions of him. Yeah, he's he's he's got
that classic Hollywood voice. People on set whispered that Hitchcock
was lucky that Tippy Hedman was new to show business.
No veteran actors would have put up with anything like this.
I mean, ingrid bergman, you're not gonna throw birds at
me for five She's not minute. Hitchcock might have had
enough cachet to get a day, not five days, maybe
five minutes, maybe five minutes, not five days of you know,

(24:09):
she'd fling the birds back. Yeah, yeah now. Hedron later
said the week was perfectly dreadful, really the worst week
of my life. Each day, I thought, and they told me,
just one more hour, just one more shot. As it
goes on for five days. On Thursday, when it should
have been fucking done. After four days of bird assault,
Hitchcock reviewed the dailies and determined that a new angle

(24:29):
was necessary from the at this point, he's just having fun.
At this point, he's just having fun. This is tippy.
And so on Thursday, the wardrobe mistress took me into
my dressing room, where elastic bands were tied around my
body with nylon thread that was pulled through tiny holes
in my costume. I soon found out what this was for.
One leg of each bird was tied to each piece
of clothing, so that when I lay on the floor,
they couldn't fly away, but would bound and perch all

(24:51):
over me. This went on for the rest of the
day while they tried to get the shots that they wanted. So,
after throwing birds at her for four days, they tie
birds to her bo and leave the birds panicking and
flipping out on her. Oh my god, it just gets better.
It just gets On Friday, they did the same thing
again so they could get close up shots at different angles.
By then, the birds were clearly losing their ship as well.

(25:14):
One in particular flipped out an attacked Tippy Hedren's left eye,
leaving a deep tear on her lower lid and coming
pretty close to blinding her. This was finally too much
for Tippy, and in all fairness, I think a lot
of Navy seals would have broken under five straight days. Yeah,
she's a tough lady. She was given the weekend off
and set to come back on Monday and have more

(25:36):
birds thrown at her. Quote when she came back to
work Monday morning, she was in such a distraught state
that she could not be roused. From a brief nap
in her dressing room, she awoke to find herself under sedation.
Back home, Hitchcock was told by her position that she
could not possibly return for at least a week, and
when he replied that she was needed for every shot,
the doctor insisted that in her present condition, she would
not be able to sustain work at all, and so

(25:57):
production on The Birds closed down for a full week,
which is an extraordinarily expensive thing. Um. They did eventually
finish shooting the film, Obviously, Hitchcock moved on to his
next production, and Tippy Hedron got some time to relax
and recover from a full week of sustained bird assault.
During this interim period, Hitchcock proved unable to turn down
his creepiness. He sent Tippy Hedron's daughter this is the

(26:19):
story I know. Oh the gift that he said, it's
pretty bad. Yeah, it is a He sent Tippy Hedron's
daughter a handmade dollar. This wasn't Melanie Griffith though, or
was it? I think it was Melanie. It was me.
I think it was Melanie. He sent her a handmade
doll that was a perfect representation of her mother, dressed
as her character in The Birds and placed in a
tiny coffin. Well, and she had the doll had scars,

(26:42):
Yeah on its face. Yeah, that's nuts. He sends her
daughter like like handmade doll of her mom's course. But
see now he's reaching over to the daughter's life, which
is crazy, it's insane. When Melanie was asked about this
later as an adult, she said, he was a motherfucker
and you can quote me so I did. Wow. Great quote,
great quote. It's probably why Melanie did so much coke

(27:04):
in the eighties. Yeah, probably didn't help. That's got a
funk up a kid, I know. And I'm sure that
just seeing her mom in that state not great, not
great for you. Shortly after sending her daughter a replica
of her corpse, Hitchcock had Tippy Hedron come in for
what he said was a deep makeup session to prepare
for their next film, Marnie. Instead of doing a makeup test,

(27:26):
a plaster cast was taken of Hedron's face and used
to make a perfectly lifelike mask of Tippy Hedron asleep
or dead. The mask had no use in the film.
Hitchcock kept it in his own office. Oh god, yeah,
that's creepy. Why because he wanted he wanted a perfect
mask of his leading lady looking like she's dead to
keep in his room. I mean, at this point, like,

(27:47):
what kind of mind is this? I mean, the guy
who makes the birds in Psycha. He sounds like a
James Bond villain. He does a little bit right. He's
got that kind of air to him, in that kind
of I must have a mask of you looking dead.
I must have a mask of your cops. So, while
he was mired in pre production from Marnie, Hedron enjoyed
a very well earned holiday, Alfred continued to send her

(28:09):
increasingly strange letters, some of which were clear examples of
sexual harassment and others of which were just weird. He
designed a special trailer just for her to use during
the filming of Marnie. He stalked it with his favorite
wines and stationary that matched the stationary he kept in
his office. Her trailer was located right next to his
private office, with a designated door that led straight to
his office, so that he could enter and accost her
whenever he wanted without anyone else seeing. When they started filming,

(28:33):
Tippy had to invite friends over to her trailer at
the end of the day just so Hitchcock would not
find her alone. God yeah, Also, that movie has a
very disturbing scene. Oh yeah, we'll be getting to that.
As a general rule, though, my advice for men in
the entertainment industry. If people start inviting their friends over
so that they're not alone with you, you may have
creeped them out. I know, you may have done something

(28:55):
messed up. I think it's at that point it's time
to kind of move on. Came from this maniac back,
peel back, Yeah, she's about to. So the famous director
started sending letters and party invitations to Tippy Hedron's parents
as if he was trying to court her favor romantically.
As Hitcher's obsession grew deeper, he sat down with a
screenwriter and demanded that the man at a scene to
the movie Marni where Hedron's character is raped. This is

(29:17):
where this is bad. Yeah, the screenwriter said, quote, I
didn't want to write that scene for him, and I
told Hitchcock. So I thought it would break sympathy for
the character of the man and it's totally unmotivated. But
hitch said he wanted it in the film, and he
insisted that at that exact moment of the rape, he
wanted the camera right on her shocked face. Jesus, Yeah,
it's also Sean Connery. It is Sean, which I mean,

(29:38):
you see him in a different light. You do. It's
kind of impossible not to in a scene like that,
and it seems like like I'm not a great film buff.
But other people say the scene feels weird. And that
was a movie that I watched that I was kind
of like, I can't watch this again. This is this
is awful now, Hitchcock grew more possessive, if that's even possible.
As time went on, he started demanding his amerman focus

(30:00):
on Tippy Hedron's face and body with almost pornographic obsession.
He banned visitors and guests from the set, and eventually
Hitchcock's horny nous overwhelmed him. Here's the dark side of
g I mean, it's what happened quote. By November, he
was telling her his recurring dream. You were in the
living room of my house in Santa Cruz and there
was a rainboat a glow around you. You came right

(30:21):
up to me and said, hitch I love you. I'll
always love you, and we embraced. Don't you understand, he
asked in a low voice, that you're everything I've ever
dreamed about. If it weren't for Alma, Tippy Hedron's feelings
and intentions and her own private life seemed of no
concern to him. But it was a dream hit, she
told him, just a dream, and she left her dressing room.
Now in public to studio executives in the media, Hitchcock

(30:43):
was effusive in praise for Tippy Hedren. He called her
the ultimate actress, the finest performer he had ever worked with,
and his praise quickly slipped into outright talking about his
attraction to her. He seems to have led several film
executives to believe that he and Hedren were having an affair.
She encountered this. When she would like talk to these people,
they would like essentially make comments that led her to
believe they thought that she was having He probably did
that just so he could, like, you know, bring down suspicion. Yeah,

(31:06):
of him being this creep a zoid. Yeah, it's not weird.
It's not weird. That's because they're having this relationship or whatever.
I mean. There was that rape scene. There was that
rape scene in the movie. Hitchcock was baffled by the
fact that all of this dedication on his part had
not yet been reciprocated by the object of his desire.
He hired a handwriting analyst to try and determine whether
or not Tippy Hedron had what he called a deceitful personality.

(31:28):
And then at the end of February, Hitchcock finally crossed
the line into physical violence. If we don't count throwing
birds at someone for five days, his physical violence uh
in a way, in a way. In older interviews like
this one I found in The Express in two thousand eight,
Hedren was open about only the verbal aspects of what
went down. Quote, he stared at me and simply said,
as if it were the most natural thing in the world,

(31:48):
that from this time on he expected me to make
myself sexually available and accessible to him however and whenever
he wanted. But in two thousand sixteen, Tippy Hedron finally
alleged that after making these demands, Hitchcock straight up assaulted her.
Quote I've never gone into detail on this, and I
never will. I'll simply say that he suddenly grabbed me
and put his hands on me. It was sexual, it

(32:09):
was perverse, and it was ugly, and I couldn't have
been more shocked and repulsed. The harder I fought him,
the more aggressive he became. Then he started adding threats
as if he could do anything to me that was
worse than what he was trying to do at the moment. Boy, Yeah,
this is hard to hear. It's rough, it's rough. It's
rough stuff. It's rough stuff. I didn't know he physically
did it yet. This didn't come out until two thousand
and sixty now, so we're going to get into a

(32:31):
little bit more about that, about what Hedren says in
two thousands seventeen, you know, after Weinstein's assaults become public
and sort of the end of this unfortunate tale. But first,
you know, it's not a weird name. Zvia the Stevia
based diet soda beverage I'm currently sipping, and in fact

(32:51):
Zva is the only Stevia based diet soda beverage currently
on this table. That's a good that's a good ad plug.
Here's some products that paid up us. We're back. We're
talking about Alfred Hitchcock's assault of Tippy Hedron. Kind of

(33:11):
the culmination of just so much creepy behavior. Uh. In
two thousands seventeen, after news of Harvey Weinstein's creepiness became
public knowledge, Tippy Hedron tweeted this I'm watching all the
cover John Weinstein. This is nothing new, nor is it
limited to the entertainment industry. I dealt with sexual harassment
all the time during my modeling and film career. Hitchcock
wasn't the first. However, I'm not going to take it anymore.

(33:32):
So I simply walked away and didn't look back. Hitch
said he would ruin my career, and I told him
to do what he had to do. It has taken
fifty years, but it is about time that women started
standing up for themselves as they appeared to be doing
in the Weinstein case. Good for them. Now. The bad
news is that Hitchcock did ruin her career. Um, he
had a run contract for a couple more years, and
so she wasn't able to do anything without him for

(33:53):
the rest of that time, and he blackballed her in
the industry. She never had the kind of career that
she could have. Well, he whined stainder, Yeah, he wind Stainder,
He wind Steiner before Weinstein was I'm guessing he was
like an elementary school at this point, right. Well, Hitchcock
created the term Weinstein, Yeah he did. He in anticipation
of the other creepy man who would take on his baton. However,

(34:17):
he did not ruin Tippy Headren's life. She went on
to run a big cat sanctuary, which might have been
tied to all the bird related trauma and led into
her being in a movie wherein she and her family
lived with a number of dangerous, gigantic cats for years
and we're horribly wounded, which might be tied a little bit.
That's what I was wondering, Like there's such a connection there.

(34:38):
It may just be that because she had had this
experience on birds, she was less likely to realize things
had crossed the line in the production of that true,
because I mean she subjected her family to that, Yeah, exactly,
And that's kind of what happens with trauma, Like you
get fucked up and then you push it on people
around you if you're not careful. I heard about that
with child molesters, that they were molested. So then at

(34:59):
the side goal continues. Well, and I can say having
gone through, uh, some of my own deals with PTSD
and having had a part like we both pushed ship
on each other and like traumatized each other further. It's
a thing like you almost do it unconsciously. Yeah, because
it resets your ideas of like what's reasonable once you've
gone through something crazy and more likely to like I'm

(35:20):
not gonna call it Tippy Hedron a bad person for
putting a family through this. Having gone through what she said,
I can see how you wasn't it her and her
husband because he was a filmmaker. Yeah, they've been working
with these animals for a while. Yeah. Anyway, well we
we benefited because it's a great movie. A great movie.
What was the name of that, but exactly it was
just released I think recently. Go watch Big Cats Funk

(35:42):
with Tippy Hedron's family, Get ready, because that movie will
fuck you up. Yeah, it's very disturbing. All of the
times you see people attacked by animals on it are real.
They're real. They are real, graphical not depictions, actual attacks
of big cats on humans. It's crazy. It's just as
one of those things that reminds you that like if
your house cat, I have a house I love cats.

(36:03):
If your house cat were a hundred and eighty pounds,
it would regularly injure you right without wanting to cause
you pain. Just that's what cats do. That's their normal,
Like routine. Yeah, they're just cats. I'm gonna go out
and just kill a goat. Yeah, fun funk with some
ship for us that's buying a sandwich. Yeah, let's get
back to the podcast. So Tippy headron after Hitchcock actually assaulter,

(36:25):
lays hands on her, stands up for herself, and she
pushes back, and Hitchcock doesn't push anymore at her, So
that stays true to his character, but he also goes
completely in the other direction. Where he'd once been talking
about her as like the next Grace Kelly, this great
star who's going to be winning awards and stuff, he
starts refusing to even speak her name, calling her only
that girl. He directs her through his assistance, and he

(36:46):
goes beyond ignoring his leading lady, and he works to
actively sabotage the movie Marnie itself, making sure the final
edited version was as bad a movie as he was
capable of making. It's not that good. It's not that
good because he sucked it up right and on purpose. Yeah,
he burned his own movie to the ground in order
to hurt Tippy Hedrin for not responding. You know, Cubrick
kind of has the same tactics. Oh yeah, oh yeah,

(37:08):
with with with the Shining, you know, he put Shelley
Devolve through some ship, which is similar. And it's one
of those things there's always if you've got a great
director whose job in that case is to get uh,
traumatic acting out, to get someone to act like they've
been traumatized, there's always a degree like even like George

(37:28):
Miller in the Making of a Mad Max Fury wrote,
there's that talk about how like great movie, great movie,
brilliant movie. There's that talk about how what's his name Batman,
Christian Bale, not Christian Bale, fucking Tom Hardy, Tom Hardy,
the other bat Bane. Yeah, yeah, he's Bane. Yeah. Tom
Hardy is like hanging beneath this truck and like his
kid is like watching as they do this stunt where

(37:51):
he's like underneath the truck held up by wires, and
his kid asks George Miller, like, what happens if the
wires break? And Bruler's like, oh, they're really strong wires,
they won't break. And it's like, yeah, but what happens
if it breaks? And he's like, well, I guess your
dad's gonna go into the wheels. He's like, your dad's son.
Your dad was bang, he'll be fine. He'll probably be fine. Yeah,
he survived that monstrosity. But there's always a degree. If

(38:13):
you're a great director, you're trying to get a great
performance to specifically an actor to act traumatized. There's a
degree of emotional funory. There always be some, even great
directors who aren't necessarily shitty people, when you get caught
up in aren't like that, you'll do some things that
are on the line. You know, I think Hedgecock crosses
that line. Yeah, well you know what it is too.

(38:33):
It's like in Cubrick's state, you know, he didn't have
actors as good as Nicholson. Yeah, so to to measure up,
he had to funk with him. He had to funk
with him. And maybe that one. I don't know enough
about that to say if he crossed a line or not.
It's always a risk he didare making there's like a
making of Shining if you watch and you can see
her kind of breaking down, and it's the same thing

(38:54):
and like Apocalypse Now where you see uh marchin where
he's like Injuris himself badly while drunk on set in
that opening scene, like cuts himself and his bleeding everywhere,
and kubers like, not keep going, you mean just keep rolling?
Oh sorry, Coppola, Yeah, that's why I'm here. I'm bad. Yeah,
I say I'm bad at this. I'm bad at all
this except for reading about creepy things people do. Um

(39:16):
so Hitchcock enough to deal with. Hitchcock's biographer Spoto, calls
Tippy Hedren Hitchcock's last great obsession and arguably his downfall.
Spoto argues that after Marny, he never made another great movie,
and then he may never even made another good movie,
that this kind of broke him. Yeah, Frenzy is pretty
interesting for the subject matter. But yeah, you're right. I
mean he's definitely like going down. Yeah, and like the

(39:39):
fact that he's sabotaged Marny is kind of like, that's
sort of where this guy's mind breaks, you know. Yeah,
he's kind of losing it. He kind of loses it
after that. While he would live on until nineteen eighty,
his life was increasingly devoid of meaningful work, filled with food,
ill health, too much alcohol, and an increasingly cold and
perpetually sexless relationship. But this is also when I saw
him on many interviews, and he was really funny. Yeah,

(40:01):
I mean he's he's got that sort of charm. Yeum,
I want to say he has a has a really
good Dick Cabin interview. Yeah, around that time. But he's
not producing his great films anymore. He's become he's already
a legend. Yeah, but he's not necessarily doing what he
does best. Yeah, yeah, which seems to he's one of
those people who doesn't last a lot longer after they

(40:21):
stopped putting out good work. Yeah. It's really a shame,
it is. And he dies a year after receiving the
Oscar for Lifetime Achievement in nineteen eighty, which is the
only Oscar he received, only Oscar he received in which
he was really anxious about taking because he number one
knew it meant that his career was over. And number two,
I didn't like how he looked on screen because he

(40:42):
was in very ill health at that point. So it
was he was not a happy man at the end. Um.
You can you can see it in the films. They
get really disgusting and disturbing. Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of
his mind unraveling, and we are all left here to
unravel his legacy and try to figure out how should
we think about Alfred Hitchcock knowing all this stuff, you know,

(41:04):
because it is clear with his work that art and
abuse were inextricably tied together. He was able to make
the great films he was able to make because he
was the kind of man who would poison a cameraman
and let him shoot himself for hours, or throw birds
at a woman for five days. The shipping thing is
a little more fun than the birds. It's a little
they're both over a line, I know, but shiitting I

(41:24):
can kind of be like, all right, you're still like
you right, But it's like the birds thing, It's like,
all right, what are you doing? This is crazy? Yeah,
the birds thing. And like you can see, like when
he locks that woman in a telephone box and fills
it with smoke. That's over a line to me too,
that is too, that's pretty. This is a guy who
most people would have put lines up earlier than hit

(41:46):
did um And because he didn't have those lines, we
got some great movies. But because he didn't have those lines,
Melanie Hedren got a doll of her mom's corpse sent
to her like it carried over into other people's lives. Yeah,
and traumatized them till this day, probably to this day,
and that's complicated. Yeah. I want to say an unknown

(42:10):
movie of his that's wonderful is Shadow of a Doubt.
I don't heard that one with Joseph Cotton. Excellent movie.
It's really good, and it's before his kind of like
Swan period. I mean, I went into this podcast, I've
definitely seen more Hitchcock than I Stave. Steven Seagal went, oh, yeah,
I stand because I only think i'd seen like under
Siege and on Deadly Ground of his. I think I've

(42:30):
seen the Vertigo, north By Northwest Psycho and the Birds obvious. Yeah, yeah, um,
but that's pretty much it from my Hitchcock Now. Yeah,
there's some kind of the big hitters. There's some deep
cuts like Suspicion is great and that's um Carrie Grant, Yeah,
and so is uh what's it called Rebecca I already
mentioned is great. There's also Foreign Correspondent is really good.

(42:52):
He worked with William Cameron Menzies, excellent cinematographer. So where
are you now? As as a huge Hitchcock fan, like obvious,
this is not a guy. It's not like Weinstein where
he was an influential person in the industry. But you
can pretty much cut mention of him out and not
affect the history of cinema. Yeah, because he was just
a producer, system producer. He wasn't like, although I've seen
a movie he directed, Oh, I didn't know he directed anything.

(43:14):
It was it was like Mercy Thoma's first film, Oh
weird Hitchcock. You cannot cut out of film Cannon without
losing something. He's too influential. He's too influential, and I
could still watch Rebecca and and love it just as much.
Does it help that he's a director who made creepy
movies rather than like, if if this was like I
feel like if Jimmy Stewart had been doing this ship,

(43:36):
I wouldn't be able to watch It's a Wonderful Life. Yeah,
it's different because you're not seeing him yeah, on on film,
So that makes it easy. That makes it easier. However,
it does tarnish what you're about to say is does
this tarnish my appreciation of his films a little bit? Yeah, Like,
I don't know if I could watch The Birds the
same way right, or even Marnie, which I haven't watched
from the first time I watched it, so there's a

(43:57):
little bit of that. But it's also like, like, right
now I want to revisit Foreign Correspondent just because it's
a brilliant film. Yeah, it's like espionage and like really
interesting for its time. One thing I do want to
bring up that I'm not enough of the film historian
to say concretely, but it occurred to me as I'm
researching this. You know, you've got Alfred Hitchcock inventing the
slasher genre and also a guy who has some serious

(44:19):
issues with women, um, which are very much on display.
I feel like horror as a genre has for a
long time had some issues with women. Um yeah. Yeah,
And I wonder how much of that is Hitchcock's DNA
in the genre. Um. He definitely is kind of the pioneer,
yeah of that, because Psycho is what a lot of
people would agree is the first slasher movie. Yeah, yeah,

(44:40):
you know, and inspired so much. It was the first
time too that that horror was was was like a masterpiece.
It wasn't just schlocky. It wasn't a guy in a
rubber suit banging around. I mean, at the time horror
was kind of goofy and cheesy, like Vincent Price. Yeah,
you know, like darkness of were Schools and Skeleton. Yeah,

(45:03):
it was corny. He made it kind of artistic. And
so I wonder how much of his issues with women
and his because like we talked about the Shining later,
and I have to think Kubert's got to be a
guy who's influenced by Hitchcock of course, and and and
and Bogdanovitch, perhaps even down to the way he treats
his actress to get a response. I'm like, well, this
would not have been a hidden story at the time. Well,

(45:25):
Hitchcock got a great performance out of Hedren and the Birds,
and he did it by fucking with her. Maybe that's
what I gotta do with Shelley deval right, right, I
gotta push her. Yeah, yeah, I mean I can see
them justifying it in that sense. Yeah, it doesn't make
it okay. And it's another example of sort of how
this kind of thing gets passed down, because we see
Hedren sort of maybe passing it down with her family
getting them into this production that's really a little too much.

(45:47):
But we also see like Hitchcock passing down this sort
of idea that like, sometimes you have to push your actresses.
So like, what did he say, Like you have to
torture the torture the woman. Yeah, the trouble of today
is we don't torture women in off. Yeah, that was
a very odd quote because I've i mean, I've never
heard heard it put that way. Yeah, and it makes
no sense. Yeah, it does unless you start thinking about like, okay,

(46:09):
well you've got the tippy header and the birds, you
get Chilly Davall in the shining. Sometimes that's what directors do.
It comes from a place though, of I think fear
of women, you know, and and and their strength. Yeah,
where it's like you're sort of insecure and about yourself
and insecure about the quality I think of the actresses
that you're getting too, that you have. Because he's not
doing that, like Hitchcock is not doing that to carry Grant. Now,

(46:32):
I was just about to say, like he would never
do that to carry He would carry Grant would just
storm off the set. Yeah, Carry Grant would not take that.
Nobody's throwing birds at Carry Grant for five days. No.
Carry Grant is interesting because he loved Hitchcock. Yeah, you know,
and and he was also so difficult to get on
board for some movies. Billy Wilder famously tried to work

(46:52):
with him many times, but for some reason, like carry
was like no, But with Hitchcock he's like, yes, I'll
do it. In a lot to people, like even a
lot of the women who worked with Hitchcock really because
you know you made great movies with him. Even Hedren
has this kind of like complexity where she's like, this
guy is someone I really don't like really fun, but
also like you know, you can't deny what he made. Yeah,

(47:14):
they're tough. I can't remember. There's another story where where
he got some actress I forget who an apartment and
then it was like within viewing of his apartment so
that he could watch her. That's did you come across that? No?
I didn't, but that sounds just like Hitchcock. I think
it was right down to it almost being part of

(47:35):
what was the movie where Jimmy Stewart's I think that's
kind of where that came from. Yeah, So again, this
is a guy who everything he does in a movie
is basically something he does in real life. I know
he lives his life the way he directs his films.
He directs fucked up films. He's he's like a performance artist.

(47:55):
Yeah yeah, well I think that's where we're gonna land
for the day. I bet you got any plug as
to plug before rolling out of here last episode. I
plug my podcast, I'll plug my Twitter. It's at abit
g awesome. Uh. You can find me on Twitter at
I right, okay. You can find this podcast on Twitter,
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(48:17):
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(48:39):
a great variety of things, So check all that out.
I'm Robert Evans and until next week, I love about you.
Bam Oh that was fun. Hitchcock in the Hitchcan. I'm
I have to say I'm pretty