The protagonist of "The Birds", the mother of Melanie Griffith, assured that she was mistreated by the mythical director, with whom she worked on two films half a century ago
The actress Tippi Hedren, discovered by the famous director Alfred Hitchcock, assured that she was harassed and cruelly treated by the master of suspense during the filming of the two films that she made for him, which began with The Birds.
Tippi: A Memoir (a Memory) is the book in which the actress reveals for the first time what she experienced in 1963 and 1964 when she filmed the tapes, after being discovered at age 31 by Hitchcock, who saw her in a commercial on television and made her his muse.
The television series The Girl (2012) had already advanced something about the stormy relationship of the famous director with his then-young actress, but in this book, Hedren opens her heart to tell more details about what happened, according to the advance obtained by the newspaper New York Post.
The then-model had moved from New York to the city of Los Angeles, after divorcing Peter Griffith, the father of her daughter Melanie, who also made a career as an actress. Hedren obtained a five-year contract with the director, as well as acting classes with him and his wife, Alma Reville.
In her memoir, the 86-year-old actress says the filmmaker became very possessive, having warned her castmates, including her costar Rod Taylor, not to talk to or touch her.
In the book, due out Tuesday, he noted that Hitchcock's obsession with his muse had reached the point that if he saw her smiling or talking to a man on location, he would turn "cold," and lash out. "Grumpy" and stared at her, expressionless, even from across the set.
Hedren also lets it be known that on one occasion the filmmaker tried to kiss her in a limousine and that he did not denounce what was happening to him because in the 1960s the term "S- harassment" did not exist and they would support Hitchcock because: "who Was he more valuable to the study, him or me?"
"It was a horrible moment," wrote the octogenarian actress in her book, who also recalled that in the final scene of the film, the director had promised to use mechanical birds, but "he lied" and did the opposite, for which he almost lost an eye when a bird stung her very closely.
"It was brutal, ugly, relentless," he says in his memoirs and despite his bad experience due to the director's obsession, his nightmare did not end there, since in the next film, Marnie, the thief (1964), a performance that he made obligatory per the contract, Hitchcock ordered a secret door installed connecting his office to the actress's dressing room.
Hedren assures that the director of Psychosis entered several times and put his hands on her. "It was S-, it was perverse," she also indicates in the book.
"The more I confronted him, the more aggressive he became," she noted, noting that during the filming of the second movie, Hitchcock asked the makeup department to make a copy of her face for him.
Despite the contract, after her nightmare with the director, Hedren no longer wanted to work with Hitchcock, who died in 1980 but continued his career, in which she filmed 50 films.
