The Birds (Universal Pictures) (1963)

TEMPERAMENT? .. ts for the Birds! (Advance) Alfred Hitchcock, while filming “The Birds,” had a difficult time maintaining his Hollywood reputation for finishing his pictures on schedule. The cast showed a mischevious inclination to delay him. “They’re the most difficult actors I have ever had to work with,” he said. Who? Rod Taylor, Suzanne Pleshette, Jessica Tandy, ‘Tippi’ Hedren? No, the birds. Hitchcock was aware when he undertook this adaptation by Evan Hunter of Daphne du Maurier’s classic horror story that he was taking on trouble. But he didn’t suspect exactly what problems he would encounter. Birds, he found, can be even more puzzling than human actors. “I know some actors I can almost predict,” he said, smiling at the thought. “But birds are so imaginative I can never guess what they will do next.” “The Birds,’’ which comes from Universal studio to the theatre sereen on 2 a. ; has one scene in which 2,000 finches fly down a chimney through the fireplace, into Jessica Tandy’s living room. By trickery this huge flock was induced to come pouring out of the fireplace precisely on cue. Hitchcock’s face lit up in anticipation of getting the shot the way he wanted it on the first take. But no. One little finch with an unerring instinct flew directly to the camera and perched on the rim, blocking the lens almost entirely. In another scene a raven was supposed to fly in and land on the back of ‘Tippi’ Hedren’s head, to launch an “attack” against her. Instead he landed at her feet, looking up at her appealingly. “Cut,” said Hitchcock in disgust, whereupon the bird, as soon as the camera stopped rolling, took wing and settled in her hair. During location filming at Bodega Bay in Northern California a gull which was supposed to fly into the scene and swoop down on a child flew the other way instead and landed on a mud flat far out in the bay. Since this was the only bird trained for the particular assignment Hitchcock’s chief birdman, Ray Berwick, had to go out after him while the whole crew watched and waited. The bird also watched and waited—until Berwick was within a few feet of him. Then the mischevious gull took off and flew directly to one of the other trainers on shore. The camera rolled again. The bird performed perfectly, and by the time Berwick returned from the middle of the bay the scene had been finished. Hitchcock’s most exasperating bird encounter at Bodega Bay came with a gull named Charley who had been trained to circle menasingly in the sky during a garden party scene. When the camera pointed skyward there was no Charley. He had suddenly disappeared. “We had to change the scene,”’ Says Hitchcock. “We rewrote it and shot it without Charley. So what happened? Next morning as we prepared for another scene there was Charley making his menacing circles above us.” All these problems with birds seemed unimportant, however, when Hitchcock talked about the unique performances he managed to get from them with the help of bird trainer Berwick. The 2,000 finches did fly down the chimney into a living room full of people, creating one of the most hectic scenes ever filmed. Trained gulls, ravens and pigeons made over 500 individual flying sorties against ‘Tippi’ Hedren in one of the film’s climactic scenes. One gull, used in the birthday party sequence, was so well trained he would swoop down from the sky, make a pass at Veronica Cartwright and then land off camera and wait to do a retake. More surprising than any of this, though, were the performances of six wild gulls trained to make one pass at a group of children, after which, while the camera followed them, they would fly off to freedom. As expected, they made their dive on the children, then turned out to sea and disap Rod Taylor and ‘Tippi’ Hedren provide the love interest against a background of all-out terror in Alfred Hitchcock’s color shocker, “The Birds.” Hitchcock, watching Miss Hedren on a TV commercial, decided she was the heroine he wanted for this particular film and signed her forthwith. (Still No. 6590-77) Her 101st. Motion Picture! (Current) Alfred Hitchcock recently was preparing to film a scene with ‘Tippi’ Hedren and Ethel Griffies for ‘The Birds,” a Universal release. ‘“Now,” he told the crew, “we are about to see a scene played by one girl doing her first film, and another doing her 101st.”’ It was true. Miss Hedren makes her bow in the film, and the 84year-old Miss Griffies said the assignment marked her 101st feature. The veteran actress made her debut at three on the London stage in “East Lynne” and 81 years later, still keeps active in films. peared. But to everyone's amazement all six returned by the following morning to the empty cages in which they had resided ° during their captivity. “So you see,” says Hitchcock, “birds are rather like actors. They like to make movies even if they don’t like to obey the director.”’ Its Birds vs. People In Hitchcock Shocker (Advance) Birds recently declared war on Hollywood. Two thousand finches descended a chimney and emerged into a living room full of people at Universal Studio when Alfred Hitchcock’s picture, “The Birds,” was in production. Winged squadrons came flying out of the large fireplace and buzzed through the room, wreaking unmentionable havoc while members of the cast ran back and forth, defending themselves from whatever might come. Rod Taylor upended a table and tried, futilely, to block the fireplace. Jessica Tandy screamed, “Tippi” Hedren rushed to protect child actress Veronica Cartwright. It was a frightening episode but not altogether a surprising one. Hitchcock himself had put the birds up to the attack. He had purchased them from a local aviary to make the ferocious scene and he had even directed their entrance through the fireplace. Before cameras began to roll a huge cage housing the two thousand birds had been installed at the top of the chimney. At Hitchcock’s signal a trap door in the cage opened and the birds, seeing the light through the fireplace below, flew toward it. This was one of the first of several large-scale bird “attacks” to be filmed by Hitchcock for “The Birds,” comino to: the 3.0503 Theatre. The picture was written by Evan Hunter from the Daphne Du Maurier story in which birds declare war on people. When the battle ende.; a minute or so after it started, hundreds of birds were sitting on chairs and window sills, looking more like lovers than fighters. And one little white-hooded finch was on Alfred Hitchcock’s knee, chirping at him merrily. MAN, HOW THOSE BIRDS CAN EAT! (Advance) THAT'S LIFE FOR YOU —IN HOLLYWOOD! (Current) Alfred Hitchcock filmed a scene for “The Birds,” a Universal release now at the theatre, in which Corvus, a trained raven, had to bite Rod Taylor’s hand. The bird learned his stint after pecking chunks of meat from the actor’s hand a few times and performed on cue, without bait, the first take. Said Hitchcock, “Corvus has now learned one of the basic rules of the actor—always bite the hand that feeds you.” Old Folk Song Heard In''The Birds” (Current) If, after seeing ‘The Birds,” you go home singing “Risseldy, Rosseldy, now, now, now,” the song the school children sing in the picture, you can blame the children of screenwriter Evan Hunter, who wrote “The Birds,”’ a Universal release, currently at WEG cota ae eee ee: theatre. “Risseldy Rosseldy” is an old folk song which Hunter’s three children learned at Pond Ridge School in Westchester County, New York. When he heard them singing it he called their teacher and she sent him the music. He added a few stanzas and shortly thereafter children in Bodega, California, were singing “Risseldy, Rosseldy, now, now, now” in front of Alfred Hitcheock’s cameras. Alfred Hitchcock found it took more than chicken feed to fill the bills of his cast in “The Birds,” a Universal release coming to the si way eer ee i theatre. The 2,000 finches, 300 English sparrows, 50 ducks, 125 ravens, gulls and assorted larger birds who dined off Hitchcock’s largesse between scenes of the picture managed to consume 100 pounds of bird seed plus 200 pounds of shrimph, anchovies and ground meat per week. Before the film was finished the tab for this provender came to about $1,000, which, as production manager Norman Deming said, “ain’t hay.” oe 55 5 HITCHCOCK BIOGRAPHY... A Reference For Drama Page Editors Alfred J. Hitchcock is the only director ever to marry his assistant director. She was Alma Reville, whom he married in 1926. From 1926 until they came to the United States, the Hitchcocks occppied a flat on the top floor of a six-story building in West End London. Mrs. Hitchcock has often worked with the director on his films, as a writer, advisor and general assistant. “Blackmail,” the first English talkie to have wide success, was a Hitchcock product for British International, where he also made “Murder,” ‘“‘The Ring,” “Juno and the Paycock,” “‘The Manx Man,” “The Farmer’s Wife,’ “Rich and Strange,” “Number 17,” “Champagne,” “The Skin Game” and “The Case of Lady Camber.” For Gaumont British, Hitch directed ‘Waltzes from Vienna” and then turned exclusively to the type of suspense story for which he won an international reputation. He directed “Secret Agent,” “The Woman Alone,” “The Girl was Young” and “The Thirty-Nine Steps,” the latter winning the New York Critics’ award for best direction of 1938. Before coming to this country, Hitch also directed “The Lady Vanishes,” a Fox British film, and ‘‘Jamaica Inn” for Mayflower. His reputation for drollery preceded Hitchcock to the United States, and good humor with the press has helped to build certain legends about him, particularly concerning his gastronomic prowess. These were credible in view of his former 290-pound weight, now reduced by more than 100 pounds. For years, the half-hour ‘Alfred Hitchcock Presents” series has alternately amused and shocked TV fans. In September of 1962, the Hitchcock television show went into a new format of weekly one-hour chillers on CBS-TV, designed as an anthology of suspense stories, in the tradition of The Master. The Hitchcocks have a married daughter, Patricia. They live in Bel Air in a lovely modern hillside home, where the director has a book-lined alcove study, and they also own a Monterey-type hilltop villa near Santa Cruz, California. Hitchcock says that the most important task of a director is to keep his audience awake. ‘You ask them,” he says, “to look at a square frame for Page 7 an hour and a half at a time. You’ve got to put something in there to keep them looking.” The famed movie maker has been nominated for an Academy Award for direction on four occasions: “Rebecca,” 1940; “Lifeboat,” 1944; “Spellbound,” 1945; “Rear Window,” 1954. In addition, he has received high critical acclaim and won many awards from newspapers, magazines and important film groups. “Rebecca” won the Academy “best picture’ Oscar. The next film on the Hitchcock schedule will be “Marnie,” from a novel by Winston Graham, and screenplay by Evan Hunter, also screenwriter of “The Birds.” Hitchcock’s American film include: Rebbecca, Foreign Correspondent, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Suspicion, Saboteur, Shadow of a Doubt, Lifeboat, Spellbound, Notorious, The Paradine Case, Rope, Under Capricorn, Stage Fright, Strangers On a Train, I Confess, Dial M For Murder, Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, The Trouble With Harry, The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Wrong Man, Vertigo, North By Northwest, Psycho, The Birds.