Latest / DISGRACELAND / Alfred Hitchcock: Killers, Auteurs, and Survivors

Transcript

Alfred Hitchcock: Killers, Auteurs, and Survivors · DISGRACELAND

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Please check the show notes for more information.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. This is a
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: story about one of the greatest filmmakers of all time,
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: Alfred Hitchcock. But it's also a story about some of
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: the most vicious killers in English and American history, killers
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: who captured the imagination of Alfred Hitchcock and who compelled
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: him to create classic tales of fear, horror, paranoia, and suspense.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: And this is a story about power, more specifically the
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: abuse of power by a controlling auteur hell bent on
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: having his way with a woman who he assumed to
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: be a powerless actress, an actress Tippyhedron, who demonstrated remarkable
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: strength and survived both personally and professionally to tell her story,
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: the story she played out on screen for Alfred Hitchcock.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: Though those stories were scored by a guy named Bernard Hermann,
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: a composer who made great music. Unlike that music I
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: played for you at the top of the show. That
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: wasn't great music. That was a preset loop for my
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: melotron called Erwin M. Fletcher.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: I presume MK two.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: I played you that loop because I can't afford the
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: rights to our day will come by Ruby in the Romantics.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: And why would I play you that specific slice of
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: glass half full Boston Nova Cheese. Could I afford it?
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: Because that was the number one song in America on
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: March twenty eighth, nineteen sixty three, And that was the
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: day that Alfred Hitchcock's thriller The Birds was released in theaters,
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: shocking audiences with an ending so visceral and so violent
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: that it felt real because it was on this episode
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: violent Killers, violent Control, Violent Birds, Vindication, and Alfred Hitchcock.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: I'm Jake Brennan in this this Disgraceland Leopold and low
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: Earl Nelson, Neville, Heath, ed Geane. These names may not
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: be familiar to you now in twenty twenty four, but
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: back in the nineteen twenties, the nineteen forties, and the
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: nineteen fifties, these men made headlines for their deeply disturbing
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: and utterly depraved crimes they committed. Nathan Leopold and Richard
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: Loewe stabbed a fourteen year old boy to death with
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: a chisel just to see if they could get.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: Away with it.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: Earl Nelson murdered at least twenty two women, mostly landladies, in.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: A little over a year.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: Sometimes he even had sex with their corpses. Neville Heath
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: aka the Lady Killer, was a sadist who bound, gagged,
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: whipped and murdered two women in England. He got off
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: on it, the sex and the murder. At Geen was
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: a collector. He made bowls from human skulls, a belt
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: from human nipples. He killed women and stole corpses from
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: graves with the express purpose to create a skin suit
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: from their body parts, which would allow him, at least
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: in his mind, to become his dead mother. These stories
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: terrified people here in the United States and abroad. Alfred Hitchcock,
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: for one, was obsessed with these stories. Hitch as he
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: was known, grew up on murder. I mean he literally
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: grew up a few blocks away from Whitechapel in London's
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: East End, the sight of five brutal unsolved murders at
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: the end of the nineteenth century. That was the time too,
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: of Jack the Ripper, who began his bloody work about
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: eight years before hitch was born in eighteen ninety nine.
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: And where was Dirty Jack now? He lived on in
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: the minds of thousands of English children whose mothers told
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: them that if they misbehaved, the Ripper.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: Would come and get them.
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: And then in nineteen twenty seven, Jack the Ripper struck again,
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: this time on a movie screen, a fictionalized version that
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: is in one of Alfred Hitchcock's earliest films, The Lodger,
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: a story of the London Fog. All of Hitchcock's other
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: obsessions soon followed. The prolific Landlady killer Earl Nelson became
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: the character of Uncle Charlie in Hitchcock's nineteen forty three
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: thriller Shadow of a Doubt. Leopold and Low were transformed
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: into two preppies who strangle a classmate for the hell
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: of it in Hitchcock's incredible nineteen forty eight film Rope.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: The sexual sadist Neville Heath was the inspiration for the
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: so called necktie killer in one of Hitchcock's final films,
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: Frenzy and Human Skin Wearing. Ed Gean bore more than
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: a passing resemblance to Norman Bates, the hotel proprietor who
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: lives with his dead mother in Hitchcock's hugely popular movie Psycho.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: That was the big One.
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: More than thirty years after his directorial debut, after making
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: more movies than most directors make in a lifetime, silent films, talkies,
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: black and white, technicolor, Now, in nineteen sixty, Alfred Hitchcock,
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: at age sixty one, was not only the most famous
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: director working in Hollywood, but also the most wealthy, all
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: thanks to a movie which broke just about every rule
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: a movie would. The lead character, Marian Crane played by
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: Janet Lee, is killed off at the halfway point. The
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: iconic shower scene, its barrage and off kilter camera angles,
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: the fast paced editing, Bernard Hermann's piercing score, all of
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: it was incredibly shocking. At the time, moviegoers were so
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: frightened that they were literally running up and down the
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: cinema aisles screaming. But it wasn't just the movie. It
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: was the marketing, the execution. No admittance once the picture
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: has started, please don't spoil the ending. Hitchcock had the
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: world right where he wanted it, under his spell, under
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: his control, and scared to death. Little did anyone know, however,
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: that you, Alfred Hitchcock, were the most scared of all.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: You never showed it.
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: You gave them that stiff upper lip and morbid sense
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: of humor, so impenetrable, so British, But it was true.
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: Everything you did, every movie you made all out of fear,
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: a fear that had been there since you were a child.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: Fear that Jack the Ripper was coming to get you.
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: Fear of the Jesuit priests who doled out that Headmaster
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: ritual on your knuckles with a strap.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: You were afraid of authority, especially.
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: The police, after that one time that you came homely
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: and your father had some London cops toss you in
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: a holding cell to teach you a lesson. You were
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: afraid of the dark of crowds. Most of all, though,
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: you were afraid of being alone, even on a movie
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: set surrounded by your team of collaborators, all the people
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: so crucial to executing your supposed auteur vision. You knew
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: how they all saw you, because you saw yourself the
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: exact same way, overweight, unattractive, an appearance that only became
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: more grotesque when you were pictured next to one of
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: your leading men debonair types like Carry Grant or Jimmy Stewart.
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: You worried that the great pulp crime novelist Raymond Chandler,
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: who wrote the script for your excellent nineteen fifty one
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: film Strangers on a Train, spoke for everyone when he
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: watched you exit your automobile and said, look at that
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: fat bastard trying.
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: To get out of his car. He didn't know that
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: you heard him, but you did. You heard everything.
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: The insult stung, but you got your revenge, not just
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: on Raymond Chandler, whom you fired, but on the world.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: You took all your fears and put them on celluloid,
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: and then projected the film on the largest screens possible.
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: You subjected the masses to your own crippling anxieties. You
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: were a master not just of suspense, but of control.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: Every shot storyboarded in advance, every move made by every
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: actor done just so because you told them to.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: Hey, you said it. Actors deserve to be treated like cattle.
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: Now you were the master of the box office, fear
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: and obsession being the twin engines that drove you, Obsession
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: being the thing at the center of your poetic get
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: Deeply Fucked Up movie Vertigo, a movie that was panned
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: by critics and dismissed by audiences upon its release didn't matter.
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: You were the guy who made Rear Window, north By
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: Northwest some of the greatest movies of all time. Plus
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: decades later, long after You died, Vertigo finally got its
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: props when it unseated Citizen Kane as the greatest movie
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: of all time, at least in the eyes of the
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: esteemed critics Poll and cit and Sound Magazine.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: Revenge in life and again in death.
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: But right now, as nineteen sixty gave way to nineteen
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: sixty one, revenge wasn't on the mind of the most
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: powerful director in Hollywood. Once again. Alfred Hitchcock was obsessed,
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: this time, though not with Murder. Murder was just a mcguffin.
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: A mcguffin being the narrative device Hitchcock employed in many
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: of his films. Think of it like a red herring,
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: something that moves the plot and the characters along, but
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: ultimately is kind of a fake out the briefcase in
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: pulp fiction, the Arc of the Covenant and Raiders of
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: the Lost Arc, these are mcguffins. In Psycho, the mcguffin
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: is the forty thousand dollars that Mary and Crane steals
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: from her employer and takes with her on the run.
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: In this episode of Disgraceland, the mcguffin is all this
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: stuff about Alfred Hitchcock being obsessed with murder, which he was,
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: But Alfred Hitchcock was truly obsessed with something else, or
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: should I say, with someone else, And like a character
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: in a Hitchcock movie, that's someone else was the object
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: not only of affection but of lust, jealousy.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: And torture.
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: Tippy Hetern needed steady, reliable work. In nineteen sixty one.
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: Tippy was a thirty one year old model, recently divorced,
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: with a four year old daughter to support and plenty
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: of bills to pay. Modeling provided when the gigs were there,
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: but it wasn't steady. In it wasn't reliable, which, as
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: I've just pointed out, were two things Tippy Hedron needed.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: So when she got a phone call out of the
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: blue from the talent agency in Los Angeles, so it was.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: Interested in her, she didn't question it. She didn't ask
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: why me. She took the meeting.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: Just days later, she got an offer, not from the
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: talent agency and not from modeling work. This was an
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: offer to work as an actress under exclusive contract to
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: the most famous director in the world, a director she
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: hadn't even met yet. Tippy Hedrin had no idea that.
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: Just days earlier, Alfred Hitchcock and his wife, Alma had
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: been watching TV in their Belle Air home when they
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: happened to catch Tippy in a commercial for a liquid
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: diet drinking Alma was Hitchcock's closest collaborator, and had been
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: for his entire career. She was his story consultant, his
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: script editor, his gut check. But Alma Hitchcock wasn't Grace Kelly.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: She wasn't Ingrid Bergmann or Janet Lee or any of
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: the blonde actresses that her husband gravitated toward when it
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: came to casting his films, and she certainly wasn't the
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: woman they were both watching on the family television set
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: right now.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: The commercial played.
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: It was brief, but hitch couldn't take his eyes off
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: of her, some thirty years his junior. Her short blonde hair,
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: her close fitting white outfit, her smile. She made him
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: feel the way he felt when he was around Grace.
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: But she was better than Grace. She wasn't off playing
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: princess and Monaco. She was nobody who could be as somebody,
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: his somebody. He was smitten and he had to know
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: who she was. He picked up the receiver of his telephone,
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: dialed his agent and spoke three words like he was
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: calling out orders on a movie set.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: Find the girl, and now he had her the girl.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: Tippy Hedrin signed to a seven year contract, five hundred
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: dollars a week, for which she'd work for him and
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: him only. But working for Alfred Hitchcock didn't just provide
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: a paycheck. It provided a whole new wardrobe. Before she'd
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: even proven herself as an actress, hitch sent Tippy to
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: his legendary costume designer, Edith Head.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: Tippy felt like she was walking into.
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: A dream as she walked through the tall red double
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: doors that led into Edith's workspace on the universal picture slot.
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: She felt like she was in a fairy tale when
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: Edith took her measurements and made her the most elegant
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: clothes ball gowns, cocktail dresses, pantsy In all, Hitchcock spent
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: over a quarter of a million dollars in today's money
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: on Tippy's wardrobe alone. No expense was spared, not when
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: it came to making Tippy look how Hitchcock wanted her
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: to look. He spent more money than anyone had ever
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: spent in Hollywood history to produce a series of screen
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: tests which Tippy performed scenes from three of Hitchcock's older movies.
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: A screen test is typically a more modest exercise in
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: which an actor performs a scene on camera so that
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: the director can get a sense of how they'll appear
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: on a film. But these were elaborate productions, staged with
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: full sets and costumes. Tippy was flattered by the attention,
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: but a little confused. Even to someone new to the
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: movie making process, this seemed both indulgent and strange, and,
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: to be frank it was more than a little reminiscent
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: of Vertigo, Hitchcock's coldly received movie from a few years prior,
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: in which Jimmy Stewart dresses up a woman to make
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: her look like another woman whom he believes to be dead.
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: The sexual perversion in the third act of that film
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: was largely coded in the subtext given the times. But this,
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: this thing with Tippy here, this wasn't a movie. Alfred
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: Hitchcock didn't have to code anything if he didn't want to.
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: He told Tippy that he had an idea for another
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: kind of screen test, and this one, as he explained,
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: he would provide her with a martini which she would drink.
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: After she finished, he would ask her a provocative question.
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: He would give her a second martini, which she would consume,
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: and then Hitchcock would ask his next question, this one
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: even more provocative than the first, A third martini, A
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: third question. Could she even imagine what these questions would be?
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: Would they make her blush? Would they excite her?
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: Hitchcock wanted to know.
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: He was practically giddy as he asked, waiting with bated
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: breath for Tippy to respond. But Tippy didn't know how
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: to respond. All this talk about getting her drunk made
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: her feel uncomfortable, so she didn't say anything. She just
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: stood up and walked away. If Hitchcock was irritated by that,
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: he didn't show it. Not at first. He bypassed all
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: the A list talent he'd worked with for years and
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: cast Tippy as the lead in his new film, The Birds,
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: the long awaited follow up to Psycho, in which residents
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: of a coastal town are inexplicably attacked by violent birds.
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: It was Hitchcock's most costly film to shoot to date
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: and is most technically challenging. Fifteen hundred shots were planned,
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: twice the average amount for a movie at that time,
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: and about a quarter of those were trick shots. He
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: employed a bird trainer to work with hundreds of actual crows, gulls,
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: and ravens, as well as a special effects team to
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: create shots using mechanical or animated birds. At first, Hitchcock
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: gave Tippy instructions on how she should act, down to
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: the most minor movements in line readings. This was typical
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: Hitchcock behavior. An actor's motivation is his paycheck and all that,
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: at least in the eyes of the master of suspense.
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: But then Hitchcock had other instructions. He told Tippy what
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: she should eat, what clothes she should wear, when she
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: wasn't working, who she could and could not see, and
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: when she deviated from these instructions, like when she spoke
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: to other men on set, Hitchcock got angry, very angry.
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: Suddenly the man who had provided her with a new
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: wardrobe was treating her like shit, because in Hitchcock's mind,
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: she owed him he had plucked her from obscurity. He
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: was turning her into a star. If it wasn't for him,
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: she would be making another mindless had for whatever diet
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: was the fat of the week. The least she could
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: do was show him some appreciation, some affection. Even it
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: didn't have to be in public, in front of the
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: entire crew. It could be here inside his limo, where
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: the two of them were seated side by side.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: In the backseat.
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: The driver slowed to a crawl and pulled up outside
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: Tippy's hotel, and without warning, Hitchcock lunched for her. She
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: couldn't the void him, that big body of his, the
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: one he knew everyone talked about, swallowing up Tippy's petite,
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: delicate form. Hitchcock tried to put his lips on her,
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: and she recoiled, screaming, hitch what are you doing. She
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: used every muscle in her body to push the director
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: off of her. Her heart dropped to her stomach as
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: his beat frantically inside of his chest.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: She panicked. She grabbed the door handle and yanked on it.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: The door flew.
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: Open and she fell out, landing on her feet, running
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: straight through the front door of her hotel into safety.
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: Tippy Hedron was shocked. She was young, She was attractive.
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: She was used to men hitting on her, but nothing
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: like this had ever happened. The fact that it was
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: now happening with the man she was legally bound to professionally,
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: at least for the next seven years, that was a problem.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: What was she going to do? What could she do?
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: Who could she go to?
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: It's not like no one knew it was happening. Even
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: Alma Hitchcock knew it was happening, Hitchcock's wife. This was
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: the early nineteen sixties, after all, when gross behavior like
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: this was not only tolerated, but usually swept under the carpet.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: For now, Tippy Hedron decided to remain professional, smile, and
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: do her job. She wasn't going to let Alfred Hitchcock
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: break her.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: We'll be right back after this word word word.
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: Regarding Tippy Hedron's best professional intentions, Alfred Hitchcock had other ideas.
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: Back on the set for The Birds, the crew prepared
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: to shoot the film's climactic action scene, where Tippy's character
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: is viciously assaulted by birds in an attic bedroom. Tippy
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: didn't understand the point of the scene in the first place.
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: If the entire town is under attack, if two people
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: have already died. If there is a seriously pissed off
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: flock surrounding the house she's right now, and she hears
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: bird sounds from up in the attic, then why the
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: hell would her character go upstairs to investigate in the
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: attic by herself. You'll do it, Hitchcock said, because I
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: tell you to. Tippy took a deep breath. She let
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: her mantra play over and over in her head. I
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: will not let him break me. I will not let
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: him break me. She remains steady, reliable, as steady and
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: as reliable as the paychecks.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: Hitchcock provided her every week.
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: She remained this way when she was told on the
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: first day of shooting this particular scene a Monday, that
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: the mechanical birds that were planning to use had broken
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: down that instead they would be using real birds. That
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: she would need to walk into a giant bird cage.
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: The two men would be standing on either side of
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: the camera, heavy duty gloves on their hands, holding large cartons.
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: She remains steady as she put herself right where hitch
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: wanted her. Hitchcock played her just like he played the
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: audience with Psycho, and just like he was planning to
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: play the audience with this film. He called action, and
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: those two men on either side of the camera opened
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: up those large carts that they were holding, and out
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: came the birds, real birds, their beaks and talons sharp
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: as knives, soaring around the room, stuck in that giant cage,
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: with Tippy moving unpredictably dramatically, darting this way and that.
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: Every time they went for the exit, the handlers would
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: grabbed them and throw them.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: Back at Tippy's face.
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: Tippy was terrified as she fought to keep the birds
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: off of her. She fought to a mad steady.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: I will not let him break me.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: She said this over and over again on Monday, and
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: then on Tuesday, and again on Wednesday. As they shot
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: the same scene over and over, Tippy was exhausted. By Thursday,
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: day four, it was determined that the birds were flying
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: around too fast and thus for not being captured on
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: camera in a way that pleased out a Hitchcock. Using
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: elastic bands and nylon threads that were run through small
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: holes in Tippy's clothing, members of the crew literally tied
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: the birds to Tippy Hedron's body. Again, Hitchcock called action.
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: This time the birds were even more crazy and agitated
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: on account of the fact that they were attached to Tippy.
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: They lashed out at her, their beaks and their claws,
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: dug into Tippy's flesh and tore at her clothes. She
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: wasn't sure anymore where the fake blood stopped and the
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: real blood began. The next day, Friday.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: Day five.
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: Day five was more of the same same scene, same birds,
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: tied to the same actress, same mantra, I will not
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: let him break me. Her words were ironclad, but the
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: birds were relentless. One landed on her and started jabbing
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: its beak in her left eye. It missed, just barely
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: dodging her lower lip. She couldn't take it anymore. She
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: lost it, screaming, her heart pounding. She then collapsed to
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: the floor. There's no way around this. I don't care
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: how much you like Alfred Hitchcock's movies. Tippy Hedron was
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: assaulted while making the Birds. She was assaulted, and she
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: was tortured until she had a nervous breakdown. That's a fact.
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: Directors do many things to elicit a performance out of
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: their actors, But when Alfred Hitchcock tossed live birds at
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: Tippy Hedron for five fucking days, five days straight. He
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: wasn't doing it to coax a great performance. He did
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: it to trigger some sort of hysteria. He did it
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: out of malice. He'd been obsessed with this woman since
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: the day he saw her in a TV commercial, and
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: he had been rejected numerous times since. After making unwanted
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: comments and advances. The following Monday, the malice continued. Tippy's
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: doctors told Hitchcock that she needed to rest for a
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: few days the production would need to halt. Hitchcock' said
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: that wasn't going to be possible, to which the doctor.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: Replied, what are you doing? You try to kill her.
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: Hitchcock eventually relented, and Tippy got her rest from Hitchcock
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: the director. That is, there was no rest from Hitchcock
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: the obsessive. He followed up the onset torture by commissioning
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: the creation of an expensive doll of Tippy and character
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: from The Birds and sent it to Tippy's young daughter.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: That's actress Melanie Griffith, by the way. But he didn't
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: just send it to her. He sent it packaged in
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: a tiny little pine box that resembled a coffin He
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: then told Tippy about his recurring dream, one in which
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: she embraced him and said, hitch I love you.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: I'll always love you.
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: He built her a fancy dressing room in a trailer
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: that just so happened to be located directly adjacent to
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: the back door of his private bungalow on the Universal Lot.
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: It was a short walk from Hitchcock's office to Tippy's trailer, just.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: How he liked it.
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: He was making that walk right now. In early nineteen
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: sixty four, roughly a year after The Birds was released
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: to mixed reviews and only a fifth of the box
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: office receipts earned by its predecessor, Psycho, Hitchcock was working
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: on his new film, Marnie, a psychological thriller, on which
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: Tippy Hedrid was starring opposite Sean Connery. And speaking of opposites,
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: Connery was the opposite of Hitchcock. He was kind sensitive,
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: not just a gentleman on the surface, but deep down too.
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: Sean Connery wasn't the one entering her trailer. Though Sean
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: Connery wasn't allowed in her trailer, only Hitchcock was allowed.
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: Hitch called the shots, he told his screenwriter Evan Hunter
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: to write a rape scene in the Marney script. Hunter
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: thought it was out of character for the role that
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: Sean Connery was playing, so Hunter the writer refused, and
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: Hitchcock fired him. Hitchcock had someone else right the scene,
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: and then while filming it, at the moment that Tippy
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: is sexually violated, he instructed his camera man to zoom
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: in as close as he could on her face.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: The whole shoot was.
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: Awkward, not as awkward as this moment, though, With hitch
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: and Tippy in her trailer, he was walking toward her,
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: backing her against the wall, just like he had backed
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: her against the wall during those five brutal days with
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: the birds. But now he was doing it alone. Now
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: he was the bird. He didn't say much, He just
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: had that look in his eye, not romance, but not lust. Honestly,
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: who knew what was going through his head, The head
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: that had created some of the most unforgettable images in
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: twentieth century cinema, Images like that of Grace Kelly, unsuspectingly
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: attacked from behind in the film dial M for Murder,
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: knocked flat on her back, her would be killer on
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: top of.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: Her, trying to strangle her to death. Her outstretched arm
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: gesturing wildly towards the camera. Joseph Cotton in.
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: Shadow of a Doubt, the seemingly harmless uncle finally revealed
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: to be a duplicitous sociopath, a killer struggling to overpower
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: his teenage niece and throw her from a moving train.
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: Farley Granger in the opening scene of Rope, diabolically fusing
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: pleasure and pain, sex and violence, getting off on choking
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: the life out of another man. And now Alfred Hitchcock
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: closing in on a terrified Tippyhedron in her trailer. Who
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: knows if he was thinking of those images those scenes
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: as he got closer didn't matter. All that mattered was
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: that he had her right where he wanted her, under
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: his control, scared to death. But she wasn't a naive
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: audience of moviegoers that he could play like a fiddle.
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: So when Hitchcock reached out and grabbed her, grabbed parts
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: of her that she never wanted him or anyone like
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: him touching.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: She fought back.
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: She pushed him, just like she pushed him in the limo,
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: only this time she had to push harder because the
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: more she resisted, the more he went after her. He
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: was relentless, but Tippy was fierce. She continued to swat
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: at him and squirm him out of his grasp, until
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: at last he was out of breath and had to stop.
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: His beat red face was flush with anger and embarrassment,
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: and he told her that she should be more grateful
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: that she was nobody until.
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: He came along. I'll ruin you, he said.
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: You know what, Tippy replied, do what you have to do.
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: Tippy Hedron proceeded to take her own advice.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: She did what she had to do.
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: She finished making Marnie like the steady, reliable professional she was,
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: even though Hitchcock never directly spoke to her again and
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: only addressed her through other crew members. Hitchcock gave up
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: on the movie, at least creatively. When it was released,
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: it made even less money than The Birds. Tippy Hedron
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: didn't care. She got paid the same regardless. More importantly,
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: she was whole. She'd been pecked, clawed, bitten, and groped,
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: and yet she remained unbroken. There's a scene towards the
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: end of Psycho in which Lilah Crane played by Vera Miles,
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: is desperately searching for her sister Marian in Norman Bates's
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: creepy Gothic house. Spoiler alert, Marion had been hacked to
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: death in the shower by Norman dressed up as his
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: dead mother way earlier in the film. As Lilah looks
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: through the house for her sister, the camera quickly shows
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: us a turntable and a copy of Beethoven's Arroyoka Symphony
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: on the platter. But why, why is this shot in
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: the movie? What does Beethoven have to do with Norman Bates?
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: Is there some deep symbolic connection that we're supposed to
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: make between this classical composition and the events of.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: One of the original slasher films.
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: No, it's actually far more simple than that, and it
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: has to do with your gut reaction to the visual image.
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: Hitchcock wants your brain to take a quick snapshot of
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: that image, specifically of that word on the record, Arroyoka,
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: a word that a quick glance looks like erotic, and
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: in fact, he's betting on you to misread it as erotic,
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: which naturally you do, and which immediately makes you think, Hey,
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: what is really going on between Norman Bates and his
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: mother images? As Hitchcock knew all too well, have incredible power.
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: Images of objects have incredible power. And there are objects
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: all throughout Hitchcock's movies, keys, locks, ties, eyeglasses, candles, Beethoven records.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: Some of these things have true meaning.
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: A lot of them are just mcguffin's remember those, But regardless,
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: most of them are burned forever and are subconscious. That
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: is Hitchcock's power. As the French New Wave director Jean
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: MoU Gadar once said, there are perhaps ten thousand people
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: who haven't forgotten Saison's apples, but there must be a
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: billion spectators who will remember the cigarette lighter of strangers
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: on a train. Gadar also said Courte Hitchcock succeeded where
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: Alexander the Great, Julius, Caesar, Napoleon, and Hitler failed in
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: taking control of the universe.
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: Unquote, be that as it may.
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: Alfred Hitchcock himself failed when it came to taking control
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: of Tippy Hedrin after the Birds and after Marnie. Tippy
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: waited out the rest of that seven year contract and
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: then went on to have a steady, reliable film and
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: television career. At the same time, the Hitchcock's best days
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: had fallen behind him. Still Hitchcock could never forget Tippy,
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: and he'd never have to, in large part because he
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: had a keepsake from his time with her, a totem,
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: if you will, perhaps not exactly like the thing's real
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: life psycho ed geinkev bowls from human skulls, and belts
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: made of human nipples, because Alfred Hitchcock was not a
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: murderer or a grave robber.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: But he was a collector.
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: If you were to walk through his house, that seven bedroom,
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: five bathroom English style nestled in the trees of bel air,
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: past the mahogany grand piano, past the Chinese terra cotta
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: figures in the Salvador Dolly sketch, the three Paul Cleet paintings,
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: that one Picasso which turned out to be a fake,
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: but I digress. And if you made her way into
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: Hitchcock's private office, there on his desk you would find
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: an object, a real object, something called a life mask,
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: a rendering of Tippy Hedron's face made from wax or plaster,
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: one that Hitchcock was able to make because he told
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: her it was needed as part of a makeup routine.
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: And that was bullshit, psychotic bullshit, by the way, there
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: was only one reason why the life mask was made.
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: It was made so that it could sit on Hitchcock's
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: desk forever, so that every day, long after Tippy Hedron
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: was out of his life, Alfred Hitchcock stare at Tippy
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: Heedron's face, at Tippy Hedron's eyes, like she was really there,
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: which of course she wasn't. The next time Tippy Hedron
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: later actual eyes on Alfred Hitchcock. It was nineteen eighty
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: at Hitchcock's funeral, dead from kidney failure at the age
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: of eighty. Some were surprised to see her there, given
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: her history with her benefactor turned tormentor. As she wrote
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: in her memoir, she had long since healed and moved
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: on from her trauma and was there to quote honor
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: him personally as an unparalleled teacher and starmaker who once
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: believed in a former model who had never acted a
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: day in her life unquote. But whatever she said, what
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: Tippy Hedron was truly honoring by attending Alfred Hitchcock's funeral
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: was her own fortitude. Despite the best efforts of a
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: predator who had all the power on his side, Hitchcock
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: had not broken her in the end, Tippy Headron was
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: the victor, the great director, he was the disgrace. I'm
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: Jake Brennan and this is Disgraceland. Thanks for listening to
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: this week's episode on Alfred Hitchcock, a problematic director to
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: say the least, but no doubt one of the greatest
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: to ever do it. And this has we wanted to
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: know which problematic directors and which problematic actors have made
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: films that were so great that you continue to watch
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: them despite the transgressions of their creators. I watched Hitchcock's
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: for a Window two nights ago and I'm going to
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: watch this a thousand more times before I die. But
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: I want to know who is it for you guys
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: six one seven nine oh six six six three eight,
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: Leave me a voicemail, send me a text, let me know.
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: Can also reach me at disgracelaandpod as well on Instagram,
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: X and Facebook.
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: Leave me a review for the show.
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: If you guys want to help out, you do that
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and you can win some
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: free merch by doing so as well.
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: All right, here comes some credits.
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: Disgraceland was created by Yours Truly and is produced in
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: found on the show notes page at disgracelampod dot com.
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: If you're listening as a Disgraceland All Access member, thank.
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: You for supporting the show.
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: We really appreciate it, and if not, you can become
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: a member right now by going to disgracelampod dot com
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: Slash Membership. Members can listen to every episode of disgracelan
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: ad free, Plus you'll get one brand new exclusive episode
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: every month, weekly unscripted bonus episodes, special audio collections, and
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: early access to merchandise and events. Visit disgracelampod dot com
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: slash membership for details, Rate and review the show, and
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook at disgracelampod
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: and on YouTube at YouTube dot com slash at disgracelampod.
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: Rock a Roller, He's a baddard man.