Hitchcock ruining Tippi's career

Another point, in 'The Girl', it takes 5 days to shoot the 'Birds in the Attic' scene. And the scene is played as if he is doing over and over on purpose, however watch the film, it is montage. The scene is well over a minute long and every shot is a different camera set up. I have no doubt it lastest all that time to shoot, but NOT the way it is presented in 'The Girl'.

The shower scene in PSYCHO also took a week to shoot. Montage again.



Welcome To Prime Time B***H! - Freddy Krueger

Tippi Hedren also came out at a time when the zeitgeist was changing. If she'd been around ten years earlier she may have been able to get by on just her looks and a handful of facial expressions, but by the late sixties Hollywood was already shifting away from the classic leading man/leading lady archetypes toward more serious character actors.





"Questions are a burden to others; answers a prison for oneself."

That isn't really so - there have been stories about Hitchcock and Grace Kelly and Hitchcock and Ingrid Bergman, that he was in love with both of them. Both of them really cared about him as a person - and Kelly was the only person who was invited to eat with his family at the kitchen table.

I think there's no question that the man had some hangups but certainly many people enjoyed working with him. Tippi did not - that was a terribly difficult shoot and was not a happy time. Again I would recommend The Dark Side of Genius which I believe is accurate about Hitchcock working on The Birds. He worked long and hard on that book and interviewed absolutely everyone. I know. I transcribed them.

Well said

I agree that she wasn't much of an actress. I'm always surprised, however, that no one points out that she had a horrible voice . The only other actress I can remember who had a voice almost as bad was Elizabeth Taylor, but she had her beauty and her past as a beloved child actress. Tippi Hedren just didn't belong in films at all.

I agree that Tippi was no actress .. but I do believe her about the abuse from Hitchcock ... so many women go through things like that , are a ashamed of it , like it was their fault .. As far as other women that worked with Hitchcock .. I would assume that he didn't obsess with them the same way he did with Tippi ... Lucky them indeed .

I feel kind of sorry for Tippi. She seems like a nice enough person and I feel she has no reason to lie about her relationship with Hitchcock but I do believe that she's completely delusional if she thinks that Hitchcock ruined her career. She might have been pretty but she was no actress. It's certainly likely that she lost out on a couple of high profile roles because of Hitchcock holding her to her contract but if she had the talent she could have passed auditions and proved herself in the following years. She seems to think that she was some great talent that Hithcock suppressed. It was 2 years paid in full and the Truffaut film she constantly laments about (although Truffaut's daughter rejects Hedren's claim that she was ever up for the role) was Fahrenheit 451 that even Julie Christie couldn't save from utter mediocrity. I feel bad that she was sexually harassed but I don't think that even under ideal circumstances that she'd be known for anything other than the Hitchcock films. That very theatrical style of acting was quickly becoming archaic and there's no way Hedren could adapt. But she can claim two very good films and that's more than most actresses can. The Birds is a great film and Marnie somehow survives Hedren's shrill and grating performance.

Regardless of the sexual harassment claims, Hitchcock MADE Tippi Hedren's career. He didn't ruin it. She had very little talent.

Also, consider the career of her daughter, Melanie Griffith. Nobody ruined that. She first became famous playing a slutty underage girl in "Night Moves", "The Drowning Pool" and "Smile". Maybe she was an emancipated minor and taking no advice at all from her mother, but she seems a lot more like the daughter of someone who knew how to "play the game" in Hollywood as opposed to the daughter of an innocent naif who had been used and spit out by Hollywood power brokers years earlier.

Her grandaughter, Dakota Johnson, also has already been declared a star based on a movie, "50 Shades of Gray" that would have sold a lot of tickets with an anatomically correct sex doll in the lead role. Whatever talent she has, she has also figured out that sex sells. I think it's amazing that a family can reach third-generation acting status based on limited talent (they're not the Fondas or the Barrymores) if they had ever been all that sabotaged by the Hollywood powers that be.