The Birds

[Guest guest]

>I found out how the film was made while in high-school, and how

>Tippi Hedren was told mechanical birds would be used for the wild

>bird attack

>scenes, but instead, live birds were hurled at her by stage crews

>for weeks during the shooting. She even suffered a bird bite and

>almost lost her eye, and was later haunted by nightmares filled with

>flapping birds.

 

 

 

As it happens, I was an extra in The Birds, along with my

younger brother Ted. Much of the filming was done at Potter School

in Bodega, three miles inland from Bodega Bay, where my father was

principal.

 

Classes had already been temporarily moved to the fire hall

just down the hill, as the school was to be closed at the end of the

term. It was later operated as a bed-and-breakfast, and now is a

museum.

 

The meeting hall that formed the top floor of the schoolhouse

was converted into the interior of the house where the bird attacks

were supposed to have occurred. The exterior shell of the house was

set up on the baseball diamond beside Potter School.

 

The running scenes were filmed at Bodega Bay, three miles

away. The film was edited so as to move Potter School from Bodega to

the location of the much less picturesque grange hall in Bodega Bay.

 

Although I was actually in only the classroom and running

scenes, I was on the set for the filming of almost every scene in

The Birds involving bird attacks--which, far from taking " weeks, "

was accomplished in just four days of actual shooting time. (The

set-up took much longer.)

 

The only part I missed was one indoor scene, where no male

extras were used, and therefore we were not asked to be on call.

That was done on the fifth afternoon, & quite a few other local

people were there to watch.

 

The only live birds used by deliberate intent were several

very highly trained mynahs, who were quite carefully handled at all

times. Alfred Hitchcock was extremely strict about what was done

with them. Presumably there was an American Humane Association set

rep present, but even if there wasn't, neither Hitchcock nor

Suzanne Pleshette would have put up with any animal abuse.

 

Hitchcock was very pro-animal anyway, liked to have the

young extras following him around, and took many opportunities to

explain things, including his intention of improving human treatment

of birds. He asked if any of us had BB guns (none did), and

vigorously denounced boys who shot birds with BB guns for fun.

 

He also drew little cartoons of himself for all of us. I

still have mine.

 

Pleshette was a natural teacher, off set as well as on, and

spent a lot of time with the extras just because she liked children.

She had an authoritative presence, but in a quite warm & gentle way.

 

Tipi Hedren was a constantly frightened nervous wreck--and

the least visibly interested in animals, at the time, of anyone

involved, other than Rod Taylor, who was terribly ill and spent

most of the time when. I don't doubt that some of the crew might

have played mean tricks on her, as she was not well-liked, but

Hitchcock and Pleshette were looking out for her, though Hitchcock

also scolded her at times, more harshly than he ever scolded anyone

else. Once she stuck her hand in a bird cage, was nipped by one of

the normally quite well-behaved mynahs, and Hitchcock went ballistic.

 

Most of the birds used were:

 

a) Mechanical crows, dozens of them, that clipped to a

person's clothing or hair like a bow tie.

 

b) Papier mache birds -- by the hundreds. The crew left

some behind. My father gathered some of them up for souvenirs, and

still has them.

 

c) Masonite silhouettes. There were hundreds of these,

too. They were still visible, nailed to fences and rooftops, until

many years later. They disappeared, I believe, during the hippie

influx into the region of 1968-1973.

 

d) Wild volunteers. Birds frequently visited Potter School

anyway, including gulls from Bodega Bay and all sorts of birds who

fed along the banks of nearby Salmon Creek, but the bogus birds had

the effect of decoys, bringing thousands of additional wild birds

into the vicinity to see what was going on.

 

At that point, I had attended Potter School for three years,

but had never before seen so many wild birds, there or anywhere.

Hitchcock kept interrupting his own staged scenes to make sure the

wild birds were captured on camera.

 

Rachel Carson had not yet published Silent Spring in book

form, but excerpts had appeared in The New Yorker, and it was from

Hitchcock that I first heard about the effects of pesticides on

birds. He stood there on the steps of Potter school between shots

one afternoon & pointed out the absence of raptors amid all the wild

birds -- who would have been feasting, if they had not all been

killed by food chain accumulations of pesticides.

 

As my mother d to The New Yorker, and saved all her

back copies, I eventually found and read the Silent Spring excerpts,

but I believe this was a year or two later, after the book came out.

 

 

 

 

--

Merritt Clifton

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