DISGRACELAND - Alfred Hitchcock: Killers, Auteurs, and Survivors

Episode Date: August 20, 2024

Alfred Hitchcock grew up on murder. He was the OG crime junkie; obsessed with true stories of stranglers, bodysnatchers, necrophiliacs, and serial killers. He was also afraid – not so much with these ghoulish figures, but of authority, the dark, crowds, and of being alone. He channeled his obsessions and his fears into some of the greatest movies of all time. And he abused his power as a controlling auteur by having his way with an actress who he assumed to be powerless. That actress, Tippi Hedren, demonstrated remarkable strength and survived both personally and professionally to tell her story.This episode contains themes that may be disturbing to some listeners, including graphic depictions of violence, sexual assault, and stalking.There's more about Alfred Hitchcock coming to your feed on Thursday in the After Party bonus episode. We want to know: Which problematic directors and actors have made films that are so great you will continue to watch them, despite the transgressions of their creators? Let us know and join the party at 617-906-6638, [e-mail], or on socials @disgracelandpod.To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at www.disgracelandpod.com.To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to a monthly exclusive episode, weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at disgracelandpod.com/membership.Visit www.disgracelandpod.com/merch to see the latest Disgraceland merch!Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - GET THE NEWSLETTERFollow Jake and DISGRACELAND:InstagramYouTubeX (formerly Twitter) Facebook Fan Group To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed. I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends.

Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that.

David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Dennis Leary, Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things, Tana Monsu, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sometimes a suspect is found guilty before a verdict is ever read in court.

On the Wicked Words podcast, I talk with the writers who dig deep into the cases that changed history, including Marsha Clark, who went from prosecuting one of the most famous murder cases to writing crime fiction. It doesn't matter that you didn't take part in the murder. If you were at the scene at all, you're guilty of murder. Every week, the real story is revealed. Join us every Monday for new episodes of Wicked Words. Listen to Wicked Words on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners. Please check the show notes for more information. Disgrace and is a production of Double Elvis. This is a story about one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, Alfred Hitchcock. But it's also a story about some of the most vicious killers in English and American history. Killers who captured the imagination of Alfred Hitchcock and who compelled him to create classic tales of fear, horror, paranoia, and suspense. And this is a story about power.

More specifically, the abuse of power by a controlling author, Hellbent on having his way with a woman who he assumed to be a powerless actress, an actress, Tippy-Hedron, who demonstrated remarkable strength and survived both personally and professionally to tell her story. The stories she played out on screen for Alfred Hitchcock, though, those stories were scored by a guy named Bernard Herman, a composer who made great music. Unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great. music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called Irwin M. Fletcher, I presume, M.K. 2. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to Our Day Will Come by Ruby in the Romantics.

And why would I play you that specific slice of glass half full Bossa Nova cheese could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on March 28, 1963, and that, was the day that Alfred Hitchcock's thriller, The Birds, was released in theaters, shocking audiences with an ending so visceral and so violent that it felt real because it was. On this episode, violent killers, violent control, violent birds, vindication, and Alfred Hitchcock. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is disgraceland, fold and low. Earl Nelson, Neville Heath, Ed Gein.

These names may not be familiar to you now in 2024, but back in the 1920s, the 1940s and the 1950s, these men made headlines for their deeply disturbing and utterly depraved crimes they committed. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb stabbed a 14-year-old boy to death with a chisel just to see if they could get away with it.

Earl Nelson murdered at least 22 women, mostly landlady's in a little over a year. Sometimes he even had sex with their corpses. Neville Heath, aka the lady killer, was a sadist who bound, gagged, whipped, and murdered two women in England. He got off on it, the sex and the murder.

Ed Gein was a collector. He made bowls from human skulls, a belt from human nipples. He killed women and stole corpses from graves with the express purpose to create a skin suit from their body parts, which would allow him, at least in his mind, to become his dead mother. These stories terrified people here in the United States and abroad. Alfred Hitchcock, for one, was obsessed with these stories.

Hitch, as he was known, grew up on murder. I mean, he literally grew up a few blocks away from Whitechapel in London's East End, the site of five brutal, unsolved murders at the end. 19th century. That was the time, too, of Jack the Ripper, who began his bloody work about eight years before Hitch was born in 1890. And where was Dirty Jack now? He lived on in the minds of thousands of English children, whose mothers told them that if they misbehaved, the Ripper would come. And then in 1927, Jack the Ripper struck again. This time, on a movie screen, a fictionalized version, that is, in one of Alfred Hitchcock's earliest films, The Lodger, a story of the London

fog. All of Hitchcock's other obsessions soon followed. The prolific landlady killer, Earl Nelson, became the character of Uncle Charlie in Hitchcock's 1944 thriller, Shadow of Adel. Leopold and Loeb were transformed into two preppies who strangle a classmate for the hell of it in Hitchcock's incredible 1948 film Rope. The sexual sadist, Neville Heath, was the inspiration for the so-called necktie killer in one of Hitchcock's final films, Frenzy. And human skin-wearing Ed Gein bore more than a passing resemblance to Norman Bates, the hotel proprietor, who lives with his dead mother in Hitchcock's hugely popular movie, Psycho. That was the big one.

More than 30 years after his directorial debut, after making more movies than most directors make in a lifetime, silent films, talkies, black and white, technicolor now in 1960, Alfred Hitchcock, at age 61, was not only the most famous director working in Hollywood, but also the most wealthy. All thanks to a movie which broke just about every rule, a movie in which the lead character, Marion Crane, played by Janet Lee, is killed off at the halfway point. The iconic shower scene, its barrage of off-kilter camera angles,

the fast-paced editing, Bernard Hermann's, piercing score, all of it was incredibly shocking at the time. Moviegoers were so frightened that they were literally running up and down the cinema aisle screaming. But it wasn't just the movie. It was the marketing, the execution. No admittance once the picture has started. Please don't spoil the ending. Hitchcock had the world right where he wanted it, under his spell, under his control, and scared to death. Little did anyone know, however, that you, out of Alfred Hitchcock were the most scared of all. You never showed it.

You gave them that stiff upper lip and morbid sense of humor. So impenetrable. So British. But it was true. Everything you did, every movie you made, it was all out of fear. A fear that had been there since you were a child. Fear that Jack the Ripper was coming to get you.

Fear of the Jesuit priests who doled out that headmaster ritual on your knuckles with a strap. You were afraid of authority, especially the police. After that one time that you came homely and your father had some London cops toss you in a holding cell to teach you a lesson. You were afraid of the dark, of crowds. Most of all, though, you were afraid of being alone. Even on a movie set, surrounded by your team of collaborators, all the people so crucial to executing your supposed autour vision, you knew how they all saw you, because you were.

you saw yourself the exact same way. Overweight, unattractive. An appearance that only became more grotesque when you were pictured next to one of your leading men, debonair types like Carrie Grant or Jimmy Stewart. You worried that the great pulp crime novelist Raymond Chandler, who wrote the script for your excellent 1951 film Strangers on a Train, spoke for everyone when he watched you exit your automobile

and said, look at that fat bastard trying to get out of his car. He didn't know that you heard him. what you did. You heard everything. The insult stung. But you got your revenge. Not just on Raymond Chandler, whom you fired, but on the world. You took all your fears and put them on celluloid, and then projected the film on the largest screens possible. You subjected the masses to your own crippling anxieties. You were a master, not just of suspense, but of control. Every shot storyboarded in advance. Every move made by every actor,

done just so because you told them to. Hey, you said it. Actors deserve to be treated like cattle. Now you were the master of the box office, fear and obsession being the twin engines that drove you. Obsession being the thing at the center of your poetic yet deeply fucked up movie Vertigo. A movie that was panned by critics and dismissed by audiences upon its release. Didn't matter. You were the guy who made rear window, north by northwest, some of the greatest movies of all time. Plus, decades later, long after you died, Vertigo finally got its props when an unseated citizen came as the greatest movie of all time, at least in the eyes of the esteemed critics poll in Sight and Sound magazine. Revenge in Life and Again in Death. But right now, as 1960 gave way to

1961, revenge wasn't on the mind of the most powerful director in Hollywood. Once again, Alfred Hitchcock was obsessed. This time, though, not with murder. Murder was just a MacGuffin, a MacGuffin being the narrative device Hitchcock employed in many of his films. Think of it like a red herring, something that moves the plot and the characters along what ultimately is kind of a fake out. The briefcase in Pulp Fiction, the arc, of the Covenant and Raiders of the Lost Ark. These are MacGuffins. In Psycho, the McGuffin is the $40,000 that Marion Crane steals from her employer and takes

with her on the run. In this episode of Disgraceland, the McGuffin is all this stuff about Alfred Hitchcock being obsessed with murder, which he was. But Alfred Hitchcock was truly obsessed with something else. Or should I say, with someone else? And like a character in a Hitchcock movie, that someone else was the object not only of affection, but of lust, jealousy, and torture. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl.

You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield. And in this new season of The Girlfriends, Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck.

I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the Girlfriends.

Trust me, babe. On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always,

can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that. Dennis Leary. I wake up and I'm hitting him in the head with a water bomb. And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance, Like he's about to attack me, like, making karate noises. And his entire, the Kardashian family over there, everybody's going,

and the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming. I immediately know that I've been asleep walking. David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Guy Branham. So anyway, Nicole Kidman broke up with Keith Thurban. Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead.

Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way over? Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things. Tena Monsu. Camilla Morone at Carrie Kenny Silver. And more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Remember when you'd walk into your local video rental place and there were always those two employees behind the counter arguing about movies? Well, that's us. I'm Millie de Cherico. And I'm Casey O'Brien. And now we're arguing about movies on our podcast, Dear Movies I Love You from the Exactly Right Network. Can I say something about the criterion closet?

Go ahead, dude. They're letting too many people in there. Okay, that's another film grape I got two. Sadly, that rental place doesn't exist anymore. It's probably a store that sells. running shoes. Or an ice cream shop with an extra pee and an E at the end. So consider us your slacker movie clerks in podcast form. I would like to establish a timeline of the moment you figured out who Channing Tatum was.

Every Tuesday, we dig into the movies we can't stop obsessing over, from hidden gems to big screen favorites. New episodes drop every week on the exactly right network. Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever. you get your podcasts. Tippy Hedron needed steady, reliable work. In 1961, Tippy was a 31-year-old model, recently divorced, with a four-year-old daughter to support and plenty of bills to pay.

Modeling provided when the gigs were there, but it wasn't steady and it wasn't reliable, which, as I've just pointed out, were two things Tippy Hedron needed. So when she got a phone call out of the blue from the talent agency in Los Angeles that was interested in her, She didn't question her. She didn't ask, why me? She took the meeting. Just days later, she got an offer, not from the talent agency and not from modeling work. This was an offer to work as an actress, under exclusive contract to the most famous director in the world. A director, she hadn't even met yet.

Tibby Hedron had no idea that just days earlier, Alfred Hitchcock and his wife, Alma, have been watching TV in their Bel Air home when they happened to catch Tippy in a commercial. for a liquid diet drink. Alma was Hitchcock's closest collaborator and had been for his entire career. She was his story consultant, his script editor, his gut check. But Alma Hitchcock wasn't Grace Kelly. She wasn't Ingrid Bergman or Janet Lee

or any of the blonde actresses that her husband gravitated toward when it came to casting his films. And she certainly wasn't the woman they were both watching on the family television set right now. The commercial played. It was brief, but Hitch couldn't take his eyes off of her, some 30 years as junior.

Her short blonde hair, her close-fitting white outfit, her smile. She made him feel the way he felt when he was around Grace, but she was better than Grace. She wasn't off playing Princess in Monaco. She was a nobody who could be a somebody, his somebody. He was smitten. He had to know who she was. He picked up the receiver of his telephone, dialed his agent, and spoke three words like he was calling out orders on a movie set.

Find the girl. And now he had her. The girl. Tippy Hadron signed to a seven-year contract, $500 a week, for which she'd work for him and him only. But working for Alfred Hitchcock didn't just provide a paycheck. It provided a whole new wardrobe. Before she'd even proven herself as an actress,

Hitch sent Tippy to his legendary costume designer Edith's head. Tippy felt like she was walking into a dream as she walked through the tall red double doors that led into Edith's workspace on the Universal Pictures Lot. She felt like she was in a fairy tale when Edith took her measurements and made her the most elegant clothes, ball gowns, cocktail dresses, pantsuits. In all, Hitchcock spent over a quarter of a million dollars in today's money on Tippy's wardrobe alone. No expense was spared. not when it came to making Tippy look how Hitchcock wanted her to look.

He spent more money than anyone had ever spent in Hollywood history to produce a series of screen tests in which Tippy performed scenes from three of Hitchcock's older movies. A screen test is typically a more modest exercise in which an actor performs a scene on camera so that the director can get a sense of how they'll appear on film. But these were elaborate productions, staged with full sets and costumes. Tipy was flattered by the attention, but a little confused.

Even as someone new to the movie-making process, this seemed both indulgent and strange. And to be frank, it was more than a little reminiscent of Vertigo. Hitchcock's coldly received movie from a few years prior, in which Jimmy Stewart dresses up a woman to make her look like another woman who he believes to be dead. The sexual perversion in the third act of that film was largely coded in the subtext, given the times. but this, this thing with Tippy here, this wasn't a movie. Alfred Hitchcock didn't have to code anything if he didn't want to. He told Tippy that he had an idea for another kind of screen test.

And this one, as he explained, he would provide her with a martini, which she would drink. After she finished, he would ask her a provocative question. He would give her a second martini, which she would consume, and then Hitchcock would ask his next question. This one even more provocative than the first. A third martini, a third question. Could she even imagine what these questions would be? Would they make her blush? Would they excite her?

Hitchcock wanted to know. He was practically giddy as he asked, waiting with bated breath for Tippy to respond. But Tippy didn't know how to respond. All this talk about getting her drunk made her feel uncomfortable, so she didn't say anything. She just stood up and walked away. If Hitchcock was irritated by that, he didn't show it.

Not at first. He bypassed all the A-list talent he'd worked with for years and cast Tippy as the lead in his new film, The Birds, the long-awaited follow-up to Psycho, in which residents of a coastal town are inexplicably attacked by violent birds. It was Hitchcock's most costly film to shoot to date, and his most technically challenging. 1,500 shots were planned, twice the average amount for a movie at that time, and about a quarter of those were trick shots. He employed a bird trainer to work with hundreds of actual crows, gulls, and ravens, as well as a special effects team to create shots using mechanical or animated birds. At first, Hitchcock gave Tippy instructions on how she should act, down to the most minor movements and line readings.

This was typical Hitchcock behavior. An actor's motivation is his paycheck and all of that, at least in the eyes of the master of suspense. But then Hitchcock had other instructions. He told Tippy what she should eat, what clothes she should wear when she wasn't working, who she could and could not see. And when she deviated from these instructions, like when she spoke to other men on set, Hitchcock got angry, very angry.

Suddenly the man who had provided her with a new wardrobe was treating her like shit, because in Hitchcock's mind, she owed him. He had plucked her from obscurity. He was turning her into a star. If it wasn't for him, she would be making another mindless hat for whatever diet was the fat of the week. The least she could do was show him some appreciation, some affection even. It didn't have to be in public in front of the entire crew. It could be here, inside his limo, where the two of them were seated side by side in the back seat.

The driver slowed to a crawl and pulled up outside Tippy's hotel. Without warning, Hitchcock launched for her. She couldn't avoid him. body of his, the one he knew everyone talked about, swallowing up Tippy's petite, delicate form. Hitchcock tried to put his lips on her, and she recoiled, screaming, Hitch, what are you doing? She used every muscle in her body to push the director off of her. Her heart dropped to her stomach as his beat frantically inside of his chest. She panicked. She grabbed the door handle and yanked on it. The door flew open and she fell out, landing on her feet, running straight through the front door of her

hotel into safety. Tipy Hedron was shocked. She was young. She was attractive. She was used to men hitting on her, but nothing like this had ever happened. The fact that it was now happening with the man she was legally bound to, professionally at least, for the next seven years, that was a problem. What was she going to do? What could she do? Who could she go to? It's not like no one knew it was happening. Even Alma Hitchcock knew it was happening. Hitchcock's wife. This was the early 1960s, after all, when gross behavior like this was not only tolerated, but usually swept under the carpet. For now, Tippy Hedron decided to remain professional, smile and do her job. She wasn't going to let Alfred Hitchcock break her. We'll be right back after this word, word, word.

There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends... Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck.

I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe.

On the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever, my first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do?

Rather be. Because- disappointed in. Do that. Dennis Leary. I wake up and I'm hitting him in the head with a water bomb. And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance. Like he's about to attack me.

Like making karate noises. And his entire, the Kardashian family over there, everybody's going. And the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming. I immediately know that I've been asleep walking. David O'Yellow-O. I love this podcast. Whether it's therapy. or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts.

Guy Branham. So anyway, Nicole Kidman broke up with Keith Thurban. Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead. Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way over? Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things. Tena, monjeu, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver.

And more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a host of The Wicked Words podcast. Each week I sit down with the true crime writers behind some of the most compelling true crime stories and discuss their years spent investigating and why it still matters. He sees his father coming out of the woods with his hands over his face, and he knows something happened. his father just grabs him and says she's gone. She's gone. These are the cases that leave survivors, families, and the journalists who cover them changed forever.

Working in national television, it'll push you to your limits, and you'll end up doing things you never thought you do. You know, you look back at it and you're like, I can't believe that really happened. Join me and step inside the investigation. New episodes drop every Monday on the Exactly Right Network. Listen to Wicked Words on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Regarding Tippy Headron's best professional intentions, Alfred Hitchcock had other ideas. Back on the set for the birds, the crew prepared to shoot the film's climactic action scene where Tipy's character is viciously assaulted by birds in an attic bedroom. Tippy didn't understand the point of this scene in the first place. If the entire town is under attack, if two people have already died,

if there is a seriously pissed off flock surrounding the house she's in right now, and she hears bird sounds from up in the attic, then why the hell would her character go upstairs to investigate in the attic by herself? You'll do it, Hitchcock said, because I tell you to. Tippy took a deep breath. She let her mantra play over and over in her head. She remains steady, reliable. as steady and as reliable as the paychecks Hitchcock provided her every week.

She remained this way when she was told on the first day of shooting this particular scene a Monday that the mechanical birds they were planning to use had broken down. That instead, they would be using real birds, that she would need to walk into a giant bird cage. The two men would be standing on either side of the camera, heavy-duty gloves on their hands, holding large cartons. She remained steady as she put herself from her. right where Hitch wanted her. Hitchcock played her just like he'd played the audience with Psycho,

and just like he was planning to play the audience with this film. He called action, and those two men on either side of the camera opened up those large cartons that they were holding, and out came the birds, real birds, their beaks and talons sharp as knives, soaring around the room, stuck in that giant cage with Tippy moving unpredictably, dramatically, darting this way, and that. Every time they went for the exit, the handlers would grab them and throw them back at Tippy's face. Tippy was terrified as she fought to keep the birds off of her. She fought to remain steady. I will not let him break.

She said this over and over again on Monday. And then, on Tuesday and again, on Wednesday, as they shot the same scene over and over, Tippy was exhausted. By Thursday, day four, it was determined. that the birds were flying around too fast and thus were not being captured on camera in a way that pleased Alfred Hitchcock. Using elastic bands and nylon threads that were run through small holes in Tippy's clothing, members of the crew literally tied the birds to Tippy Hedron's body. Again, Hitchcock called action. This time, the birds were even more crazy and agitated

on account of the fact that they were attached to Tippy. They lashed out at her. Their beaks and their claws dug into tippy's flesh and tore at her clothes. She wasn't sure anymore where the fake blood stopped and the real blood began. The next day, Friday, day five, day five was more of the same. Same scene, same birds tied to the same actress, same mantra. I will not let him break me. Her words were ironclad, but the birds were relentless. Juan landed on her and started jabbing its beak at her left eye.

It missed just barely, gouging her lower lid. She couldn't take it anymore. She lost it, screaming, her heart pounding. She then collapsed to the floor. There's no way around this. I don't care how much you like Galford Hitchcock's movies. Tippy Hedron was assaulted while making the birds. She was assaulted and she was tortured until she had a nervous breakdown.

That's a fact. Directors do many things to elicit a performance out of their actors. But when Alfred Hitchcock tossed live birds at Tippy Hedron for five fucking days, five days straight, he wasn't doing it to coax a great performance. He did it to trigger some sort of hysteria. He did it out of malice. He'd been obsessed with this woman since the day he saw her in a TV commercial, and he had been rejected numerous times since after making unwanted comments and advances.

The following Monday, The malice continued. Tippy's doctors told Hitchcock that she needed to rest for a few days. The production would need to halt. Hitchcock said that wasn't going to be possible. To which the doctor replied, What are you doing? You try to kill her?

Hitchcock eventually relented and Tippy got her rest. From Hitchcock, the director, that is. There was no rest from Hitchcock, the obsessive. He followed up the onset torture by commissioning the creation of an expensive doll of Tippy and character from the birds and sent it to Tippy's young daughter. That's actress Melanie Griffith, by the way. But he didn't just send it to her.

He sent it packaged in a tiny little pine box that resembled a coffin. He then told Tippy about his recurring dream, one in which she embraced him and said, Hitch, I love you, I always love you. He built her a fancy dressing room in a trailer that just so happened to be located directly adjacent to the back door of his private bungalow on the Universal Lot. It was a short walk from Hitchcock's office to Tippy's trailer.

Just how he liked it. He was making that walk right now in early 1964, roughly a year after the Byrds was released to mixed reviews and only a fifth of the box office receipts earned by its predecessor, Psycho. Hitchcock was working on his new film, Marnie, a psychological thriller in which Tippy Headwin was starring opposite Sean Connery. And speaking of opposite, Connery was the opposite of Hitchcock. He was kind, sensitive, not just a gentleman on the surface,

but deep down, too. Sean Connery wasn't the one entering her trailer, though. Sean Connery wasn't allowed in her trailer. Only Hitchcock was allowed. Hitch called the shots. He told his screenwriter Evan Hunter to write a rape scene in the Marny script. Hunter thought it was out of character for the role that Sean Connery was playing. So Hunter, the writer, refused, and Hitchcock fired him. Hitchcock had someone else right the scene, and then while filming it, at the moment the Tippy is sexually violated, he instructed his cameraman to zoom in as close as he could on her face. The whole shoot was awkward. Not as awkward as this moment, though, with Hitch and Tippy in her trailer. He was walking toward her, backing her against the wall, just like he had backed her against

the wall during those five brutal days with the birds. But now, he was doing it alone. Now, he was doing it alone. Now, he was the bird. He didn't say much. He just had that look in his eye. Not romance, and not lust. Honestly, who knew what was going through his head? A head that it created some of the most unforgettable images in 20th century cinema. Images like that of Grace Kelly,

unsuspectingly attacked from behind in the film Dial M for murder, knocked flat on her back, her would-be killer on top of her, trying to strangle her to death. her outstretched arm gesturing wildly towards the camera. Joseph Cotton in shadow of a doubt, the seemingly harmless uncle finally revealed to be a duplicitous sociopath, a killer struggling to overpower his teenage niece and throw her from a moving train. Farley Granger in the opening scene of rope,

diabolically fusing pleasure and pain, sex and violence, getting off on choking the life out of another man. And now, Alfred Hitchcock, closing in, on a terrified Tippy Hedron in her trailer. Who knows if he was thinking of those images, those scenes as he got closer, didn't matter. All that mattered was that he had her right where he wanted her,

under his control, scared to death. But she wasn't a naive audience of moviegoers that he could play like a fiddle. So when Hitchcock reached out and grabbed her, grabbed parts of her that she never wanted him or anyone like him touching, she fought back. She pushed him just like she'd.

pushed him in the limo. Only this time she had to push harder, because the more she resisted, the more he went after her. He was relentless, but Tippy was fierce. She continued to swat at him and squirm out of his grasp until at last he was out of breath and had to stop. His beat, red face was flush with anger and embarrassment, and he told her that she should be more grateful that she was nobody until he came along. I'll ruin you, he said. You know what, Tipi replied, Do what you have to do. Tippy Hedron proceeded to take her own advice. She did what she had to do.

She finished making Marnie like the steady, reliable professional she was, even though Hitchcock never directly spoke to her again and only addressed her through other crew members. Hitchcock gave up on the movie, at least creatively. When it was released, it made even less money than the birds. Tippy Hedron didn't care. She got paid the same regardless. More importantly, she was whole.

She'd been pecked, clawed, bitten, and groped. And yet she remained. There's a scene toward the end of Psycho, in which Lila Crane, played by Vera Miles, is desperately searching for her sister Marion in Norman Bates' creepy Gothic house. Spoiler alert, Marion had been hacked to death in the shower by Norman,

dressed up as his dead mother way earlier in the film. As Lila looks through the house for her sister, the camera quickly shows us a turntable and a copy of Beethoven's Eroyoica Symphony on the platter. But why? Why is this shot in the movie? What does Beethoven have to do with Norman Bates? Is there some deep symbolic connection that we're supposed to make

between this classical composition and the events of one of the original slasher films? No. It's actually far more simple than that. And it has to do with your gut reaction to the visual image. Hitchcock wants your brain to take a quick snapshot of that image, specifically of that word on the record, Eroyaca, a word that at quick glance looks like erotic. And in fact, he's betting on you to misread it as erotic,

which naturally you do, and which immediately makes you think, hey, what is really going on between Norman Bates and his mother? Images, as Hitchcock knew all too well, have incredible power. Images of objects have incredible power. And there are objects all throughout Hitchcock's movies, keys, logs, ties, eyeglasses, candles, Beethoven records.

Some of these things have true meaning. A lot of them are just MacGuffins, remember those? But regardless, most of them are burned forever in our subconscious. That was Hitchcock's power. As the French New Wave director, Jean-Luc Goddard once said, there are perhaps 10,000 people who haven't forgotten Cézan's apples, but there must be a billion spectators who will remember the cigarette letter of strangers on a train. Goddard also said, quote,

Hitchcock succeeded where Alexander the Great Julius Caesar, Napoleon, and Hitler failed and taking control of the universe, unquote. Be that as it may, Alfred Hitchcock himself failed when it came to taking control of Tippy Hedron. After the birds and after Marnie, Tippy waited out the rest of that seven-year contract and then went on to have a steady, reliable film and television career at the same time the Hitchcock's best days had fallen.

behind him. Still, Hitchcock could never forget Tippy, and he'd never have to, in large part because he had a keepsake from his time with her, a totem, if you will. Perhaps not exactly like the things real-life psycho Ed Geinkept, bowls from human skulls and belts made of human nipples, because Alfred Hitchcock was not a murderer or a grave robber, but he was a collector. If you were to walk through his house, that seven-bedroom, five-bathroom, English-style, necessary. in the trees of Bel Air, past the mahogany grand piano, past the Chinese terracotta figures in the Salvador-Dolly sketch, the three Paul-Cleet paintings that one Picasso, which turned out to be a fake, but I digress. And if you made your way into Hitchcock's private office, there on his desk,

you would find an object, a real object, something called a life mask, a rendering of Tippy Hedron's face, made from wax or plaster, one that Hitchcock was able to make, because of the same. as he told her it was needed as part of a makeup routine. And that was bullshit. Psychotic bullshit, by the way. There was only one reason why the life mask was made. It was made so that it could sit on Hitchcock's desk forever. So that every day, long after Tippy Hedron was out of his life,

Alfred Hitchcock could stare at Tippy Hedron's face, at Tippy Hedron's eyes, like she was really there, which of course, she wasn't. The next time Tippy Hedron later, actual eyes on Alfred Hedron, Hitchcock, it was 1980, at Hitchcock's funeral, dead from kidney failure at the age of 80. Some were surprised to see her there, given her history with her benefactor turned tormentor. As she wrote in her memoir, she had long since healed and moved on from her trauma, and was there to, quote, honor him personally as an unparalleled teacher in Starmaker,

who once believed in a former model who'd never acted a day in her life, unquote. But whatever she said, what Tippy Hedron was truly honoring by attending Alfred Hitchcock's funeral was her own fortitude. Despite the best efforts of a predator who had all the power on his side, Hitchcock had not broken her. In the end, Tippy Hedron was the victor. The great director, he was the disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. Thanks for listening to this week's episode on Alfred Hitchcock, a problematic director to say the least, but no doubt one of the greatest to ever do it.

And this has me wanted to know which problematic directors and which problematic actors have made films that were so great that you continue to watch them, despite the transgressions of their creators. I watched Hitchcock's Brewer Window two nights ago, and I'm going to watch this a thousand more times before I die. But I want to know who is it for you guys? 617-906-66-6-6-36-3-8. Leave me a voicemail. Send me a text. Let me know.

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Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe, on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests, like Amelia Clark. When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. And my first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that. David O'Yello-O.

I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Dennis Leary, Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things, Tana Monsu, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sometimes a suspect is found guilty before a verdict is ever read in court. On the Wicked Words podcast, I talk with the writers who dig deep into the cases that changed history, including Marsha Clark, who went from prosecuting one of the most famous murder cases to writing crime fiction. It doesn't matter that you didn't take part in the murder. If you were at the scene at all, you're guilty of murder. Every week, the real story is revealed. Join us every Monday for new episodes of Wicked Words. Listen to Wicked Words on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.