Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds’ turns 60 and is still one of the scariest movies ever made

Susan King
·6 min read
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After the release of his 1960 masterpiece “Psycho,” Alfred Hitchcock received an irate letter from someone saying his daughter refused to take a bath after seeing Henri Clouzot’s 1955 thriller “Les Diaboliques,” which features a horrifying murder in a bathtub. And now she wouldn’t take a shower because of “Psycho.” What was he to do? Hitchcock wrote back the fuming father in his typical succinct and macabre style telling him to “send her to the dry cleaners.”

Undoubtedly, he received a lot of angry missives who saw his next film, “The Birds,” which celebrates the 60th anniversary of its release on March 28. In what is considered the Master of Suspense’s only horror film, “The Birds” finds feathered friends on the attack for no apparent reason. Let’s face it, six decades later if you see a large flock of birds gathering on a school’s jungle gym or malevolently peering down from trees, you immediately think of the film.

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“The Birds” was based on a short story by Daphne du Maurier that appeared in “Good Housekeeping” in 1952. This wasn’t the filmmaker’s first encounter with du Maurier. He first adapted her “Jamaica Inn” in 1939, a disappointment and best known today as his last British film before he went to Hollywood and Maureen O’Hara’s film debut. The following year, he directed her best-known work “Rebecca,” which won the Oscar for Best Picture.

In June 1961, Daily Variety reported that Hitch had bought the rights to the short story. That same year, he read a newspaper account of a mysterious bird attack on the coastal California town of Capitola. According to TCM.com there were many factors that might have spurred his interest in the material including  the “fear of a nuclear war with Cuba and Russia” that was “pervasive throughout the country…Over the years, film scholars and critics have come to read other meanings into the movie; some see it as a metaphorical Western with the birds replacing the Indians as the demonized other.’ And some see the film as an allegory about sexual repression. Even today, ‘The Birds’ continues to fascinate with its ambiguous ending in which the bird attacks are never explained.”

Evan Hunter, the author of such novels as “The Blackboard Jungle” who wrote the “87th Precinct” best-sellers under the pseudonym of Ed McBain, was hired to write the screenplay. Du Maurier’s original short story was set in Cornwall farming community under attack.

The film is set over five days. There’s even a meet cute sequence between Melanie (Tippi Hedren) and Mitch (Rod Taylor) at a pet shop in San Francisco before the birds begin to swoop down in Bodega Bay. There are many terrifying sequences including the deadly attack on a gas station, Melanie’s too close of an encounter with the birds in a telephone booth and in the attic of  house and the attack on school children as they hysterical  run away from the winged ones.

Hunter was not a happy camper with the final product. He told writer Patrick McGilligan in  “Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light” that “Hitch allowed his actors outrageous liberties with what I had written…he juggled scenes and even added one scene-the writer of which remains unknown to me. The 1980 Cinemafantastique article quotes Hitchcock as saying: “Hunter wasn’t the ideal screenwriter.”

With his favorite blonde actress Grace Kelly living the royal life in Monaco, Hitch selected model Hedren after seeing her doing a commercial for the diet drink Sego on “The Today Show.” Hitch  didn’t give the newbie much direction with her performance, but was obsessive about every aspect of her look.

They original plan was to use mechanical birds with motorized wings. According to the Cinemafantastique, some $200,000 was spent on making and testing the faux birds. But these mechanized creatures looked phony. So, Ray Berwick, who trained the animals on 1962’s “The Birdman of Alcatraz,”  was hired to obtain and train birds. “We used dummy birds and opticals for the mass scenes and background stuff but all the stuff in the foreground with the birds are the real thing,” he said.

A 1962 Daily Variety article noted “The Birds” had received permits to obtain a certain amount of living and dead seagulls. But when the U.S Fish and Wildlife inspectors arrived on set in Bodega Bay, they fined the production $400 for having too many birds as well as no permit for having over 60 various songbirds. Hitchcock noted during an appearance on ABC’s “The Dick Cavett Show” that over 3,000 creatures flapped their way to stardom in the movie.

Cast and crew were injured by the birds during the production, especially Hedren, the mother of Melanie Griffith and grandmother of Dakota Johnson.  Live gulls were thrown at her for her harrowing sequence in the attic. Hedren was put through hell for a week. “By Thursday, I was noticeably nervous,” Hedren told McGilligan. “By Friday, they had me down on the floor with the birds tied loosely to me with elastic bands which were attached to the peck-hole in my dress. Well, one of the birds clawed my eye and that did it. I just sat and cried.’’

Hitchcock eschewed a musical soundtrack. According to McGilligan, the Master of Suspense “wanted birdcalls and noises performed on an advance instrument he first encountered on Berlin radio in the late 1920s — the electroacoustic Trautonium.

The film left the New York Times quaking in its boots: “Making a terrifying menace out of what is assumed to be one of nature’s most innocent creatures and one of most melodious friends, Mr. Hitchcock and his associates have constructed a horror film that should raise the hackles on the most courageous and put goose-pimples on the toughest hide.”

But most reviewers weren’t as kind with the New Yorker going so far as calling it a “sorry failure”; Hedren was singled out for being bland and stylized. However, she was nominated at the Golden Globes or most promising newcomer (female).

The movie made $11.4 million at the box office and in 2016 was the added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress for being “culturally, historically or aesthetically” significant. “The Birds” only received one Oscar nomination: Ub Iwerks for special visual effects but he lost the race to the team from “Cleopatra.”

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