The Birds, the Ultimate Hitchcock Heroine and the Grandfather Figure

Tippi Hedren in “The Birds”, 1963. Universal Pictures

It was sixty years ago, 1963. It was very rare that women enjoyed the prerogative of a sports car in movies. Grace Kelly had a nice moment in To Catch a Thief, driving her Sunbeam Alpine fast on the coast of Monaco and keeping Cary Grant on the edge, but it was more for the benefit of her passenger. My favourite to this day remains Tippi Hedren in The Birds, driving her Aston Martin convertible on the meandering curves of Bodega Bay, free, liberated, a natural extension of her rapacious, bold nature. It’s a joy watching Tippi control that car, especially that we are served the scene with a grain of Hitchcock humour, who filmed the lovebirds in the cage on the floor leaning with every curve. If there has ever been a car that I have ever really wanted to drive, then that’s the car, and it’s all because of Tippi Hedren.

It says so much about her character. Just as her green suit does. Because that suit alone and what happens to it can guide us through her character’s trajectory. It is a trajectory similar to that of Tallulah Bankhead in Lifeboat, probably the most self-sufficient, independent and complex character developments of Hitchcock’s heroines, and one of my favourites alongside Tippi Hedren. François Truffaut described Tallulah Bankhead in Lifeboat as “starting out as a jaded sophisticate and, in the course of the physical ordeal, gradually becoming more natural and humane.” The same happens with Melanie Daniels, who starts out as a snobbish, perfectly coiffed socialite who gradually becomes vulnerable, breakable, more natural and humane.

Tippi Hedren in “The Birds”, 1963. Universal Pictures

But more than talking about the costume, which has been done so many times, I would like to talk about a particular scene, my favourite of the whole film, which offers a window into the character, the times, the place. But first, let’s start from the beginning: San Francisco, one of Hitchcock’s favourite locations. A bustling city, a busy street. We get a glimpse of an elegant woman waiting at the lights at the curb. We see her crossing the street and the immediate impression we get is that she’s very much a woman of her surroundings. She is dressed in an elegant and sharp charcoal grey suit of wool blend, composed of a pencil skirt and a jacket with stand collar, three-quarter length sleeves and angled front welt pockets, and a white collarless blouse underneath. She wears long black leather gloves and an oversised black fold-over clutch and classic pointed-toe pumps. Her light blonde hair is in an impeccable chignon. She sits and walks tall and natural within the cityscape in Union Square, flanked by skyscrapers, palm trees and the towering Dewey Monument. She crosses the street and suddenly stops when she hears a wolf whistle. With a scornful look, she half turns, ready to confront the impertinent man, but her face lightens up in a smile when she realises it’s just a school boy. Her brass yet elegant manner, her self-confident, runaway walk and moves, her bold, assured demeanor speak volumes about her, without a line of dialogue.

Melanie Daniels is in a league of her own, very much unlike the very conventional-looking women around, not very much unlike the sharp suited men in black. The men’s world is clearly a world Melanie Daniels enters as she pleases. And nowhere is this thought more visual than in the shot of Melanie and Mitch (second image below) in the bird shop – her blouse sleeve cuffs are peeking out from underneath her jacket sleeves, a key sartorial element in men’s wardrobes.

Tippi Hedren and Rod Taylor in “The Birds”, 1963. Universal Pictures

She enters a bird shop, where she is about to meet Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor), a young lawyer. He is sharp-suited and ruggedly masculine, and, in my opinion, one of the most underrated Hitchcock male characters. Rod Taylor lets the character lead the way – he makes him real – and his style is just as subtle yet strong as his performance. I believe he is the most modern of all Hitchcock’s main male characters. Melanie Daniels decides to play shop girl with this sharp-suited, ruggedly masculine customer, showing him around the shop and foolishly taking a canary out of its cage to gauge his interest. An occasion to put into practice her natural ability to allure. She doesn’t realise that he’s already been playing a prank on her. He’s recognised her from the very beginning, as he had seen her in court, defending herself at a hearing for one of her practical jokes. “Back in your gilded cage, Melanie Daniels!”, he says putting the canary that has escaped back in the cage – her cosmopolitan image he had of her had already been working against Melanie Daniels. Her look when she realises she’s been had, is priceless. She snaps and she tells him exactly what she thinks of him, without a moment’s thought to watch her manners. So many of Tippi Hedren’s looks and gestures and moments in The Birds are impossible to associate with any other performance. There could be only one Melanie Daniels and Tippi Hedren absolutely is the ultimate Hitchcock heroine.

Hitchcock discovered Tippi in a tv commercial, asked her to do a screen test and fought for her with the reluctant suits at Universal who considered her casting too risky a choice. She was not the usual female star Hitchcock’s films were centered around. She was a novice, at her first film role. “I was a movie star, not because I’d proven myself yet but because none other than Alfred Hitchcock said I was”, Tippi wrote in her book, Tippi: A Memoir. “And he hadn’t just given me this opportunity, he’d personally seen to it that I could take it and run with it, he’d literally taught me everything I knew about acting.”

Tippi Hedren in “The Birds”, 1963. Universal Pictures

The action quickly moves to a small, sleepy coastal town called Bodega Bay, at about 60 miles North of San Francisco, and the sense of location is so sharp and assured that it has always felt very familiar to me, like I had been there before. In no other Hitchcock film is this feeling more pervasive, not for me. It’s a feeling that stays with me and that makes the film all the more impactful. The Brenners’ house and farm Hitchcock and his team built themselves, making an exact copy of the existing houses.

Melanie arrives in Bodega Bay – she has vicariously driven us there in her car – in her green suit, mink coat, perfectly matched taupe heels, gloves and bag, and ton-sur-ton scarf. She hadn’t planned to come all the way here. She had meant to leave the birds, a present for Cathy – she is not used to not having the last word, so she has concocted a birthday present for Mitch’s sister, partly for fun, partly because it’s in her nature and commandeering personality – outside the door of his apartment in San Francisco, but a neighbour had told her Mitch spent the weekends in Bodega Bay with his family. That’s where we get a first good look at her green suit.

Hitchcock was planning on using a lot of green in the movie, and limited Edith Head, his long-time collaborator, to using green in Hedren’s wardrobe as well. “Green to Hitchcock evoked a chaste, cool quality, setting Melanie apart from the Bodega Bay residents”. Edith Head used another one of her designs, the eau de nil suit worn by Grace Kelly in Rear Window, as inspiration for Tippi’s green suit, only this time with a structure more akin to a Chanel suit. The costume designer kept the lines simple – she usually did, especially in the ’50s and ’60s, because it had always been her fear that if she didn’t, her designs wouldn’t stand the test of time. Six copies of the suit were made, since Tippi would wear it for a large part of the film, and most of them would need to be distressed during the repeated attacks of the birds.

The suit is in fact not actually a suit, but a sleeveless sheath wool dress with side darts, bias finish on the jewel neckline, nipped in at the waist and matching big buckle belt, paired on top with a matching jacket with three-quarter raglan sleeves with turnback cuffs and patch pockets. The colour coordination in this suit is an attention grabber, but not in a distracting way. Reportedly, Hitchcock personally selected Hedren’s jewellery for the film: a multi-strand, two-toned pearl necklace and bracelet and a pair of gold hook stud earrings for the charcoal grey suit, and the same earrings, a gold necklace, a chunky gold ring and a delicate gold bracelet watch for the green suit. It was important that Melanie be elegant to suggest her privileged social position and materialistic nature, so her wardrobe had to send out a certain message. “There are wonderful designers who make you look good, very elegant,” Tippi said. “But Edith taught me that you not only design to make a person look according to their character, you have to make sure the person can do the action.”

Tippi Hedren and John McGovern in “The Birds”, 1963. Universal Pictures

Melanie Daniels arrives in Bodega Bay in her crisp suit and make-up. Her hair is still intact, as she used her scarf to keep it in place while driving her convertible. She stops in front of a general merchandise store which also serves as a postal office – nothing could look more American than that, with a Levi’s advertisement in the window and two Coca-Cola signs hung on the store front – and that’s where one of my favourite scenes takes shape. She enters to ask for directions about the Brenners’ house. There is a very warm and candid looking elderly man, John McGovern, behind the counter – he is both postal clerk and shopkeeper. He is visibly surprised and pleased at the same time seeing this charming and elegant stranger in his shop. She is obviously someone he is not used to seeing around his little town. He is intrigued and fascinated by her, in the most kind and friendly manner, even if at first he seems just slightly reluctant. I’ve always resembled him with a grandfather figure, a grandfather who greatly loves his granddaughter (give or take a few years here in the case of both characters) and although he hasn’t fully understood her and he is still getting used to her having her own mind (she is from a different generation, she lives in the big town, the changing times), he has secretly given her his greatest support and has always admired her independent nature. He’ll always live in his world, but she always makes his day when she visits. The shopkeeper is probably the most open-minded of all the town folk, too. She has that effect on him. If you have had this kind of grandfather figure in your lives, consider yourselves lucky.

– Good morning!

– Good morning!

– I wonder if you could help me.

– I’ll try my best.

– I’m looking for a man named Mitch Brenner.

– Yeah…

– Do you know him?

– Yeah…

– Where does he live?

– Right here, Bodega Bay.

– Yes, I know, but where?

– Right across the bay there…

– Where?

And the dialogue continues with Melanie finally figuring out where the Brenners live, with her confessing that she wants to surprise them, and the shopkeeper joking that she should hire herself a boat and go by the back door. The look on his face when she goes on and asks where she can get a boat is something I cherish deeply and every time I watch the film I am thankful for all the great supporting roles in cinema. His surprise is genuine when he finds out that she can handle a boat and that’s the moment when she finally wins him over, and the man, all smiles, offers to order her a boat. The charming “Thank you!” she offers in return after asking further directions ends the most natural, casual and elegant conversation between strangers I have ever seen on screen. They could easily be grandfather and granddaughter, two generations apart.

Now you should grab yourself the film, put it in your player and start watching. The small, sleepy coastal town becomes the place where birds are attacking people for no apparent reason. Nobody has any idea what draws the birds and turns them bad, and Hitchcock makes sure that the mystery stays intact. “If you like, you can make it the theme of too much complacency in the world: that people are unaware that catastrophe surrounds us all.” I’m sure you hadn’t thought about that one.

“The Birds”, 1963. Universal Pictures

sources: Hitchcock Truffaut, by François Truffaut; Edith Head: The Fifty-Year Career of Hollywood’s Greatest Costume Designer, by Jay Jorgensen Alfred; Hitchcock: The Complete Films, by Paul Duncan; an Alfred Hitchcock interview with Ian & Perkins Cameron

The Birds, the Ultimate Hitchcock Heroine and the Grandfather Figure

10 Responses to The Birds, the Ultimate Hitchcock Heroine and the Grandfather Figure