Notes

1. Screenwriter Evan Hunter also wrote the novel King’s Ransom under the name Ed McBain, which was turned into Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low, a much better film also released in 1963.

2. In addition to the original Daphne du Maurier story, which I understand the movie does not closely follow, Wikipedia says:

The Birds is also partly inspired by the true events of a mass bird attack on the seaside town of Capitola in California on August 18, 1961, when “Capitola residents awoke to a scene that seemed straight out of a horror movie. Hordes of seabirds were dive-bombing their homes, crashing into cars and spewing half-digested anchovies onto lawns”. Alfred Hitchcock heard of this event and used it as research material for this film which was then in progress. The real cause of the birds’ behavior was toxic algae, but that was not known back in the 1960s. In the film, the characters make reference to a similar bird attack “last year” in Santa Cruz, which is an implied reference to the Capitola attack.

3. Rod Taylor was pretty out of control and almost doomed the production with excessive drinking, according to the following story:

Rod Taylor’s love of alcohol and carousing was evident during the filming of “The Birds.” He would start drinking at the motel bar every night and was often joined by [hairdresser] Virginia Darcy. They were kindred spirits; they both liked their liquor and a good time. One night, according to Darcy, they ended up in bed together. Darcy also recalled one incident when “Rod was driving drunk, up and down the streets of Santa Rosa, yelling and screaming.” This put Darcy in an awkward position, as she was dating a local police officer at the time. . . .

Taylor drove the crew back to the motel that evening, and he was pulled over for drunk driving. . . . Taylor was ordered out of the car and slammed against the door with his hands behind his back. Everyone was stunned, and as Taylor was arrested, he said, “Don’t you girls get involved. I don’t want you to get hurt or anything.” He was taken to the local police station. Johnston went back to the motel and tried to find production manager Norman Deming, but, she said, “We didn’t know what room to go to find him, so we scooted back to ours and went to bed.”

The next day Taylor was late for work, and those who knew why tried to keep it quiet. Virginia Darcy happened to be dating the booking officer, Homer Lee, so she persuaded him to let Taylor off with a caution and a citation. “He didn’t end up in jail because Homer saw to it. If he had been charged, that could have closed down production,” said Darcy, because the hearing judge visited only once a month. The next day, [Hitchcock’s assistant] Peggy Robertson expressed her gratitude and said, “Thank God for you, Virginia. . . . You saved our company.”

4. Many interesting details of the production are collected in this article in Behind the Lens. Here are a couple of them:

The final shot of the film is composed of three panels, matte paintings and multiple film layers, i.e., 32 separate exposures, leading Hitchcock himself to call this “the most difficult single shot I’ve ever done.” Complex is an understatement as the scene combined live birds, animated birds, mechanical birds and the car driving toward the matte painting backdrop.

One may think that Tippi Hedren is “acting” in the key attic scene. This was no acting. This was true terror. Assured by Hitchcock personally that mechanical birds were being used in the attic, on the first take she walked into an attic filled with live birds which were flying loose and also be flung at her by prop men. Over the course of this five day shoot for this one scene, live gulls, ravens and crows were thrown at Hedren until she was ultimately gouged on her cheek near her eye at which point she was hospitalized for a week.

5. Fun advice for anybody who has a location that someone wants to use for a movie:

The man who owned the Tides Restaurant in downtown Bodega Bay where a few scenes were filmed was named Mitch Zanich. He allowed Hitchcock to film there on one condition—the male lead had to be named “Mitch.” Zanich is seen in the segment after a seagull attacks Melanie—he asks Rod Taylor, whose character was Mitch Brenner, “What happened, Mitch?”