Tippi Hedren/Coming of Age/Spring 2011/by Kelly Oden

COMING of AGE P r e s e n t e d b y C o u n c i l o n A g i n g o f We s t F l o r i d a

L I F E S T Y L E

M A G A Z I N E

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Your Ethical Will

An Exclusive Interview with

Medicare Fraud

Tippi Hedren

Magic Home Makeover

www.coawfla.org

www.ballingerpublishing.com

An Exclusive Interview With

Tippi Hedren

By Kelly Oden and Austin Holt

Photo by Gor Mageara

a distinctive career. She worked as a New York fashion model Tippi Hedren inhasthehad1950s before moving to California after the birth of her

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daughter, actress Melanie Griffith. Alfred Hitchcock discovered Tippi, the pretty cover girl, while viewing a 1962 TV commercial on NBC’s The Today Show. Hitchcock put her under personal contract and cast her in The Birds in 1963. Her performance in the film earned her both the Golden Globe award and the Photoplay award as Most Promising Newcomer. Her next film was the title role in Hitchcock’s Marnie in 1964 opposite Sean Connery, where she played the challenging and difficult role of a frigid, habitual thief. Both films have gained huge followings and are now widely considered as classics. The professional relationship with Hitchcock ended with mutual bitterness and disappointment during the filming of Marnie. Next, Charles Chaplin cast her in a supporting role in his final film A Countess from Hong Kong in 1967. Tippi and her second husband Noel Marshall began collecting big cats and other wildlife for the film Roar, which they starred in and produced. The film took 11 years and $17 million to make, but it only made $2 million worldwide. Nevertheless, the film was a turning point in her life; she became actively involved in animal rights, as well as a wide variety of humanitarian and environmental causes. Tippi has devoted much time and effort to charitable causes: she is a volunteer International Relief Coordinator for “Food for the Hungry.” She has traveled worldwide to set up relief programs following earthquakes, hurricanes, famine and war, and has received numerous awards for her efforts. Onscreen, she continues to work frequently in films, theater and TV. She enjoys spending time with her daughter and grandchildren Alexander Bauer, Dakota Johnson, and Stella Banderas. COA recently had the pleasure of talking to Tippi Hedren about her life and work.

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COA: Hello Tippi, this is Austin Holt with Coming of Age Magazine. How are you?

Tippi: Good.

COA: Wonderful. So, tell me a little bit about yourself. Tell me a little bit about growing up in the American Midwest and how it led into a career in modeling.

Tippi: I was born in Southern Minnesota and lived in a little town called Lafayette. It was a really tiny little town and my father had a general store and you know, just very, very small. Gosh, I think there were probably about 200 people in the little town.

COA: How did you find modeling in the first place, living in a town that small?

Tippi: When I was about five, we moved to Minneapolis. Later, I went to West High School and I was getting out of the streetcar one day and a lady handed me her card and said, ‘Will you ask your mother to bring you down to Donaldson’s Department Store? We’d like to have you model in our Saturday morning fashion shows.’ That’s how the whole thing started. That’s how my whole career started.

COA: Alfred Hitchcock discovered you in a similar same way, correct? How did that happen? I believe you were doing a commercial during The Today Show?

Tippi: After I started the modeling career in Minneapolis, my parents moved to L.A. because the winters were very hard on my father. I continued modeling and, of course, New York called and waved its hand and said come on over here and I did that. I

had accrued enough money to get me there, for a month at the Barbizon for women and enough to get home on a train if I didn’t make it. So, I went to Eileen Ford. I had contacted her and sent her photographs of me and she said ‘yeah come on.’ I met with her and the first week, oh gosh, I made, you know it was in 1950 so the rates at that time were not as much as they are now, but I made enough money to cover everything in the first week.

were working on The Birds and he was busy working with Evan Hunter who was the screenplay writer, and you know it just never occurred to me that I would even be considered for it. Hitch introduced me to all the different departments and had me sit in on meetings and it was just amazing; It was just wonderful. Of course, I met the fabulous Edith Head.

COA: How long were you modeling before your career went into show business?

Tippi: I started modeling in 1950 and you know television was just becoming very popular and as soon as they came in, I started doing commercials.

COA: Oh, the great costumer, yes.

Tippi: Yes, she created the most beautiful wardrobe for me. A wardrobe that I could live in.

COA: Any memorable products, experiences or people you worked with?

Tippi: I did cigarettes. I did Chesterfield. I did a live show with Perry Como and I had to learn how to smoke. I did it and you can’t fake smoke. You have to do it. You have to learn it, and of course we didn’t know at that time that it was dangerous.

COA: So, you picked up smoking at that point?

Tippi: I did.

COA: How long did you smoke for?

Tippi: I smoked until the cancer reports came out in 1965. I said ‘I’m a lot smarter than this,’ so I quit cold turkey. It’s one of the most addictive things you could ever do. It’s a terrible, awful, awful thing.

COA: I can imagine the fashion scene in New York in the 50s. You watch shows like Mad Men, for instance and you have these high rolling ad execs in this crazy fast-paced world of 1950s and 60s fashion in New York. I imagine it’s a fantastic time and a very hectic time.

Tippi: It was a fantastic time and I loved it. I really did. I owned several different apartments and my daughter was born in New York.

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COA: Oh, your daughter Melanie [Griffith].

Tippi: Yes, Melanie was born in New York and it was because of Melanie that I moved to California because living in New York, there was no freedom for a child and I wanted her to just be able to say, ‘I’m going out to play.’ We moved out here and I had rented a very expensive home in Westwood. I thought my career would continue the way it had in New York, but then it didn’t and I thought, ‘oh boy, now what am I going to do?’ and I got a call from Universal

Tippi in her Recent CSI role of Karen Rosenthal Studios asking if I was the girl in the pet milk commercial. It was a product called Sego. It was a diet drink. And he asked if I would come over and meet with him and bring photos and any tape that I had, so over I went. He said that a producer director was interested in me, and I said, ‘well, who is it?’ During the entire interview he never answered who it was.

That was on Friday the 13th of October in 1961.

COA: (laughs) Wow, how ominous.

Tippi: Yes, isn’t that funny? It was Friday afternoon and he asked if I would leave my materials over the weekend, which I did. I said, ‘well I will have to have them back quickly.’ I was asked to come back on Monday and I met one executive after the other at Universal and none of them would tell me who this producer was. On Tuesday I was asked to go to MCA, the agency. It was probably the biggest agency in the world actually. And it was then that Herman Citron, who was an agent, told me that Alfred Hitchcock wanted to sign me to a contract and if I agreed with the terms, we would go over and meet him. So, I signed the contract before I even met him.

COA: That’s fascinating, and he was so enthralled by that one commercial that he wanted to sign you right away. Did he have you in mind for The Birds at the time?

Tippi: I don’t know that he did. When I went under contract I thought I’d be doing the weekly television show. You know they were anthologies and they did a different show all the time.

COA: Yes, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, sure.

Tippi: Yes, but that’s what I thought I’d be doing every week. It never occurred to me. When I first went under contract and met everyone at the studio, they

COA: Oh so your whole personal wardrobe was an Edith Head wardrobe?

Tippi: Yes. It was an unbelievable wardrobe… fabulous. We did a screen test and Edith did the costumes and Bob Birch, who was Hitches’ VP, was on board and Bob Boyle did the test. We did scenes from To Catch a Thief, Rebecca, and Notorious…three entirely different women. Martin Balsam was flown in from New York to be my leading man and it took three days to do the screen test. After it was all assembled, I guess all the executives and everybody looked at it and I was invited to dinner at Jason’s with Mr. and Mrs. Hitchcock. Lew Wasserman, who was then head of Universal joined us and Hitch gave me a very beautifully wrapped package from Gump’s in San Francisco. It was an absolutely beautiful very high-end shop and I opened the package and it was a magnificent pin of gold and sea pearls with three birds in flight. He said ‘we want you to play Melanie Daniels in The Birds.’ Well, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I didn’t know what to do. I just got teary-eyed and I looked over at Alma Hitchcock and she had tears in her eyes and Lew Wasserman, one tear (laughs) and Alfred Hitchcock just sat there looking very pleased with himself.

COA: Is this when your relationship with Alfred Hitchcock really picked up, because now he was directing you in one of his feature films.

Tippi: Yes, and he was not only my director, he was my drama coach because I had never done a film before. I had done countless commercials, but as far as acting, becoming a character, entirely different thing.

COA: About your character in the film, what basic things were you keeping in your mind about the character?

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are attacking and for the end scene where all the birds attacked me up in that bedroom, I said, ‘How will we be doing that scene, Mr. Hitchcock?’

He said, ‘We will use mechanical birds like we do with children.” I said, ‘Perfect, fine.’ Well, everybody lied to me. There was no intention of using mechanical birds and they didn’t tell me that until the morning we were supposed to start that scene. The assistant director came into my dressing room on the set and he was looking at the wall, the ceiling, the floor and I said, ‘What’s the matter with you?’ He said, ‘The mechanical birds don’t work. We have to use real ones.’ And out the door he went. I just stood there with my mouth open because I had seen and we all had been scratched and of course all the bird trainers wore gauntlets up to their shoulders.

COA: (laughs) You were wearing a green dress, which was not the same thing.

Tippi: (laugh) Green dress, yes. I had six of them though and I like to let everybody know that. Some of them had to be torn and that sort of thing, and the shoot was six months long so it’s important that everybody knows that I had six dresses. So anyway, I walked onto the set and they had no intention of using mechanical birds. They had a cage built around the set and inside the cage were five cartons. Three or four cartons of ravens and seagulls and the prop men were there with gauntlets up to their shoulders ready to hurl them at me.

COA: (laughs) I always wondered, are these specially trained, like union birds. Do they have their sag cards or anything like that?

Tippi: The late Ray Berwick was the trainer and he was absolutely wonderful. He trained them individually, he trained them in groups, it was just awesome. But he really cared about those animals. In fact, one day we were working on the party scene with the children. He had trained three seagulls to each takeoff from his arms and to circle, dive-bomb the kids and come back to his arm and the first two took off and circled and dive-bombed the kids and came back. The third one just took off, which ordinarily would have been just fine except that Ray had very loosely wired their beaks closed so that they couldn’t hurt the children. Ray had to go to Mr. Hitchcock and say, ‘we have to close down for the afternoon. We have to find that bird.’ He went out in a rowboat on the bay and went to all the reefs and found the bird and took the wire off its beak. Otherwise, that bird would’ve died a very painful death. I’ll never forget that, how 34 COMING

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COA: I see, so instead of an insideout method acting type thing, it was more of an outside-in emulation.

Tippi: Yes, and Marlon Brando did not appreciate that.

gentle he was with all of those critters. And there was one bird that was so sweet he couldn’t be in the movie. His name was Buddy and he’d hop into my dressing room and jump up on my dressing room table and play with all of my makeup and sit on my shoulder. He was just wonderful.

COA: Your next film with Alfred Hitchcock, you were a completely different character. Tell me about how the transition worked from The Birds to Marnie. How was that for you?

Tippi: Oh, they were indeed two different characters and I read the Winston Graham book and it was just fabulous. It was so incredible reading about the mind of this woman and how devious she was and complicated beyond belief and clever about the planning of her steps. That’s one thing in the movie, you can’t really get across how that person was thinking, but I loved playing the character because it was so complicated.

COA: As far as Alfred Hitchcock was concerned—he’s obviously a legendary director and extremely talented—you hear that he has a reputation for being protective over his leading ladies. Did you ever experience any of that?

Tippi: He became very possessive and very controlling, which was very unnerving and I really wasn’t very happy with that situation. It was very sad, too, because it was such a great opportunity. He was such an incredible, fine director but to have this possessive quality… I was not the first one that this happened to and I finally said that I had to get out of this contract and he said, ‘well you can’t, you have your daughter to take care of, your parents are getting older.’ I said, ‘none of my family would want me to be in a situation in which I’m not happy. I do want to get out of the contract.’ He said, ‘Well, I’ll ruin your career.’ And he

did. He kept me on the contract and paid me my salary and for two years I said I wanted out. He really did ruin my career.

COA: Do you have any idea what his motivations were?

Tippi: I think it was just control and I think he became infatuated with a number of his actresses. It was absolutely tragic.

COA: I suppose your contract expired or went up for renewal and you eventually got out of your contract with him.

Tippi: I did. He gave my contract to Universal and they asked me to do a television show that I didn’t think I was right for and I said, ‘I don’t want to do it.’

They said, ‘Well if you don’t, you’re out of your contract.’ I just shot my hand out and agreed. Two weeks later, Charlie Chaplin called.

COA: Oh yes, A Countess for Hong Kong. What was that transition like? You had really only worked with Alfred Hitchcock as a director up until that point and now you’re going on to somebody equally legendary.

What did you pull away from your experience with them?

Tippi: I am the only actress who worked with both of the English film geniuses.

COA: That makes sense actually. How was that transition for you?

Tippi: Oh it was great. He was very different in his directing and Marlon Brando did not approve of that method of directing. I thought it was just fabulous. In fact, they should’ve done a second unit and done a film on Charlie directing because he’d act out all the different roles himself and then say, ‘Alright, now you do it.’

COA: What did you come away from with Charlie Chaplin that you didn’t come away from with Alfred Hitchcock?

Tippi: Well, Charlie was…they were just so different. I mean Hitchcock was very funny on the set, he would tell jokes and he loved dirty limericks. He was so well prepared.

Actually, in his mind the film was finished before he even started shooting. He knew exactly the point of each scene. We didn’t do a lot of takes. We did rarely more than three. So, I was spoiled, very spoiled because some directors go on and on and on. Charlie was very serious on the set but it was fabulous watching him change from my character to Sophia Loren’s character to Marlon’s to his son’s. It was just glorious watching him.

COA: I’d like to go ahead and shift gears. You at one point became very involved with several causes, mainly with wildlife preservation. Tell me a little bit about that and how that became symbolic.

Tippi: I did. I did two films in Africa in 1969 and 1970, and during that time, environmentalists were putting out a great deal of awareness about the fact that if we, the people of the world, didn’t do something immediately to save the animals and wildlife from encroaching civilization, by the year 2000, the wild animals would be gone. We started hearing a lot about the plight of the whales, the tigers, the pandas and the elephants. My then husband was a producer and we thought, well, lets do a movie about animals and the wild. We were kicking around ideas and we went to all the different game preserves all over the continent of Africa. On one game preserve, there was a house that had been abandoned by a game warden because it flooded during the rainy seasons.

He moved out and a pride of lions moved in. It was obviously a group of at least 25 to 30 lions of all sizes.

They were sitting in the windows with their paws over each other. They were walking in and out the door, they were playing on the verandas, they were napping on the verandas. It was a magnificent sight to see. You couldn’t get near that house (laughs). Well I guess you could, once (laughs). We thought, wow there we have it; we have a magnificent centerpiece for the movie.

COA: That’s remarkable and you parlayed that experience into Shambala.

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Tippi: Yes. When we got back to California, the script was written. Our plan was to use Hollywood acting animals and have a nine-month shoot. We gave the scripts to these trainers of these Hollywood acting animals and they just came back laughing at us. They said, ‘You can’t do this movie because of the number of cats you have working together.’ We said, ‘But that’s the way it was in Africa with the house.’ They said, ‘No. Because they have to fight an animal they don’t know. We don’t want our cats hurt and we don’t want to get hurt. Get your own animals to do this movie.’

So the first one to the rescue was a doctor in Los Angeles who had purchased a little eight-week-old cub. Feed it with a bottle, play with him, take a little nap with him and by the time he was seven or eight months old he was taking a good chunk out of him because he didn’t have a 400-pound mom to say, ‘knock it off, I’ve got to teach you some manners,’ nor did the cub have any siblings to play with, so the doctor became his sibling.

His house was ruined and he was just saying, ‘someone take this little monster off my hands.’ So my daughter and I went to get him in our car and we brought him home where he continued his demolition work and pretty soon we had five little lions living with us. Of course, that’s against the law to have exotic animals living within the city limits. So, one day one of the lions looked over the concrete wall and the neighbor looked up and said, ‘that’s a lion’ (laughs). Next morning, 6 am, pounding at the door. It was animal control and he said, ‘I hear you have some lions here.’ I ran and got the littlest one and explained to the officer that we were doing a movie and that it was important to get to know these animals and we didn’t think of them as pets and they wouldn’t be here very long. He said, ‘Yeah. You got that right, lady. You’ve got 24 hours to get them off your property.’ We knew a number of the trainers so we boarded the little lions. California Fishing and Game Department heard that we were collecting animals for this movie and pretty soon we were a very important facility to our state government and federal government to take in these animals. They were all born in the United States to be sold for personal possession and financial gain and it was always amazing to me that people would think an apex predator would be a good pet.

COA: In addition to Shambala and wildlife preservation, you hear about celebrities who use their stardom and advantages to promote certain causes. You have many causes that you’re passionate about. There’s a list as long as my arm. What compelled you to be so giving?

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Tippi: Well, I take from my parents. My mother was active in the Lutheran church and those causes are always very charitable and so I kind of grew up with that. I was very active with an organization called “Food For The Hungry” and traveled around the world with “Food For The Hungry” as their volunteer coordinator. We’d go to different areas that had been struck by earthquakes or hurricanes. You know the devastation that happened with the earthquakes and how awful it is for those people and of course many of the poor countries’ buildings are not built to withstand any kind of disaster like that. We’d go in and set up programs to help them get their families back together, get their houses built back up, their businesses going.

Not just put a Band-Aid on it, not just bring food and medication and then leave, we would stay there and help them and we worked with missionaries all over the world.

COA: I suppose it’s always a timely issue, but especially now with the recent issues in Haiti and Chile.

Tippi: There are organizations that stay on and see these things through and with many of the countries it takes years to build back up. The one thing that I really loved was when I had gone to Vietnam twice on USO tours and I met a Vietnamese actress who was the biggest actress in Vietnam and Asia and it was Kieu Chinh. I met her there and she had her own television show, she had her own production company, beautiful family. That was a very, very important time of my life. It was so emotionally just racked with all kinds of feelings. In 1975, “Food For The Hungry” rented a huge area up in Weimar, California. We helped over 1,500 Vietnamese refugees come into the United States. We got them sponsors. We took them to the supermarket and kind of integrated them into an American way of life. We helped them with their licenses, tried to find a job for them. I had seamstresses brought in because the women were really good with their hands and they were good businesswomen. Then one day I thought, you know, I’m going to have my manicurist come up and teach them how to do the Juliet Manicure, which in 1975 had been sort of a paper wrap over your fingernails.

Dusty came up every week to give them a lesson and then during the week they practiced on me, they practiced on each other and finally we rented a bus and sent them down to Sacramento to go to beauty school so that they could get their licenses and all 20 of them passed in English. They then went out to have these incredible successful careers. So, I’m responsible

for all the Vietnamese manicure shops. I love the thought of it. I go to different cities and see them and just get this nice kind of quiet feeling that I did something really good there.

COA: That’s remarkable. I did not know that. That’s fantastic.

Tippi: Then I’m working on legislation on federal bills.

The first one I co-authored was shelved because they had a committee from Texas and they said this isn’t good for the state of Texas. Well, there are more tigers living in people’s backyards in Texas than exist in the country of India. They have an estimation of about 5,000 tigers living in people’s backyards in Texas and there are 1,400 in India. But that first bill that I was working on didn’t go anywhere because it didn’t even go to committee. And there are more can-hunts in Texas. A can-hunt is a facility that will take any exotic animals, and for anywhere from $3,000 to $50,000 you can blow that animal away with a weapon of your choice, throw their head on the wall, a rug on the floor, or stuff it. The second bill I co-authored, my own congressman, Buck Mckeon, introduced for me and it was called the Captive Wildlife Safety Act and it was just to stop the interstate traffic of these animals, so it has stopped the ability for the breeders to ship them out of their own state. It limits it a great deal. And I testified for that bill. These animal are not pets, they are predators. One of the most dangerous in the world and so many people have been hurt in the last five years; it’s been close to 600 people hurt and some of them for life. The bill passed unanimously in the house and senate and Bush signed it in 2003. It took two years before it was enforced, but it is making a difference. The bill that I’m working on now, the federal ban on the breeding of exotic felines for personal possession is being put on hold.

COA: That’s fascinating. You know actually that reminds me of something. Correct me if I’m mistaken, but you live on your wildlife preserve, right?

Tippi: I do. I love it and they’re very securely behind 9-gauge fencing and 3-quarter inch poles and the fencing and the poles are concreted 2-feet into the ground and all the gates are locked and it’s very secure.

COA: You mentioned a couple of times your daughter Melanie. She obviously has become extremely well known in her own right. What sort of advice did you give to her when she was growing up and getting into show business?

Tippi: You know I was very surprised when she wanted to go into show business because she had seen how hard it is. This is not all glamour. It isn’t all red carpet and bright lights. It’s hard work. The hours are terrible and you’re always looking for a job. You know, it’s a tough business and she saw that. I never suggested that she become an actress, but I don’t

believe people should tell their children what to do with their lives. As long as they stay legal and moral, I think the child should be able to figure out his or her own career and I was very surprised when Melanie chose to do this.

COA: You must be very proud too. She’s done a fantastic job for herself.

Tippi: Oh, indeed she has and she’s raised three wonderful children. Alexander is now 24, Dakota is 20, and Stella del Carmen Banderas Griffith is 13.

COA: That’s a name that takes a while to get use to (Laughs).

Tippi: (Laughs) I love saying that.

COA: Incidentally, how is Antonio Banderas as a sonin-law?

Tippi: Oh he’s fabulous. He really is wonderful.

COA: I can imagine the family dinners are always entertaining.

Tippi: Oh very. Absolutely, it’s really fun. We all get together on holidays and that sort of thing, but Alexander lives in New York now and Dakota has her own apartment and she’s going into show business as well. Antonio taught them all how to play guitar and piano and he’s been a wonderful stepfather and father.

COA: That’s wonderful.

Tippi: I have to tell you one more thing. I’m receiving a lifetime achievement award from the Genesis Awards on this coming Saturday and Melanie’s going to be introducing me.

COA: Oh fabulous. Congratulations.

Tippi: The Genesis Awards were launched by Gretchen Wyler who is a Broadway actress and became very much involved with the plight of all animals, as am I. I met her when I first started off, but in 1986 she launched the Genesis Awards and she asked if I would be one of the presenters because we think so much alike and I said certainly. I was a presenter at the Genesis Awards for…I think I only missed three of them. They give awards to people in the media who have opened the eyes of their audience to different animal rights issues.

COA: That’s wonderful and your daughter’s going to be presenting your award. Congratulations.

Tippi: Yes, thank you.

COA: Well Tippi I really appreciate your conversation. It’s been not only an enjoyable conversation that’s satisfied my inner Hitchcock geek, but it’s also been a very enlightening one and I certainly appreciate your time.

Tippi: Thank you very much.

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