Tippi Hedren

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Nathalie Kay "Tippi" Hedren (born January 19, 1930)^[1] is an American actress with a career spanning six decades. She is best known for her role in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds and her extensive efforts in animal rescue at Shambala Preserve, an 80-acre wildlife habitat which she founded in 1983.

Hedren is the mother of actress Melanie Griffith, and they share credits on six films, notably Pacific Heights (1990).

[edit] Biography

Hedren was born in New Ulm, Minnesota to a Swedish father and a German-Norwegian mother. Her father ran a small general store in the small town of Lafayette, Minnesota. Her father gave her the moniker "Tippi". "My father thought Nathalie was a little bit much for a brand new baby", Hedren explained at a 2004 screening of The Birds. In the screen test found in the DVD extras, she explains that it is "a Swedish nickname, (short) for Tupsa... meaning 'Little Girl' in Swedish".

As a teenager, Hedren took part in department store fashion shows. Her parents relocated to California while she was still a high school student. When she reached her 18th birthday, she bought a ticket to New York and began a professional modeling career. Within a year she made her film debut (minus dialogue) as a Petty Girl model in The Petty Girl (1950) musical comedy, although in interviews she refers to The Birds (1963) as her first film. While in New York, she met and married her first husband, Peter Griffith, in 1952.^[2]

Enjoying a successful modeling career in the 1950s and 1960s, Tippi Hedren was discovered by Hitchcock, who was watching The Today Show when he saw Hedren in a diet drink commercial and was taken by her distinctive walk and attractive toss of her head. Hitchcock was looking for an actress who possessed something of the sophistication, self-assurance and cool-blonde sex appeal of Grace Kelly, with whom he had made three films. Hedren, expensively groomed and mentored by Hitchcock, appeared in his films The Birds and Marnie. At the time of the films' releases, she was criticized for being too passive in The Birds and too expressive in Marnie. It took several years before she received respect for her work in both films from American film critics.

[edit] Films

At a packed house in Lancaster, California's Antelope Valley Independent Film Festival Cinema Series screening of The Birds on September 28, 2004, Hedren recalled how she was mysteriously selected for a lead role: "I said, 'Well, who is this person? Who is interested?'... Nobody would tell me who it was." It was Alfred Hitchcock, who soon announced his choice of Hedren for The Birds.

Hitchcock put Hedren through a then-costly $25,000 screen test, doing scenes from previous Hitchcock classics as Rebecca, Notorious and To Catch a Thief with actor Martin Balsam. He signed her to a multi-year exclusive personal contract, something he had earlier done in the 1950s with Vera Miles. Hitchcock's plan to mold Hedren's public image went so far as to carefully control her style of dressing and grooming. Hitchcock, ever the showman, insisted for publicity purposes that her name should be printed only in single quotes -- 'Tippi'. The press mostly ignored this directive from the director, who felt that the single quotes added distinction and mystery to Hedren's name. In interviews, Hitchcock compared his newcomer not only to her predecessor Grace Kelly but also to what he referred to as such "ladylike", intelligent, and stylish stars of more glamorous eras as Irene Dunne and Jean Arthur. Later, Hedren indicated that she didn't want to be known as the next Grace Kelly but rather as the first Tippi Hedren.

Hedren made her debut in The Birds with a wealth of publicity. In a December 1962 Look magazine cover story "Hitchcock's New Grace Kelly", Alfred Hitchcock compared her to his star of To Catch a Thief and Rear Window, saying, "'Tippi' has a faster tempo, city glibness, more humor. She displayed jaunty assuredness, pertness, an attractive throw of the head. And she memorized and read lines extraordinarily well and is sharper in expression."

Hedren said of her mentor, "He is subtle as a psychiatrist and never gives displaced encouragement." With the release of the film, she got a very tepid reception, the only exceptions being critic Bob Thomas ("Miss Hedren makes an impressive debut") and Time magazine ("pleasant and ladylike, as Grace Kelly was.") Years after the film's release, she remembered the location work at Bodega Bay as dangerous and taxing, commenting, "For a first film, it was a lot of work."

For the harrowing final attack scene in a second-floor bedroom, filmed on a closed set at Universal-International Studios, Hedren had been assured by Hitchcock that mechanical birds would be used. Instead, Hedren endured five solid days of prop men, protected by thick leather gloves, flinging dozens of live gulls, ravens and crows at her (their beaks clamped shut with elastic bands). Cary Grant visited the set and told Hedren, "I think you're the bravest lady I've ever met." In a state of exhaustion, when one of the birds gouged her cheek and narrowly missed her eye, Hedren sat down on the set and began crying. A physician ordered a week's rest, which Hedren said at the time was riddled with "nightmares filled with flapping wings".

The Birds brought her a Golden Globe as Most Promising Newcomer.^[3] Premiere magazine chose Hedren's character, Melanie Daniels in The Birds as one of "The 100 Greatest Characters of All Time".

Marnie (1964), a psychological thriller from the novel by Winston Graham, was Hedren's second Hitchcock assignment, co-starring with Sean Connery. She recalls Marnie as the favorite of her two films for Hitchcock because of the complex, challenging central character, an attractive, secretive, emotionally battered young woman who travels from city to city assuming various guises in order to rob her employers.^[4] On release, the film was greeted by mixed reviews and indifferent box-office but, over the decades, has significantly grown in stature among Hitchcock fans.

Although Hitchcock continued to have Hedren in mind for several other films after Marnie, the actress had become increasingly uncomfortable with his possessive manner and she declined any further work with him. Other directors who wanted to hire her had to go through Hitchcock, who would inform them she was unavailable. "It grew to be impossible. He was a very controlling type of person, and I guess I'm not about to be controlled", said Hedren, who bought out her contract. Ending their professional relationship on a sour note, she recalled, "He said, 'Well, I'll ruin your career.' And he did."^[5]

Charles Chaplin cast her as the sophisticated, brittle, cheated-upon wife of Marlon Brando in his shipboard comedy A Countess From Hong Kong (1967). She made more than 40 films between 1967 and 2006, including Pacific Heights, Citizen Ruth and I Heart Huckabees. More recently, she has appeared in episodes of The 4400 and Fashion House and the forthcoming thriller Rodeo Girl (2007).

[edit] Influence

Hedren's influence on actors and films has surfaced in recent years: A stylish Louis Vuitton ad campaign in 2006 paid tribute to Hedren and Hitchcock with a modern-day interpretation of the deserted railway station opening sequence of Marnie. For a woman who was introduced by Hitchcock as the next Grace Kelly, now found herself as an original inspiration to younger actresses. In interviews Naomi Watts has stated that her character interpretation in Mulholland Drive (2001) was influenced by the look and performances of Hedren and Kim Novak in Hitchcock films. Michael O'Donoghue, one of the writers of the original Saturday Night Live (1975), praised its star Jane Curtin when he said she had "an icy Tippi Hedren quality" about her.^[6] Bridget Fonda, who played Hedren's daughter in the straight-to-cable film Break Up (1998), gushed to her about how she watched Marnie "a million times".

[edit] Shambala Preserve

In 1981, Hedren produced Roar, a grueling, five-year project starring dozens of African lions. "This was probably one of the most dangerous films that Hollywood has ever seen", remarked the actress. "It's amazing no one was killed." During the production of Roar, both Hedren and her husband at the time, Noel Marshall, were attacked by lions, and Jan de Bont, the director of photography, was scalped.

Roar directly led to the 1983 establishment of the non-profit Roar Foundation and Hedren's Shambala Preserve, located at the edge of the Mojave Desert in Acton, California between the Antelope Valley and the Santa Clarita Valley 40 miles northeast of Los Angeles. A haven for endangered exotic big cats, Shambala currently houses some 70 animals, including African lions, Siberian and Bengal tigers, leopards, servals, mountain lions and bobcats. Hedren lives on the Shambala site and conducts monthly tours of the preserve for the public. When questioned about the many birds at Shambala, Hedren responded, "I love birds. No, I like 'em. I do. I hate to tell you that. It spoils the whole story."^[7]

Hedren took in and cared for Togare, a lion that belonged to Anton LaVey, after he was told by San Francisco officials that he couldn't keep a fully grown lion as a house pet. More recently, Shambala became the new home for Michael Jackson’s two Bengal tigers after he decided to close his zoo at his Neverland Valley Ranch in Los Olivos, California.

May 2006: Shambala benefit stage production of The Birds in Hollywood. Shambala supporter Don Norte, Veronica Cartwright, playwright David Cerda, Tippi Hedren and Shambala supporter Kevin Norte.

Several documentaries have focused on Shambala Preserve, including the 30-minute Lions: Kings of the Serengeti (1995), narrated by Melanie Griffith, and Animal Planet's Life with Big Cats (1998), which won the Genesis Award for best documentary in 1999.

[edit] Listen to

• Animals Aloud: Tippi Hedren takes Deirdre Kennedy on a tour of Shambala

[edit] Marriages

Tippi Hedren has been married four times:

• Peter Griffith (1952 - 1961)
• Noel Marshall (1964 - 1982)
• Luis Barrenecha (1985 - 1995)
• Martin Dinnes (2002 - present)

[edit] Filmography