Alfred Hitchcock: a sadistic prankster: Let loose the birds from 'Tippi' !!!

Alfred Hitchcock: a sadistic prankster!

This article is crappy journalism at its lurid best.  The article is linked here. Nothing is new here. And very little of it is accurate.  I have included Vertigo Falls hero Dave Pattern's far better written response below.  (Pattern is behind the excellent often linked to Hitchcock Wiki site).

Pattern's Response to the article:

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  Dave Pattern

  08/13/2012 01:22 PM

  Perhaps Martin Chilton should try reading Patrick McGilligan's vastly superior biography of Hitchcock ("Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light") rather than believing everything he read in Spotto's often inaccurate book -- especially the apocryphal story of the brandy laced with laxative. 

  As for the doll of Hedren being in a "miniature coffin", here's what Hedren herself said in a 1999 interview for the Literature Film Quarterly:

  "I was called in to have a mask made of my face. And I really didn't think anything of it, because at the make-up facility at Universal there are faces of every actor up on the wall. So I thought, well, gee, I'm just going to join all that. That's fine, that's wonderful. It's a rather painful experience to go through this, with the plaster on your face and the straws up your nose and that sort of thing...

  The outcome of that was a doll that was made for my daughter [Melanie Griffith] for a Christmas present. And the difference in this little doll was that most of the time when a doll is made of a celebrity or whatever, it's sort of a caricature of that person. This was an absolute replica of my face. Bob Dawn, who was absolutely brilliant in his field of prostheses and that sort of thing, had taken that mask and taken it down to this tiny little face, and it was absolutely perfect. The doll was then dressed in the green outfit that I wore in The Birds for six months. 

  Unfortunately, they put the doll in a pine box. And then it was presented to my daughter for Christmas. And my little girl, Melanie, looked at it and just blanched white, and we had to put the doll away.  

  Now this was not -- and I truly believe this -- this was not an intentional thing for Hitch to hurt my daughter. She was hurt by it. But this was not intentional on his part. I mean, he did a lot of really weird things, but this was not intentional... It was supposed to be a very, very, kind of wonderful, thoughtful gift. And one that had taken great thought, great effort, great expense, I'm sure. So it wasn't -- I can't say that he was trying to hurt anybody."

  It's also worth noting that Gerald du Maurier was himself a prodigious and well-known practical joker and one of Hitchcock's closest friends.  Speaking of "Lord Camber's Ladies", which Hitchcock produced and du Maurier starred in, Daphne du Maurier wrote: "It was a wonder that the picture was ever completed at all, for hardly a moment would pass without some faked telegram arriving, some bogus message being delivered, some supposed telephone bell ringing, until the practical jokers were haggard and worn with their tremendous efforts."