Chapter 9
The Bates Motel and The Birds
One of the most famous scenes in movie history comes a third of the way through Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960). It forever changed the way horror movies were made. By the time the knifing scene in a shower stall was over, the lead character in the film was dead, and audiences were left to puzzle over the strange, nervous young man who seemed devoted to his mother. The Bates Motel and its shy caretaker, Norman Bates, made movie history.
Hitch had warned reviewers not to reveal Norman Bates’s terrible secrets. Theater owners who showed Psycho received stern instructions to not let anyone in after the movie had started.
Posters showed Hitchcock himself pointing to his watch and warning, “It is required that you see Psycho from the very beginning!”
Although the movie was quite shocking, it became the most successful Hitchcock movie ever. Psycho was made using a crew from the television show Alfred Hitchcock Presents for $800,000. Today, the film has earned over fifty million dollars.
One morning in 1961, Hitch and Alma, with their two new dogs, Geoffrey and Stanley, were watching the Today show. A commercial for a diet drink came on. Hitch called his agent and told him to find out who the blond girl in the ad was.
Her name was Tippi Hedren. She was a model with little interest in acting. Tippi ed when a few days later she was offered a seven-year contract with the famous director. Tippi was soon being measured for six identical green suits that she would wear for her role in The Birds. The movie told the story of a small town that comes under attack by vicious birds. It was Hitchcock’s most technically challenging movie yet. The director used live birds as well as bird models, and the eerie calls and cackles of birds on the soundtrack. He had to master trick photography for many of the key scenes.
Ray Berwick was the man in charge of the birds in the movie. Hitchcock had at first hoped to use more mechanical birds, but they didn’t look real enough. So Berwick brought in over three hundred live ones, mostly seagulls. Once on set, some birds were trained to land on the shoulders of actors, but sometimes the actors had to be smeared with meat and anchovies to attract them.
The movie posters quoted Hitchcock as saying, “This could be the most terrifying motion picture I have ever made.” The filming of The Birds was very difficult on the crew and the cast, but no one seemed to suffer as much as Tippi. The birds were unpredictable and frightening, and they sometimes scratched. Even though the film briefly made her a star, the demands of the director proved too much for her. She made only one more movie with Hitchcock.