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 "Tippi," which goes on sale on Tuesday, documents Hedren's
rise from fashion model to movie star and "Hitchcock blonde"
after the director spotted her in a commercial and cast her in
the lead of the 1963 thriller "The Birds."
The book by Hedren, mother of actress Melanie Griffith and
grandmother to "Fifty Shades of Grey" star Dakota Johnson,
offers a rare, first-person account of the rotund "master of
suspense" that contrasts sharply with Hitchcock's public image
as a mild-mannered, self-effacing English gentleman.
What emerges is the unflattering portrait of a powerful director
who nursed a dark, uncontrollable obsession with the icy-blonde
leading ladies of his films.
Hitchcock died in 1980 at age 80. A representative for his
estate did not immediately return requests for comment.
Hedren, 86, recalled Hitchcock making unwanted advances during
her grueling six-month shoot for "The Birds" in 1962, including
one encounter while riding back to her hotel with the filmmaker
in his limousine.
"With no warning, he threw himself on top of me and tried to
kiss me," she wrote. The actress said she pushed the director
away and left the vehicle.
The breaking point, she wrote, came in 1964 during production of
Hedren's second Hitchcock film, "Marnie," when the director
"suddenly grabbed me and put his hands on me."
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"It was sexual, it was perverse, and it was ugly, and I couldn't
have been more shocked and more repulsed," she added, alleging that
Hitchcock threatened to ruin her career when she insisted on ending
her contract, which she did that day.
"It was the early 1960s. Sexual harassment and stalking were terms
that didn't exist back then," she wrote.
"Besides, he was Alfred Hitchcock, one of Universal's superstars,
and I was just a lucky little blonde model he'd rescued from
relatively obscurity. Which one of us was more valuable to the
studio, him or me?"
"The Birds," about a California town terrorized by a vicious flock
of birds, is often named among the best horror films in American
cinema.
Hedren's experiences with Hitchcock were dramatized in HBO's 2012
film "The Girl," and stars actress Sienna Miller as a young Hedren
being coached, manipulated and tormented by Hitchcock.
The film features the limousine incident and sees Hedren terminate
her contract with Hitchcock when he demands she be "sexually
available" to him at all times.
(Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Steve Gorman and Peter
Cooney)
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