Tippi Hedren Breaks Long Silence, Claims Alfred Hitchcock Sexually Abused Her While Filming ‘The Birds’

It’s sad when a story like this explodes in just a matter of hours, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles, and that cookie will continue to crumble as social media sites and various exploitative sites feed the story a toxic fuel.

Tippi Hedren, who starred in the classic pic, The Birds, just released Tippi: A Memoir, yesterday. Almost immediately some of the memoir’s inner workings are coming to light, including a nasty tale in which Hitchcock allegedly assaulted the actress, who refused the man’s advances, only to have things take a harsh turn on the set of The Birds, a bit of punishment from Hitchcock, most would surmise.

Here’s a brief excerpt from the book:

“I’ve never gone into detail on this, and I never will. I’ll simply say that he suddenly grabbed me and put his hands on me. It was sexual, it was perverse, and it was ugly, and I couldn’t have been more shocked and repulsed. The harder I fought him, the more aggressive he became. Then he started adding threats, as if he could do anything to me that was worse than what he was trying to do at that moment.”

Sounds like a terrible experience, if you ask me. But Tippi stuck production on The Birds out, and she did prevail in the long run, although it sounds as if immediate ramifications of her refusal of Hitchcock’s aggressive advances came with a price.

Remember the now infamous phone booth sequence? Well the mechanical birds that bombarded that phone booth shouldn’t have, in theory, caused any kind of physical damage to Hedren. But the glass in the phone booth, which was supposed to be shatterproof was – not so mysteriously – not shatterproof. It was just plain old glass, and Hedren took that to the face.

Sadly, these kinds of stories aren’t limited to a single recounting, or two terrifying memories. Tippi’s got a head and a heart full of these kinds of memories, and it sounds as though these issues will be thoroughly explored in her new memoir.

Our suggestion? Buy the damn book – it sounds like a potentially heartbreaking but insightful and riveting piece of work!