The Girl after The Birds

Shot in San Francisco, Bodega Bay and the town of Bodega, “The Birds” was released in 1963. “Marnie,” co-starring Sean Connery, was released in 1964.

It was during production of “The Birds” that she began to feel something wasn’t right.

“He just kept staring at me, watching me all the time,” she remembers. “It was a little unsettling, on the set or wherever.”

Midway through “Marnie,” Hitchcock began to make advances, she says.

“It was an obsession,” she said, “and it’s a terrible thing to be the object of someone’s obsession if you’re not interested in it.”  After rebuffing him, “I became an expert in ways to not be alone with him.”

Once she rejected him, “That’s when I started being called ‘The Girl.’ He told me he would ruin my career and he did,” she said. “He told me he wouldn’t let me out of my contract and he kept paying me my $600 a week.

“All I know is, years after, I heard about films that people wanted me to do, but to get to me they had to go through him. All he would say is, ‘She’s not available.’”

At the time, “Those were the big studio days and there was no one I could go to,” she says. “The ‘sexual abuse’ thing did not exist at that time. I never told my parents because they would have been destroyed.”

Scene from the 1963 film, 'The Birds'

This weekend’s return to The Tides restaurant is a nearly bi-annual pilgrimage for Hedren to the location of “The Birds” filming. She usually autographs photos of herself for a fee and chats with fans, spending the weekend in Bodega Bay before returning home to her preserve in Acton.

“I just love going back to Bodega. Everybody is so nice to me and they all love talking about ‘The Birds,’” she said.

When she returns home, she’ll look out the window on her big cats and her other kindred spirits, a huge flock of black ravens that live on the preserve.

“They’re meat eaters, you know,” she says. “And we feed the cats 400 to 500 pounds of meat every day. The ravens are big and shiny and smart. I just love them.”

Bay Area freelancer John Beck writes about entertainment for The Press Democrat. You can reach him at 280-8014, john@sideshowvideo.com and follow on Twitter @becksay.