Random Extremely Bizarre Things Most People Don't Know About Alfred Hitchcock (15 items)

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  (#1) He Terrorized Actress Tippi Hedren And Her Daughter

  Alfred Hitchcock had a thing for blonde leading ladies, including Tippi Hedren, the star of 1963's The Birds and 1964's Marnie. He developed an odd obsession with her, and wanted to control everything about her life. While filming The Birds, he locked Hedren in a room with a bunch of angry live birds, some of which were tied to her body. She eventually collapsed in a crying fit and had to be carried off set, and required a week of bed rest. Hitchcock also sent Hedren's daughter, Melanie Griffith, a wax doll that resembled her mother and was nestled in a small coffin.

  According to Hedren, this happened because she rejected Hitchcock's sexual advances. When he made things difficult, she threatened to stop working with him, at which point he told her he'd ruin her career if she did. She eventually extricated him from her life, to the detriment to her career.

  Hitchcock had similar obsession with other leading ladies, including Grace Kelly, though claimed he was celibate, having only had sex once, with his wife, Alma. Some might say he terrorized Hedren as he did his other actors, for the sake of improving their performances. 
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  (#2) He Was Terrified Of Eggs

  In 1963, Hitchcock declared eggs terrified him.

  “I’m frightened of eggs, worse than frightened, they revolt me. That white round thing without any holes … have you ever seen anything more revolting than an egg yolk breaking and spilling its yellow liquid? Blood is jolly, red. But egg yolk is yellow, revolting. I’ve never tasted it.”
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  (#3) He Had A Demented Sense Of Humor That Involved Laughs At The Expense Of The Safety And Sanity Of Others

  Hitchcock loved perverse jokes and cruel pranks. He was known to use blue food coloring in dinner guests' meals, once crammed a horse in an actor's tiny dressing room for fun, and spiked a crew member's drink with a laxative after chaining him to a piece of film equipment.

  Many of his pranks were employed to get actors into character, such as when he coaxed an uneasy and shy performance from Joan Fontaine in 1940's Rebecca by saying the cast and crew hated her. He was also known to make jokes like, “Call me Hitch. Hold the cock,” and referred to Anthony Perkins as Master Bates on the Psycho set.
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  (#4) He Used Homosexuality To Create Uneasiness

  Homosexuality is associated with crime, violence, and villainy in many of Hitchcock's films. Gay antagonists, and lots of subtext, can be found in 1948's Rope and 1951's Strangers On A Train. In the 1950s, homosexuality was still seen as a mental disorder by mainstream society.

  Hitchcock used the uneasiness surrounding homosexuality to build tension in several films, including a housekeeper's strange behaviors in Rebecca and Norman Bates's cross dressing practices in Psycho.
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  (#5) He Had An Entire Apartment Complex With Furnished Rooms And A Drainage System Built For 'Rear Window'

  Hitchcock was a bit of a control freak. He meticulously planned shots and went to strange, sometimes extreme lengths to get actors in character. His obsession with control can easily be seen in Rear Window, for which he had an entire apartment complex built in a studio so he could control every aspect of the environment. There were 31 apartments in the complex, 12 of which were completely furnished. Several even had running water and electricity.

  The set was based on a real courtyard, behind a building at 125 Christopher Street in New York City. Construction of the set required removing the floor of the sound stage, so the recessed courtyard could be built below ground level. An intricate light system was created so the inside and outside of the buildings could be lit without lights interfering with one another. A complex drainage system was devised so rain scenes could be filmed in the studio without water pooling. 
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  (#6) He Wanted Cary Grant To Have A Sneezing Fit Inside Lincoln's Nose In 'North By Northwest'

  Throughout the early 1950s, Hitchcock toyed with an idea he referred to as The Man In Lincoln's Nose. The project was conceived as a movie about a wrongly accused man trying to exonerate himself, and would include a scene in the United Nations, as well as a climatic scene at Mount Rushmore.

  While developing the idea, Hitchcock wanted to include a scene in which Cary Grant's character hides in Lincoln's nose on Mount Rushmore and has a sneezing fit. The film was eventually named North By Northwest and Mount Rushmore refused permission for filming, requiring a reproduction set to be made. The sneezing idea was abandoned.
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  (#7) He Refused To Meet Steven Spielberg Because He Felt Like A Whore For Taking Money To Do A Voice For The Jaws Ride

  When the Universal Studios theme park opened in 1964, Hitchcock was hired to help with promotion over the course of several years. He was paid $1 million to star in ads and promotional films for attractions, which, in the 1970s, included the Jaws ride. 

  Jaws director Steven Spielberg was a big Hitchcock fan and tried to meet his idol several times. Hitchcock always turned him down, eventually admitting the reason was "Because I'm the voice of the Jaws ride [at the Universal Studios them park]. They paid me a million dollars. And I took it and I did it. I'm such a whore. I can't sit down and talk to the boy who did the fish movie... I couldn't even touch his hand."

  Perhaps even weirder still, all this information came compliments of Bruce Dern, who knew both directors and tried to put them in touch with one another. 
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  (#8) Walt Disney Said 'No Thanks' To Hitchcock's Filming Request

  In the early 1960s, Hitchcock approached Walt Disney about filming an unknown project on location in the Disneyland theme park. Despite Hitchcock's popularity at the time and the extra recognition his project would bring to the park, Disney turned him down. His reason? "That disgusting movie Psycho."
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  (#9) He Collaborated With Salvador Dali On A Dream Sequence

  For 1945's Spellbound, Hitchcock enlisted the help of surrealist Salvador Dali for a dream sequence. Dali created about 20 minutes of footage that was edited way down for the film. Hitchcock noted: 

  "I wanted Dali because of the architectural sharpness of his work. But Dali had some strange ideas. He wanted a statue to crack like a shell falling apart, with ants crawling all over it. And underneath, there would be Ingrid Bergman, covered by ants! It just wasn't possible."
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  (#10) He Was A Binge Eater

  Hitchcock's relationship with food was as complicated as some of his plot twists. As a child, he secretly binged on things like bacon and fried fish. As an adult, he was known to order three steaks at a time and finished his meal with several servings of ice cream. Food also has plenty of appearances in his films, such as a chicken dinner in 1946's Notorious and a lobster take out meal in 1954's Rear Window.

  Hitchcock had a revelation about his mortality while filming Lifeboat in 1944 and put himself on a diet and, as a result, he lost a third of his body mass. Although he regained the weight he lost, before and after images of the director appear in a newspaper ad in the film (which you can see above). 
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  (#11) He Helped Make A Holocaust Documentary That Was Lost Until the 1980s

  In 1945, Alfred Hitchcock was asked to help with a documentary about the atrocities of Nazi concentration camps. The director was so appalled by the footage he was shown of Bergen-Belsen, he stayed away from the studio for a week. The film was created in an attempt to hold Germany more accountable for the Holocaust, but changing political circumstances resulted in it being shelved once it was complete.

  It was virtually forgotten until the 1980s, when it was shown at the 1984 Berlin Film Festival.
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  (#12) His Dad Had Him Locked Up For Being Naughty

  When Hitchcock was about five years old, his father sent him to the local police station. He had been causing trouble and was to give the first policeman he saw a note from his father. After reading it, the policeman locked young Hitchcock in a cell for a few minutes before he returned, saying "This is what we do to naughty boys.” 

  Hitchcock never forgot this moment, but fear served him well. As he once said, "I’m fortunate to be a coward, to have a low threshold of fear, because a hero couldn't make a good suspense film.”

  It's possible this story isn't true, as the only source for it is Hitchcock, a man prone to myth-making and telling tall tales. But it's a great anecdote nonetheless.
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  (#13) He Bought As Many Copies Of The Book 'Psycho' As He Could To Avoid Spoiling The Ending

  Hitchcock claimed he was drawn to Psycho by the unusual narrative device of the heroine's death appearing very early in the story. He anonymously purchased the rights to the book for $9,000. It was important to the director to keep the story's twist a secret from film audiences.

  To make sure the ending wouldn't leak and viewers could be appropriately chilled, Hitchcock purchased every copy of the Psycho novel he could, keeping it out of the hands of readers. 
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  (#14) He Handcuffed His Actors Together And 'Lost' The Key

  The 39 Steps required actors Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll to be attached to one another with handcuffs. In one of his famous attempts to get actors into character and improve their performances, Hitchcock handcuffed the pair together for real during a rehearsal and pretended to lose the key.

  He continued the rehearsal for some time, and left the two alone for a bit, forcing them to spend hours together. After that, the two had a natural ease together that wasn't present before. 
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  (#15) His Wife Was His Biggest Collaborator

  In 1923, film editor Alma Reville received a job offer from Hitchcock. In 1926, he also gave her a marriage proposal. She accepted, and became Hitchcock's biggest collaborator, as well as his wife. Reville is credited with everything from assistant director to screenwriter on 19 Hitchcock films, and is said to have convinced the director to keep Bernard Herrmann's now legendary string music during the Psycho shower scene.

  Although the couple had one child, their marriage was primarily celibate, which fueled speculation Hitchcock was a homosexual in denial.

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