Tippi is a memoir written by the actress Tippi Hedren, famous for her appearances in Hitchcock movies. Going in without expectations, it left me rather flat.
After a short remembrance about growing up, she moves into modelling and then commercials. One day she receives a call that Hitchcock and his wife Alma have been tracking her down for an audition. He signs her to a contract and after grooming and lessons, he presents her with the script to The Birds. Wildly successful, she went on to film his next, Marnie. Over the course of working with her Hitchcock became more than handsy, his advances eventually making filming unbearable, and when she rebuffed him halfway through Marnie, he never spoke to her directly again, only referring to her as The Girl. (This strained relationship was made into a BBC movie itself called The Girl in 2012.) Since she was under a tight contract to Hitchcock, after Marnie he was effective in stalling her film career.
This is all told within the first 75 pages, and for me, the rest of the book stalled.
Have you heard of a film called Roar? She'll tell you all about it. In the mid-1960's, Tippi visited Africa and fell in love with lions. Eventually adopting several and turning her California property into a big cat preserve, she began planning a film originally titled Lions, Lions and more Lions. For the rest of the book, almost 200 pages, she details the ups and downs of trying to get this film made, interspersed with mentions of her daughter Melanie Griffith's marriages and divorces. Roar did eventually come out.
I was surprised that her career was so short and mainly comprised of these two Hitchcock films, since I think of her as an iconic Hollywood name. There was certainly way too much information about a film that few people have heard of, and it was a drag to get through to the end. Great she has a sanctuary for the big cats but a dull memoir.
1933 / Tradeback / 223 pages
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