While the thriller was primarily shot at the former Potter Schoolhouse on Bodega Lane in the town of Bodega, there were several other prominent local establishments and businesses featured throughout the film.
A few miles inland is the quaint village of Bodega itself, where you can see the schoolhouse of Annie Hayworth (Suzanne Pleshette), at 17110 Bodega Lane, which, in the film, appears to be just up the hill from the bay. The house was originally a schoolhouse, a local community centre and for a while a guest house.
Film crews shored up and rebuilt it for the filming. With the exception of the gazebo featured in the party scene, the school is the only original building used in the film that still stands to this day.
The ranch house on Westshore Road, part of the Gafney ranch that had occupied Bodega Head for nearly 100 years was used for exterior shots of the Brenner House.
The Birds is set in Bodega Bay, California in 1952 and is loosely based on a novel written by Daphne du Maurier. The main character, Melanie Daniels, is a youthful socialite living in San Francisco. In the opening scene, Melanie stops by a pet store to purchase a mynah bird for a relative.
The Birds is also partly inspired by the true events of a mass bird attack on the seaside town of Capitola in California on August 18, 1961, when "Capitola residents awoke to a scene that seemed straight out of a horror movie.
The location scenes in the Alfred Hitchcock-directed film The Birds (1963) were filmed in both Bodega Bay and nearby Bodega (though both were represented as being parts of the film's Bodega Bay.)
How many real birds were used when filming The Birds by Alfred Hitchcock?
According to Hitchcock, 28,000 birds were used (out of which 3,200 were trained, 30 were considered special, and 4 were so consistently reliable they became leads).
Loosely based on a Daphne du Maurier short story, Hitchcock's "The Birds" helped put Bodega Bay on the map. After filming “Shadow of a Doubt” in Santa Rosa, Alfred Hitchcock returned to Sonoma County in 1963 to film “The Birds,” which became one of the director's most notable movies.
Most adults stop singing as they are no longer defending their territories or in search of a mate. Instead, they are busy rearing their young and teaching them how to find their own food before they fly south for the winter.
You may notice fewer birds at your feeders during the late summer and early fall as there is usually lots of natural food available. Weather patterns. Birds may temporarily move out of areas to avoid droughts, floods, storms, exceptional heat and cold waves, and other unusual weather conditions.
Although some mechanical birds were used, many of the birds in The Birds were actual birds. The scene in which Tippi Hedren is attacked by birds in the attic was shot over days and she was hospitalized before Hitchcock was satisfied with the footage. During this, real crows were tied to her body.
"The Birds" is a horror story by the British writer Daphne du Maurier, first published in her 1952 collection The Apple Tree. The story is set in du Maurier's home county of Cornwall shortly after the end of the Second World War. A farmhand, his family and community come under lethal attack from flocks of birds.
Director: Rick Rosenthal. Writers: Daphne Du Maurier, Ken Wheat, Jim Wheat & Robert Eisele. Starring Brad Johnson, Chelsea Field, James Naughton, Jan Rubes & Tippi Hedren. Local Film Locations: Cape Fear River & Old Yacht Basin, 150 Old Yacht Basin Drive, Southport.
The Birds Relived! For those of you who are movie buffs, don't miss visiting Potter's School in Bodega, CA. It's a private residence now, but just standing in front of the front gate will give you flashbacks of Hitchcock's 1963 horror film, The Birds. Still looks the same as in the film.
What kind of car did Tippi Hedren drive in The Birds?
I'm often asked about the Aston Martin that was driven by Tippi Hedren in the 1963 Alfred Hitchcock film, 'The Birds'. Well, the AMHT Register tells us that it was a DB2/4 Drophead coupe, chassis number LML/944 that was loaned to Universal Studios in 1963 especially for the film.
The Birds is a political allegory about the psychological violence of capitalism and the fear-mongering of the Cold War. Fear of nuclear attack is apparent when the birds “cover the bay like a white cloud”, suggestive of a nuclear mushroom cloud.
“By then I was barely coherent, not sure how much more of this I could possibly take,” she recalls. After a bird that was tied to Hedren's shoulder pecked her too close to her eye she finally snapped, telling her director, “I'm done!” before bursting into tears.
' For The Wrong Man, Henry Fonda was instructed to take a crash course in jazz; for The Birds Tippi Hedren took piano lessons so she could play a Debussy arabesque.
As Hitchcock yelled "Action!" a flock of live ravens, doves, and pigeons were hurled at Hedren, an experience she describes as "brutal and ugly and relentless." Filming lasted five days, and Hedren says she was "on the verge of collapse" on the final day of shooting.
Bodega Bay is a town in California with a population of 1,186. Bodega Bay is in Sonoma County. Living in Bodega Bay offers residents a rural feel and most residents own their homes.
The Sonoma Coast town of Bodega Bay is best known for its fresh California seafood, from sweet Dungeness crab to rockfish, salmon, ling cod, albacore, and halibut.
