IN: Hedren was born on January 19, 1930, in New Ulm, Minnesota, to Bernard Carl and Dorothea Henrietta (nee Eckhardt) Hedren. For much of her career, Hedren's year of birth was reported as 1935. In 2004, however, she acknowledged that she was actually born in 1930 (which is consistent with the birth registration index at the Minnesota Historical Society). Her paternal grandparents were Swedish immigrants, while her maternal ancestry is German and Norwegian.

The Birds (1963) was Hedren's screen debut. Hitchcock became her drama coach, and gave her an education in film-making as she attended many of the production meetings such as script, music or photography conferences. Hedren said, "I probably learned in three years what it would have taken me 15 years to learn otherwise." She learned how to break down a script, to become another character, and to study the relationship of different characters. Hedren portrayed her role of Melanie Daniels as Hitchcock requested. She said, "He gives his actors very little leeway. He'll listen, but he has a very definite plan in mind as to how he wants his characters to act. With me, it was understandable, because I was not an actress of stature. I welcomed his guidance." During the six months of principal photography, Hedren's schedule was tight, as she was only given one afternoon off a week. At first, she found the shooting "wonderful". Hitchcock told a reporter, after a few weeks of filming, that she was remarkable, and said, "She's already reaching the lows and highs of terror." Nonetheless, Hedren recalled the week she did the final bird attack scene in a second-floor bedroom as the worst of her life. Before filming it, she asked Hitchcock about her character's motivations to go upstairs, and his response was, "Because I tell you to." She was then assured that the crew would use mechanical birds. Instead, Hedren endured five solid days of prop men, protected by thick leather gloves, flinging dozens of live gulls, ravens and crows at her (their beaks clamped shut with elastic bands). In a state of exhaustion, when one of the birds gouged her cheek and narrowly missed her eye, Hedren sat down on the set and began crying. A physician ordered a week's rest. Hitchcock protested, according to Hedren, saying there was nobody but her to film. The doctor's reply was, "Are you trying to kill her?" She said the week also appeared to be an ordeal for the director. Universal's executives, who did not back Hitchcock's decision to hire Hedren in the first place, were impressed with her performance and Wasserman described it as "remarkable". While promoting The Birds, Hitchcock was full of praise for his new protegee, and compared her to Grace Kelly. "Tippi has a faster tempo, city glibness, more humor [than Grace Kelly]. She displayed jaunty assuredness, pertness, an attractive throw of the head. And she memorized and read lines extraordinarily well and is sharper in expression." The film was screened out of competition in May at a prestigious invitational showing at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival. Hedren's performance was praised in Variety's review: "Aside from the birds, the film belongs to Hedren, who makes an auspicious screen bow. She virtually has to carry the picture alone for the first forty-five minute stretch, prior to the advent of the first wave of organized attackers from the sky. Miss Hedren has a star quality and Hitchcock has provided her with a potent vehicle to launch her career". Hedren received the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year, tied with Elke Sommer and Ursula Andress. Her role as Melanie Daniels was named by Premiere magazine as one of the greatest movie characters of all time.
QUESTION: Who was the producer of The Birds?
IN: Carroll Baker was born and raised in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, in a Roman Catholic family, the daughter of Edith Gertrude (nee Duffy) and William Watson Baker, a traveling salesman. She is of Polish descent, which has given rise to a rumor that her birth name was Karolina Piekarski. However, this currently cannot be substantiated by known records. Baker's parents separated when she was eight years old, and she moved with her mother and younger sister, Virginia, to Turtle Creek, Pennsylvania.

Baker portrayed a pacifist Quaker schoolteacher in John Ford's Cheyenne Autumn (1964), and received critical acclaim for the role. She then had a supporting role as Saint Veronica in George Stevens' The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), and portrayed a cynical, alcoholic movie star in The Carpetbaggers (1964), which brought her a second wave of notoriety in spite of the film's lackluster reviews. The New York Times called the film "a sickly sour distillation" of the source novel, but said Baker's performance "brought some color and a sandpaper personality as the sex-loaded widow." The film was the top moneymaker of that year, with domestic box-office receipts of $13,000,000, and marked the beginning of a tumultuous relationship with the film's producer, Joseph E. Levine. Based on her Carpetbaggers performance, Levine began to develop Baker as a movie sex symbol, and she appeared posing in the December 1964 issue of Playboy. She was subsequently cast by Levine in the title roles of two 1965 potboilers-- Sylvia, as an ex-prostitute and con artist, and as Jean Harlow in Harlow. Baker appeared on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post on their November 2, 1963, issue dressed as Harlow, promoting the film's upcoming production. In 1965, she became an official celebrity spokesperson for Foster Grant sunglasses and appeared in advertisements for the company. Baker likened this era of her career to "being a beauty contest winner [as opposed to] an actress." Despite much prepublicity, Harlow received a lukewarm response from critics: Variety referred to Baker's portrayal of Harlow as "a fairly reasonable facsimile, although she lacks the electric fire of the original." Relations between Baker and Levine soured; in a 1965 interview, Baker sardonically commented: "I'll say this about Joe Levine: I admire his taste in leading ladies," which led the press to suspect a rift between the actress and producer. Baker sued Levine over her contract with Paramount Pictures in 1966, and was ultimately fired by Paramount and had her paychecks from Harlow frozen amid the contentious legal dispute; this left Baker hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt (however, she was eventually awarded $1 million in compensation). In an interview with Rex Reed in his book People Are Crazy Here (1974), Baker revealed that she had felt pressure in both her working relationship with Levine, and her domestic life with her husband, the latter of whom she said wanted to maintain an expensive lifestyle: "We'd been very poor when we started out at the Actors Studio in New York," she told Reed. "I was under contract to Joe Levine, who was going around giving me diamonds and behaving like he owned me. I never slept with him or anything, but everyone thought I was his mistress." In the spring of 1966, Baker returned to theatre, performing in a production of Anna Christie at the Huntington Hartford Theater in Los Angeles. The production was directed by Garfein. The production was heralded as the "theatre event of the week" in Los Angeles, though its reception was middling. Cecil Smith of The Los Angeles Times wrote of the production: "The beautiful Miss Baker's vehicle becomes a hearse." The play was also performed at the Tappan Zee Playhouse in Nyack, New York in June 1966.
QUESTION:
What happened in Sylvia?