Obsession and darkness at centre of Hitchcock classic

The 1964 psychodrama Marnie’ was blighted by its director’s behaviour towards the lead star Tippi Hedren, resulting in dramatic results on and off screen

- Geoffrey Macnab

During her stand-off with director Alfred Hitchcock on the set of Marnie (1964), Tippi Hedren hit the director where it hurt him the most – right in the midriff. “She [Hedren] did what no one is permitted to do. She referred to my weight,” the English filmmaker, still smarting about her insults many years later, complained to biographer John Russell Taylor. From that moment on, neither would speak directly to the other. He began referring to her as “the girl”.

Another biographer gave a very different account of why relations broke down so badly between Hitchcock and his 34year-old star. He had become hopelessly and pathetically obsessed with her. She was under contract to him, and he was trying to control every aspect of her life both on and off screen. There was a three-decade age gap between them. He was deeply repressed but that didn’t stop him from disgracing himself. “Hitchcock finally lost any remnant of dignity and discretion. Alone with Hedren in her trailer after the day’s work, he made an overt sexual proposition that she could neither ignore nor answer casually, as she could his previous gestures,” Donald Spoto claimed in his book, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock.

Whatever its cause, the breakdown of relations between Hedren and Hitchcock overshadowed Marnie even before the film was released. Loosely based on a novel by Poldark writer Winston Graham, this is the story of a disturbed young woman who steals from her employers and continually changes identities. One of her bosses, the upper-class American businessman Mark Rutland (played by Sean Connery in the first flush of his 007 celebrity), falls in love with her.