Tippi Hedren, Who Survived “The Birds” & Gangrene, Turns 93

Jan 19

Jan 19 Tippi Hedren, Who Survived “The Birds” & Gangrene, Turns 93

It turns out The Birds was not Tippi Hedren’s worst animal encounter in a movie. That would be Roar, a film that involved close contact with more than 150 untrained lions, tigers, leopards, and cheetahs. It has entered Hollywood lore as the most dangerous movie ever made.

The idea was born while longtime conservationist Hedren and her talent agent husband, Noel Marshall, were visiting a game preserve in Mozambique in 1969. What if they made a movie about a family whose house is overrun by big cats, using their actual family in their home in Sherman Oaks, California?

“I don’t know how we survived it,” Hedren would later tell Variety. “Our nine-month shoot turned into five years. We were one on one with those big cats. They’re dangerous animals and they’re big. As I made the movie I got into the issue of stopping the government from allowing people to breed lions and tigers as pets. They shouldn’t be pets. They’re apex predators, top of the food chain, one of four of the most dangerous animals in the world.”

Hedren and Marshall would both contract gangrene from the inevitable injuries; daughter Melanie Griffith needed facial reconstructive surgery after a mauling, cinematographer Jan de Bont was scalped, requiring 120 stitches. When the carnage was finally in the can in 1981, Roar’s tagline would read: “No animals were harmed in the making of this movie. 70 members of the cast and crew were.”

But a very good thing would come out of this ordeal. In 1983 Hedren founded the Roar Foundation and the Shambala Preserve, a sanctuary for big cats—lions, tigers, leopards, cougars, servals, and bobcats—about 40 miles north of LA. The animals are all rescues, many of them confiscated by the USDA, departments of Fish and Game, and assorted humane societies. At Shambala the cats are kept safely within enclosures, so the risk of contracting gangrene is minimal.

Tippi Hedren survived her monumental mistake and turns 93 this week. Many happy returns on the day!