What’s ‘The Birds’ star Tippi Hedren’s Minnesota connection?

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Even today, the scene is pretty terrifying.

A woman shines her flashlight against the wall and there they are — dozens of crows and gulls. They attack, swooping in to swarm and peck her viciously as she tries to block them with her hands.

It’s the scariest part of Alfred Hitchcock’s suspenseful 1963 classic “The Birds.”

The movie’s star, Tippi Hedren, has Minnesota roots. David Piper, who lives in Minneapolis, was curious to learn more about Hedren’s history here.

He reached out to Curious Minnesota, the Strib’s reporting project answering reader questions, to ask about Hedren: “What exactly is her Minnesota connection?”

Hedren, who is 95, was born in Minnesota and lived here until she was 15. As of her birthday this year, she is retired and no longer doing interviews, said her agent Harlan Boll.

“All in all, it’s been a pretty amazing life for a small-town girl from Minnesota whose only dream was to be a figure skater,” she wrote.

Hedren grew up in the tiny Minnesota town of Lafayette, where her dad owned the general store and her mom worked as a teacher, she wrote in “Tippi: A Memoir.”

The youngest of two daughters, she was born in nearby New Ulm, which was the closest place with a hospital. “My parents named me Nathalie Kay,” she wrote, “but from the very beginning my daddy called me Tippi, a nickname for the Swedish word tupsa, which means little girl or little sweetheart.”

Hedren’s paternal grandparents lived with them for a while, she wrote. “When they did speak, it was never in English, always in Swedish, and they seemed to stay in their room all the time.”

During the Depression, when Hedren was 4 or 5, her father lost his store and the family moved to the Twin Cities, she wrote.

Hedren’s life changed when she was a sophomore at Minneapolis’ West High School. A woman approached her in front of a drugstore in Morningside and asked her to model for Donaldson’s department store. (She spent her modeling earnings on cashmere sweaters, she wrote.)

Then, when Hedren was 15, the family moved to California. Her father was ill, and doctors recommended a more temperate climate.

In 1950, Hedren took a train to New York to meet with agent Eileen Ford. She joined Ford’s modeling agency, and soon landed on the cover of Life magazine (“Too Much Jewelry?” the cover asked). She began doing television advertising work as well.

In 1961, Hitchcock was watching “The Today Show” when he saw her in an ad for the diet shake Sego, she wrote.

Days later, she was invited to a meeting with agent Lew Wasserman. He told her, “Alfred Hitchcock wants to put you under contract,” Hedren wrote, and she soon agreed, though she had yet to meet the famous director.

That’s when he told her she’d be playing the lead role in “The Birds.”

She was suddenly a star — but the six months she spent working on the movie involved many grueling moments, both on and off screen.

For the final attack scene, Hedren had been expecting the filmmakers to use mechanical birds. Instead, the assistant director came to her dressing room to tell her that the mechanical birds weren’t working. “We’re going to have to use live ones,” he told her, according to her book.

Trainers “pelted” her with “live screaming frantic birds” for five days of filming, she wrote. On the final day, trainers tied a few of the birds’ feet to the rips in Hedren’s clothing so they would stay close and peck her. One pecked close to her eye.

“I finally snapped,” she wrote. “‘I’m done,’ I said, with what little of my voice was left.”

It all took a “horrible emotional toll,” even though she loved acting, she wrote.

Still, she was “proud and happy” about the film and wanted to promote it. In the months leading up to the release of “The Birds,” in 1963, Hedren and her family returned to Minnesota on a promotional tour for the film.

The former mayor of Lafayette and most of the town’s residents traveled to the Twin Cities to greet her, gathering at Edina’s Westgate Theater for a celebration.

She returned that summer to lead Minneapolis’ Aquatennial parade as its celebrity grand marshal. And in 1964, Hedren won a Golden Globe for “best newcomer.”

She went on to star in one more Hitchcock film, “Marnie” with Sean Connery. During filming, the director grabbed her in his office, she wrote. “The harder I fought him, the more aggressive he became. Then he started adding threats.”

She was able to get away, and the director never spoke directly to her again, she wrote.

“I was shattered, but I wasn’t remorseful, not for a single minute. I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life. Refusing Hitchcock that horrible afternoon wasn’t one of them.”

Hedren went on to make dozens more movies and shows, but never again landed a leading role like the ones in “The Birds” and “Marnie.”

In 2012, HBO made a movie called “The Girl” about what Hedren went through, based on Donald Spoto’s book “Spellbound by Beauty: Alfred Hitchcock and his Leading Ladies.” When the movie was released, Hedren told the Star Tribune: “I feel strong. I lived through it beautifully. He ruined my career but he didn’t ruin my life.”

Hedren went on to turn the grounds of her home in California’s Soledad Canyon into an animal preserve with lions and tigers (In 1981, Hedren and her second husband made a movie starring the big cats, called “Roar.” It wasn’t released in the U.S. until 2015, when Alamo Drafthouse gave it a limited run.).

This year, on Hedren’s birthday in January, Griffith shared a reel on Instagram. Hedren, looking poised and wearing red lipstick, waves and blows out candles.

In pink frosting on her cake, a birthday wish using a Swedish word for grandma: “Happy 95th Mor Mor.”

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