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The Real Life Event That Prompted Alfred Hitchcock to Make ‘The Birds’
The Real Life Event That Prompted Alfred Hitchcock to Make ‘The Birds’
(Clever Journeys) - On August 18, 1961, thousands of seabirds suddenly began dive-bombing homes and cars in the coastal town of Capitola, California.
The strange event terrified residents, who woke to find the streets littered with disoriented and dead birds regurgitating half-digested anchovies.
At the time, famed director Alfred Hitchcock lived on a 200-acre estate just a few miles away in Scotts Valley. Intrigued by the bizarre incident, he called the local Santa Cruz Sentinel newspaper.
He asked the paper for copies of their coverage, using the real-life horror as research material for his next project.
This real-life avian invasion combined with a 1952 short story. It became the direct inspiration for his classic 1963 thriller, The Birds.
For decades, the cause of the birds’ behavior remained a mystery. It wasn’t until years later that scientists…