The idea of lending Hitchcock’s gifts to a tale of humans besieged by the natural world had floated around for many years before The Birds went into production. In 1953, his friend and sometime business partner Sidney Bernstein recommended buying the rights to The Day of the Triffids, John Wyndham’s dystopian novel about humans under attack from a species of giant plant. Bernstein and Mary Elsom—an Englishwoman engaged in scouting potential Hitchcock material—pitched the book as an H. G. Wells extravaganza, ripe for exploitation by the latest special effects, including 3D. Hitchcock didn’t bite. He was wary of science fiction, and despite his enthusiasm for adopting and adapting new technology, he was never sold on the viability of 3D as a storytelling tool. When sound and color were introduced in the twenties and thirties, he instantly saw the potential of each to help build a narrative and add new layers to the Hitchcock touch. However, 3D, he believed, was just the opposite, a gimmick that reduced rather than expanded a filmmaker’s options.
Another concern Hitchcock had with 3D is that it failed to deliver on its central promise. Rather than drawing the viewer into the world of the film, it reminded them of the artificiality of what they were seeing, which could only detract from a distinctive and convincing diegesis. As daring as it was, Psycho had forced Hitchcock back to basics, drawing on his core filmmaking principles for a black-and-white movie made on the kind of budget he hadn’t handled since wartime. There were no real stars, no stunts, and no dramatic chase sequences across world-famous monuments. Faced with such constrictions, he made the most of what he had when it came to selling the film in a novel, now legendary, advertising campaign, intertwining his celebrity with the gothic dread of the film’s fairy-tale universe. In an unforgettable trailer, he led cinema audiences around the Bates house, like a realtor from the Seventh Circle of Hell. His face appeared in promo posters; he, rather than Janet Leigh or Anthony Perkins, recorded radio ads. It was also he who shaped how the film should be exhibited in cinemas across the country. He insisted that nobody be allowed admission to Psycho once the film had begun, a break from the custom of the day that he told exhibitors was needed to extend an atmosphere of “mysterious importance” from the screen to the lobby. It was Hitchcock’s likeness that moviegoers saw in cardboard-cutout form as they waited in line, pointing grimly at his watch, and it was his voice they heard in prerecorded messages warning them that any attempts to enter the auditorium once the film had started “will be met by force.” Hitchcock’s reputation was front and center in creating an atmosphere of specialness around the film, priming audiences for the spooky world they were about to enter. There were no preview screenings, and the cast and crew had been asked to take an oath promising not to divulge any of the awful secrets of the film’s plot—a fact that was used for publicity purposes, along with the revelation that the usually press-friendly Hitchcock had ordered a closed set during filming. The ratcheting suspense had its desired effect. From the opening week, there were reports of not merely shrieking inside the auditorium, but crying, fainting, and seats wetted by patrons who had lost control of themselves.
The excitement spread across the planet. When Hitchcock embarked on a world tour to promote Psycho, he and his personality were exploited every bit as extensively. In Australia, he made headlines by expressing his dislike of the way in which women were treated in the antipodes. “Your women are marvellous,” he told a journalist in Sydney, “yet they are so downtrodden by your men.” Considering that Psycho is all about American women being treated horrendously by American men, that was a bold statement, indeed. Less provocatively, he also posed for photographs in his hotel room to accompany an article about his efforts to locate a missing shoe, which at least one newspaper deemed newsworthy.
The Australian leg of the tour ended with a dinner in Hitchcock’s honor, on Friday, May 13, at which the creepy turned to camp. The dining room was draped in black, colored only by sprays of white lilies and chrysanthemums, and according to the Melbourne Herald, “sombre organ music filled the room.” Hitchcock arrived by hearse, greeted by eight young women dressed all in black, while guests—several of whom were “leading psychiatrists”—posed for photographs in front of a huge copy of Hitchcock’s silhouette. The publicity tour underlined what the opening of the film in the United States had demonstrated: Psycho was less a movie and more a cultural happening, expanding on a tradition of the riotous early performances of Le Sacre du Printemps in Paris, and the Armory Show exhibition in New York in 1913, which introduced the American public to cubism, fauvism, and futurism, and allied Europe’s groundbreaking modern art with an American genius for marketing and working the public into a lather.
Three years later, the success of that campaign shaped the promotion of The Birds. “The star of this picture, as with Psycho, is Alfred Hitchcock,” stated the shrewd Madison Avenue PR man William F. Blowitz in a memo to his colleagues. “Therefore, a pivotal element in publicity and advertising will be Hitchcock. In the notes on the magazine campaign, the trailer and ads, all of this is emphasized. The point of the campaign is to sell tickets to The Birds; Hitchcock will be a principal element.” Hitchcock was not just placed at the center of it, he served as its propelling force. As with his work with writers, in matters of publicity he needed collaborators with skills and talents he lacked—yet the entire project was guided by his image
