Alfred Hitchcock Hitchcock had intended to film "Marnie" first, and in March 1962 it was announced that Grace Kelly, Princess Grace of Monaco since 1956, would come out of retirement to star in it. When Kelly asked Hitchcock to postpone "Marnie" until 1963 or 1964, he recruited Evan Hunter, author of "The Blackboard Jungle" (1954), to develop a screenplay based on a Daphne du Maurier short story, "The Birds" (1952), which Hitchcock had republished in his "My Favorites in Suspense" (1959). He hired Tippi Hedren to play the lead role. It was her first role; she had been a model in New
A. S. Hitchcock until his death in 1935. In 1912 he became Custodian of Grasses, Division of Plants, United States National Museum. Hitchcock remained Custodian without remuneration until his death. His field notebooks are archived in the Smithsonian Institution. He was a professor of botany in the Kansas State Agricultural College and authored over 250 works during his lifetime. The Hitchcock-Chase Collection consists of 2,707 drawings (mostly ink, but some pencil) of grasses, representing hundreds of genera, that were assembled by the Smithsonian Institution agrostologists Albert Spear Hitchcock (1865–1935) and Mary Agnes Chase (1869–1963). The collection is on indefinite loan to Hunt Institute