During the filming of "Last Summer," a seagull was killed. "In one scene," Hershey explained, "I had to throw the bird in the air to make her fly. We had to reshoot the scene over and over again. I could tell the bird was tired. Finally, when the scene was finished, the director, Frank Perry, told me the bird had broken her neck on the last throw." Hershey felt responsible for the bird's death and changed her stage name to "Seagull" as a tribute to the creature. "I felt her spirit enter me," she later explained. "It was the only moral thing to do." The name change was not positively received. When she was offered a part opposite Timothy Bottoms in "The Crazy World of Julius Vrooder" (1974) (or "Vrooder's Hooch"), Hershey had to forfeit half her salary, $25,000, to be billed under the name "Seagull" because the producers were not in favor of the billing.