Steven Mikulanthe wax museum on Hollywood Boulevard, is re-opening in August after an
extensive housecleaning. Today, foreshadowing its new Alfred Hitchcock
exhibit, the museum will unveil a waxwork of actress Tippi Hedren.
Hedren, who played the neurotic thief Marnie Edgar in Hitchock's Marnie and, more famously, the mischievous socialite Melanie Daniels in his The Birds,
will be honored at a public, sidewalk ceremony in the forecourt of Grauman's Chinese Theater at 10:30 a.m. In perhaps a rather ominous note, Hedren will appear for her unveiling near Michael Jackson's star. Still, the location may be appropriate since Hedren, in 2005, adopted two tigers from Jackson's Neverland Ranch.
Following the ceremony, Tussauds will conduct a Scream
Test to see who has the most convincing voice of fear. According to the
“participants will be encouraged by the master of ceremonies to scream
into our Scream-O-Meter. . . . The winning scream will be immortalized
by Madame Tussauds and live on indefinitely in the all-new Madame
Tussauds Hollywood Alfred Hitchcock experience.”
This second event sounds more like William Castle than Alfred Hitchcock. One just can't imagine Tippi Hedren or Melanie Daniels screaming out of feminine fright. Vera Miles may have let loose toward the end of Hitchcock's Psycho,
but her scream was a last gasp of the paranoid 1950s, whereas Hedren's
Melanie represented the martini cool of the early 1960s. If anything, she grows
almost catatonically silent at the end of The Birds, perhaps
presaging the 1970s — or 2009.
Grauman's Chinese Theater forecourt, Hollywood Boulevard, near Orange Avenue; 10:30 a.m.
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