Problem: Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan,  (nee Miller; 15 September 1890 - 12 January 1976) was an English writer. She is known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around her fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. Christie also wrote the world's longest-running play, a murder mystery, The Mousetrap, and six romances under the name Mary Westmacott. In 1971 she was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) for her contribution to literature.

Christie occasionally inserted stereotyped descriptions of characters into her work, particularly before the end of the Second World War (when such attitudes were more commonly expressed publicly), and particularly in regard to Italians, Jews, non-Europeans, and sometimes Americans, the last usually as impossibly naive or uninformed. For example, she described "Hebraic men with hook-noses wearing rather flamboyant jewellery" in the first editions of the collection The Mysterious Mr Quin (1930), in the short story "The Soul of the Croupier"; in later editions, the passage was edited to describe "sallow men" wearing same.  In The Hollow, published as late as 1946, one of the more unsympathetic characters is "a Whitechapel Jewess with dyed hair and a voice like a corncrake ... a small woman with a thick nose, henna red and a disagreeable voice". To contrast with the more stereotyped descriptions, Christie sometimes showed "foreigners" as victims or potential victims at the hands of English malefactors, such as, respectively, Olga Seminoff (Hallowe'en Party) and Katrina Reiger (in the short story "How Does Your Garden Grow?"). Jewish characters are often seen as un-English (such as Oliver Manders in Three Act Tragedy), but they are rarely the culprits.  Often, she is affectionate or teasing with her prejudices. After four years of war-torn London, Christie hoped to return some day to Syria, which she described as "gentle fertile country and its simple people, who know how to laugh and how to enjoy life; who are idle and gay, and who have dignity, good manners, and a great sense of humour, and to whom death is not terrible."  She had trouble with an incompetent Swiss French nursery helper (Marcelle) for toddler Rosalind, and as a result she decided, "Scottish preferred ... good with the young. The French were hopeless disciplinarians ... Germans good and methodical, but it was not German that I really wanted Rosalind to learn. The Irish were gay but made trouble in the house; the English were of all kinds".

What kind of stereotyped characters?

Answer with quotes: (when such attitudes were more commonly expressed publicly), and particularly in regard to Italians, Jews, non-Europeans, and sometimes Americans, the last usually as impossibly naive or uninformed.


Problem: Hedren was born on January 19, 1930, in New Ulm, Minnesota, to Bernard Carl and Dorothea Henrietta (nee Eckhardt) Hedren. For much of her career, Hedren's year of birth was reported as 1935. In 2004, however, she acknowledged that she was actually born in 1930 (which is consistent with the birth registration index at the Minnesota Historical Society). Her paternal grandparents were Swedish immigrants, while her maternal ancestry is German and Norwegian.

On October 13, 1961, she received a call from an agent who told her a producer was interested in working with her. When she was told it was Alfred Hitchcock who, while he was watching The Today Show, saw her in a commercial for a diet drink called Sego, she agreed to sign a seven-year contract. During their first meeting, the two talked about everything except the role he was considering her for. Hedren was convinced for several weeks it was for his television series, Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Hitchcock later said, "I was not primarily concerned with how she looked in person. Most important was her appearance on the screen, and I liked that immediately. She has a touch of that high-style, lady-like quality which was once well-represented in films by actresses like Irene Dunne, Grace Kelly, Claudette Colbert, and others but which is now quite rare."  Hitchcock put Hedren through an extensive color screen test that lasted two days and cost $25,000, doing scenes from his previous films, such as Rebecca, Notorious and To Catch a Thief with actor Martin Balsam. According to Balsam, Hedren was very nervous but studied every line, did every move she was asked to, and tried to do everything right. Hitchcock asked costume designer Edith Head to design clothes for Hedren's private life and he personally advised her about wine and food. He also insisted for publicity purposes that her name should be printed only in single quotes, 'Tippi'. The press mostly ignored this directive from the director, who felt that the single quotes added distinction and mystery to her name. Hitchcock was impressed with Hedren. As production designer Robert F. Boyle explained, "Hitch always liked women who behaved like well-bred ladies. Tippi generated that quality."  Afterward, Hedren was invited to lunch with Hitchcock, his wife, Alma, and Lew Wasserman, head of Universal, at one of Hitchcock's favorite restaurants, Chasen's. There she was presented with a golden pin of three birds in flight, adorned by three tiny seed pearls, and was asked by Hitchcock to play the leading role in his upcoming film The Birds. "I was so stunned. It never occurred to me that I would be given a leading role in a major motion picture. I had great big tears in my eyes", Hedren later recalled.

what else did she do?

Answer with quotes:
Hitchcock put Hedren through an extensive color screen test that lasted two days and cost $25,000, doing scenes from his previous films,