During the filming of The Birds, Rod was engaged to Anita Ekberg, the voluptuous Swedish actress who famously jumped into the Trevi fountain in Rome staring Fellini’s La Dolce Vita which set the mood for the permissiveness of the swinging 60s. Hitchcock used this detail to infuse the character of Melanie Daniels, as a ‘shallow, wealthy playgirl’, with the same background of ‘jumping into a fountain in Rome.’
Rod Taylor & Anita Ekberg
A couple of years earlier, Rod was offered a part in Thunder in the Night which involved location filming in Italy. It was here that he met Anita Ekberg and the two began a tumultuous on/off relationship in front of the world’s paparazzi. Brawls in bars between the two followed, strange gifts exchanged, including a blue bottomed monkey from Anita, to the point that Rod felt like ‘Every day I was starring in an Errol Flynn movie.”
During the filming of The Birds Anita flew out from Rome, to join Rod on location. “He was a handsome young man, always very pleasant,” remembers Birds crew member Mary Bennett. “He was engaged to Anita Ekberg, and they had a fight, and she had thrown the engagement ring. He was looking for it and couldn’t find it and was telling the story to the amused crew.”
The press had a field day while various wedding dates were set between the couple, but they kept being postponed. The engagement was called off months later, after filming of The Birds, and the two stars would go their separate ways, eventually marrying different people within a year of breaking up.
