Writer of Pop Culture

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This Day in Pop Culture: March 28

March 28 brough both chills and cheers: Hitchcock unleashed “The Birds”, while P.T. Barnum wowed crowds with a reinvented circus.

March 28, 2026

3–4 minutes

March 28 has delivered some memorable moments in entertainment history. Alfred Hitchcock sent audiences running for cover with The Birds, Ub Iwerks lent his special‑effects genius to a surprisingly dark project, and P.T. Barnum (“the greatest showman“) reshaped the circus world with a major merger that changed the show forever.

1963: ‘The Birds’ Attack Hollywood

In the early 1920’s Ub Iwerks worked with Walt Disney creating cheerful Laugh-O-Grams and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit shorts. In the 1960’s, he recorded sounds of birds attacking for Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds.

Released in theaters on this day, the Universal Pictures’ movie is based on a short story of the same name by Daphne du Maurier. It was also partially inspired by true events of a bird attack that happened in Capitola, California.

The story is about a few scary and mysterious days when birds of all kinds began attacking the people Bodega Bay, California with no real explanation as to why. Hitchcock once said that the birds in the story rose up to punish humans for taking them for granted. Most of the birds featured in the movie (about 25,000 of them) were real, but there were some mechanical ones used as well.

The Birds starred Tippi Hedren, Rod Taylor, Jessica Tandy, Suzanne Pleshette and Veronica Cartwright. While Iwerks was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Special Effects and Hedren got a Golden Globe for New Star of the Year, the movie itself received mixed reviews from critics. Some thought the film was a lot of fun thrills while others though it was Hitchcock’s worst. Over time, appreciation of the film has grown.

Rick Rosenthal directed the made-for-TV movie, The Birds II: Land’s End in 1994. It wasn’t really a sequel. It featured all-new characters and took place in a different seaside town. (Bodega Bay was mentioned, but only once). Hedren was there too, but she played a different character. As for Rosenthal, he wasn’t thrilled with the finished product. He used the pseudonym Alan Smithee in the credits.

A remake of The Birds was also in the works in 2007 which would have been directed by Martin Campbell and starred Naomi Watts, but it was cancelled. Then in 2010, the low-budget film, Birdemic: Shock and Terror was inspired by the Hitchcock tale. Despite its terrible reviews (some calling it one of the worst movies ever made) two sequels were released in 2013 and 2022.

1881: Greatest Show on Earth

Entrepreneur P.T. Barnum became a natural salesman at the age of 12 selling lottery tickets and cherry rum to soldiers. Later, he tried out a variety of businesses, including newspaper publishing and running a boarding house. But he didn’t find his true calling until 1871.

Barnum’s new venture was called “P.T. Barnum’s Grand Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan, and Circus: The Greatest Show on Earth” which was quite a mouthful. On this day ten years later, Barnum joined forces with James Bailey and James Hutchinson, and in 1887, the re-branded circus went by the name of “The Barnum & Bailey Greatest Show on Earth.”

Barnum died on April 7, 1891, and his circus was bought by the rivaling Ringling Brothers in 1907. On May 21, 2017, the circus performed its last show in Uniondale, New York…until it came back in 2023!