That evening in his apartment as he listened to TV reports of increasing tension and escalation by the Russian premier, a preoccupied Clark had completely forgotten about attending a formal Press Awards dinner with Lois.Plot SynopsisThe credits are played, with Charles Previn's upbeat music, over a sketched, art-deco drawing of a cityscape [New York] next to a river.They returned o a slightly similar theme two years later in their screenplay forBall of Fire (1941).Other spin-offs of the Ninotchka theme include MGM'sComrade X (1940)with Clark Gable and Hedy Lamarr (in he Soviet Union), andThe Iron Petticoat (1956)with Katharine Hepburn and Bob Hope (in London).The typical Hitchcock MacGuffin was the question:Why do the strange attacks occur?The main inspiration for the film's bird attacks came from mysterious, real-life avian deaths occurring in the summer of 1961.