Ingrid Bergman

The Full Biography

Ingrid Bergman. Actress. The Stockholm girl who made a natural face into Hollywood’s idea of honesty, then spent an exile paying for a love the town had hired her to look like she would never have.

This is her story.

The image most people still carry is Ilsa at a piano, or a woman in a gaslit house, or a Hitchcock profile against a green statue. What the still cannot show is Ingrid Bergman of Stockholm, a parentless teenager who came to Hollywood already a star in Sweden, three Oscars, and a life that turned when she had a child with Roberto Rossellini while still married, and the American pulpit called her a scandal until it needed her back.

She was born on August 29, 1915, in Stockholm. Her mother, Friedel Adler, died when Ingrid was two. Her father, Justus Bergman, a photographer and artist, died when she was twelve. An aunt took her, then died. The girl who would be hired as honesty was, first, a child who kept losing the room. She went to the Royal Dramatic Theatre school and then into Swedish pictures. Intermezzo (1936), as a pianist who wrecks a marriage and then walks back out of it, made her a star in Sweden. David O. Selznick saw a print and brought her to California to remake the same story in English in 1939. He did not, unusually, sand the eyebrows into a type. He left the height, the accent, the face that looked as if it had not been invented in a makeup chair. Hollywood called that natural. It was also a contract decision.

The American run was fast and then it was a climate. Adam Had Four Sons. Rage in Heaven. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941) opposite Spencer Tracy. Then Casablanca (1942), for Michael Curtiz, as Ilsa Lund, a wife who walks into Rick’s café and asks a piano player to play a song the house cannot afford. Humphrey Bogart is the man who will not quite say he is a hero. She is the reason he might. The still at the piano is the civic object. The performance is a woman who has already chosen and still has to choose again. She was not sure, on the set, how the picture ended. The ending is why the picture lasted.

For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), as Maria, opposite Gary Cooper, a Hemingway war and a sleeping bag the censors watched. Then Gaslight (1944), for George Cukor, as Paula Alquist, a woman being talked out of her own mind in a London house. Charles Boyer is the husband. Angela Lansbury is the maid. The first Oscar arrived. Casablanca is the climate. The gaslight is the statue. The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945), opposite Bing Crosby, a nun who can throw a punch, the picture America wanted after the war. Spellbound (1945), for Hitchcock, a psychiatrist and a ski-run. Notorious (1946), Hitchcock again, opposite Cary Grant, a daughter of a Nazi sent into a marriage as an assignment, a close-up and a key and a cup of coffee that is poison. It is all face. It is the picture that shows what Selznick left when he left the eyebrows. Joan of Arc (1948) was a pageant. She had already, by then, written to an Italian director she had not met and asked to work.

In 1949 she went to Italy to make Stromboli with Roberto Rossellini. She left her husband, the Swedish dentist and neurosurgeon Petter Lindström, and their daughter, Pia. She had a son, Roberto Ingmar, with Rossellini before the divorce was finished. The American press and, in 1950, Senator Edwin C. Johnson of Colorado, speaking on the Senate floor, treated her as a moral emergency. She was denounced as an apostle of degradation. She lived and worked in Europe. Europa ’51. Journey to Italy. More children: the twins Isotta Ingrid and Isabella Fiorella, born in 1952. The marriage to Rossellini was a working life on hard pictures and then it ended, in 1957, as working lives do. She did not recant the leaving. She paid in exile. The pulpit wanted a harlot. She was a woman who left.

She had already, before Italy, been a working mother. Pia was born in 1938, in Stockholm, while the Hollywood run was still an offer and not yet a climate. Petter Lindström was a husband and a doctor who expected a wife to remain a wife. The letters to Rossellini — she had seen Rome, Open City and Paisan and wanted that kind of picture — are the door she built for herself. Hollywood had hired honesty. She spent it on a director who made hard films in hard places. The pulpit called that betrayal. She called it work.

The town, after a few years, wanted the face again. Twentieth Century-Fox put her in Anastasia (1956), for Anatole Litvak, as a woman who may be a lost princess or a woman who has learned to play one. Yul Brynner is the man who coaches her. The second Oscar arrived — a forgiveness that was also a hit. She took it. She did not pretend it unsay the years in Italy. Indiscreet (1958) with Grant again, a comedy of adults. The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958). She married the Swedish theatrical producer Lars Schmidt in 1958; that marriage lasted until 1975 and was, by her account, a working peace. She worked in Paris, in London, on stages that did not require a senator’s permission. The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1964). Cactus Flower (1969). Then Murder on the Orient Express (1974), for Sidney Lumet, as Greta Ohlsson, a Swedish missionary with a small part she played as a whole life. The third Oscar, supporting, arrived. Three statues. A pulpit that had already used up its speech.

I have no regrets. I wouldn’t have lived my life the way I did if I was going to worry about what people were going to say.Ingrid Bergman

The turn is Italy, not Casablanca. A complete life of America’s honest face has to hold the pulpit, Pia’s distance, Isabella’s career, and a woman who chose a director and a life over a studio’s lease on her virtue. The Oscars after the exile are the town’s apology. She took them. She did not pretend they closed the kitchen.

Pia Lindström, Roberto, and the twins have had to share a mother who is a climate and a scandal. Friends from the European years describe a woman who was less Ilsa than a working mother on a set. In London, at the end, she was ill and still working. Autumn Sonata, for Ingmar Bergman — no relation except the name the columns enjoyed — is a late mother-daughter picture that knows the kitchen as well as the close-up.

The later years

Home, after the second Oscar, was not Hollywood. It was a life in Europe that had already been paid for: apartments and stages in Paris and London, summers in Sweden, a marriage to Schmidt that let her work without a studio’s lease on her weekends. She did not return as a penitent. She returned as a professional the town had discovered it still needed. The parts of those years are a woman choosing the guest list. A comedy with Grant. A missionary in China that is also a star vehicle. A small part on a train that she played as if it were the lead, which is how you win a third statue without asking the pulpit for a blessing.

She had also, in those European years, been a theatrical producer’s wife who still took a mark in London and Paris as if the Senate had never spoken. Schmidt’s company gave her Ibsen and O’Neill without a studio’s notes. She played Hedda and more. She kept the accent. She kept the height. She kept the refusal to sand the eyebrows into a type the pulpit would have found easier to forgive. The work was the forgiveness she actually wanted: a part, a rehearsal, a house that was not Holmby Hills and not Stromboli, a life that could hold children in two countries and a job in a third.

The stage held her when the pictures thinned. She played O’Neill and Ibsen and Shaw in houses that did not require a senator’s review. She wrote, with Alan Burgess, Ingrid Bergman: My Story (1980), a book that does not sand Italy and does not perform a confession for the American pulpit. Pia had grown up in the United States and had had to share a mother with a scandal and a climate; the distance between them is in the public record and in the book. Isabella became an actress and a face the cameras hired for a different kind of honesty. Roberto and Isotta made lives that were not Ilsa’s. The children are the remainder she chose. The official love is the remainder Hollywood chose. Both run.

In 1978 she went to Norway for Autumn Sonata. Ingmar Bergman, no relation, put her opposite Liv Ullmann as a concert pianist who has been a better artist than a mother. It is a kitchen picture. It is also a close-up picture. She is not Ilsa and not Paula. She is a woman who has worked and is now being asked to account for the work. The performance is the last great one, and it knows it. She had already, by then, been treated for breast cancer. She did not make the illness a tour. She made it a schedule she worked around. In 1982 she played Golda Meir in the television film A Woman Called Golda. She is unrecognizable and exact. The Emmy arrived after she was gone. She never stood to collect it.

She died on August 29, 1982, in London, on her birthday, of the cancer she had been working through. She was sixty-seven. The funeral service was in London; the grave is in Stockholm, beside her parents, a circle the first rooms had already drawn. The official obituaries led with Ilsa and the three Oscars. The better ones remembered the Senate floor, the years in Italy, the twins, and a woman who had said she had no regrets. Stockholm took her home. Hollywood took the piano. Isabella took the work of being a public daughter without becoming only a footnote to a scandal.

The last years were not a decline. They were a woman who had already written the private life the town had forbidden, and who spent the remainder taking the town’s apology without kneeling for it. She worked sick. She worked as Golda. She worked as a mother on Ingmar Bergman’s set. She kept a London address and a Swedish grave already chosen in the mind. Friends from those rooms describe a professional who still learned the lines and still cooked, a woman who had been Ilsa and was now a patient with a call sheet. She died on the date she had arrived, which is a symmetry the file did not ask for and which the columns could not resist. A complete last chapter holds the third Oscar, the kitchen in Autumn Sonata, the London rooms, the children, and a refusal to unsay Italy. The pulpit had wanted a harlot and then a penitent. It got a professional who kept the eyebrows and the life.

What she left on the table in those years is as specific as what she took. She did not return to a studio contract. She did not tour a confession. She did not ask Pia to perform a reconciliation for a camera. She took the parts that still had a person in them, and she took the cancer as a fact she would work around until she could not. Stockholm had the first rooms and the last earth. London had the last bed. Hollywood had the piano. Isabella had a career that is not a footnote. That division is the remainder. It is also the life she chose when she left for Stromboli and did not come back as the woman Selznick had rented.

After she was gone

Every honest close-up still pays her a tax. Every star who leaves a marriage for a director still walks through her pulpit. Casablanca still plays. The senator is a footnote. Isabella is a continuation. The birthday death is the last symmetry the file did not ask for.

She came out of Stockholm, kept her eyebrows, took a piano and a poison, left for Italy with a child on the way, paid in exile, took the town’s apology, and died on the day she had arrived. If you only remember Ilsa, you have the climate. If you remember the pulpit, Isabella, and August 29, you have her.

Portrait: Whitey Schafer · Public domain (PD-US, no notice; photographer d. 1951) · via Wikimedia Commons

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