Ingrid Bergman was born in 1915. While the decade of the 1930s was blessed with hugely talented actresses such as MARLENE DIETRICH, GRETA GARBO, and BETTE DAVIS, most of the top female stars of the period were highly stylized performers. Ingrid Bergman’s seemingly effortless naturalism was so new and fresh to American moviegoers that she quickly found a large and admiring audience. Her luminous beauty, intriguing accent, and considerable acting talent only added to her allure. In addition to making quite a number of memorable movies, Ingrid Bergman has the distinction of having inadvertently been one of the first Hollywood performers to help break down the studio contract system. She is also remembered as having been, at one time or another, Hollywood’s most loved and most hated female star.
Born in Sweden, Ingrid Bergman’s early life was filled with tragedy. Both of her parents died when she was still a young girl; she was raised by relatives. Thanks to her inheritance, however, she was able to pursue a course of study at the Royal Dramatic Theater in Stockholm. In 1934, she had a small role as a maid in her first film, Munkbrogreven. She continued to act in the Swedish cinema, eventually earning leading roles and making a total of 12 films in Europe during a five-year period. Meanwhile, DAVID O. SELZNICK’s trusted story editor, Katherine Brown, saw one of Bergman’s Swedish films, Intermezzo (1936), and insisted that the producer not only buy the rights to the story but sign the Swedish actress to star in the remake, as well.
Selznick wisely followed Brown’s suggestion and brought Ingrid Bergman to Hollywood on a one-picture deal. Intermezzo (1939), with LESLIE HOWARD as her costar, was an immediate hit and Selznick wasted no time in calling Bergman back from Sweden, signing her to a seven-year contract. After his success with GONE WITH THE WIND (1939), Selznick made relatively few films and simply didn’t have suitable projects for Ingrid Bergman. Yet, she soon became a gold mine for the producer, who loaned her out to a succession of studios for huge sums of money—but not right away. After a stint on Broadway, she starred in three successful 1941 films before she made the leap to superstardom, including Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Ingrid Bergman had desperately wanted to play the lead role of Maria in the Paramount production of Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls. Gary Cooper was already cast, and she was terribly disappointed when an actress named Vera Zorina won the part instead. It was unclear what movie she would star in next until HEDY LAMARR turned down the role of Ilsa Lund in Casablanca (1942). The rest, as they say, is history. Playing opposite HUMPHREY BOGART, she injected her soulfulness into one of the greatest love stories the movies have ever produced. The film was a smash hit, establishing Bogart as a romantic leading man and Ingrid Bergman as a sexy, vulnerable star with enormous box-office appeal.
The combination of Casablanca’s success and Vera Zorina’s inability to carry her role in For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943) led to a surprise turnaround. Zorina was fired, and Ingrid Bergman was suddenly pursued for the role that she had so vigorously sought nearly a year earlier. The actress was superb in the film, and the movie was yet another major boxoffice hit.
Ironically, just as she was not the first choice for her previous two box-office triumphs, Ingrid Bergman’s next two winners also fell to her by default. Gaslight (1944) had been originally intended for IRENE DUNNE and later for Hedy Lamarr, but Ingrid Bergman not only won the role; she also won her first Oscar as Best Actress for her performance as a woman nearly driven insane by her husband (CHARLES BOYER). It was VIVIEN LEIGH who turned down Saratoga Trunk (1945), giving Ingrid Bergman the opportunity to star in yet another hit film. She was the hottest female star in Hollywood. Every film she graced was a box-office bonanza, including the last three she made under contract to Selznick: Spellbound (1945), The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945), and Notorious (1946). Ironically, among all her hit films after Intermezzo, only the two Hitchcock films, Spellbound and Notorious, were Selznick productions. When the producer tried to re-sign her for another seven years (at considerably better terms than her first contract), Ingrid Bergman turned him down, choosing instead to make her own deals as a freelance star. Her ability to free herself of studio domination was an early blow against the studio contract system. Unfortunately, her contractual freedom didn’t do her very much good.
A series of poor film choices, such as Arch of Triumph (1948), Joan of Arc (1948), and a rare Hitchcock dud, Under Capricorn (1949), sent her stock spiraling downward. Her descent, however, wasn’t fatal until she made Stromboli (1950) for Italian film director Roberto Rossellini. Though Ingrid Bergman was married to Dr. Peter Lindstrom and had a child by him (Pia Lindstrom, a onetime New York TV performing arts critic), she fell in love with Rossellini, had a baby by him, and became a pariah in America virtually overnight. She was even denounced on the floor of the U.S. Senate, where she was called “Hollywood’s apostle of degradation.” The public flames of indignation and outrage over her infidelity were fanned by the fact that her image had been particularly pure and wholesome. After all, she had played a nun in The Bells of St. Mary’s and a saint in Joan of Arc. It didn’t matter that she quickly divorced Lindstrom and married Rossellini. The damage was done.
Not only Ingrid Bergman was persona non grata in America, but also her films. Stromboli had limited bookings and so did the subsequent five movies she made in collaboration with her new husband. Despite the birth of two more children (twins), her marriage to Rossellini collapsed, and it appeared as if the same was true of her film career. Jean Renoir tried to help her by giving her the lead in his film Paris Does Strange Things (1956). But the real turnaround occurred when Twentieth Century–Fox took a chance and hired her to star in Anastasia (1957). Not only was the film a huge hit—her first since Notorious more than a decade earlier—but she even won her second Oscar for Best Actress in the bargain.
Ingrid Bergman’s marriage to Rossellini was annulled in 1958, and the actress eventually married theatrical producer Lars Schmidt. But for film fans, the big news was that the love affair between America and Ingrid Bergman was on again. In fact, over the ensuing decades, despite relatively few significant films, the actress became even more adored and admired by her fans than ever before, perhaps because she survived the scandal with so much dignity.
She enjoyed a short period of good work in fine films such as Indiscreet (1957) and The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958), but by the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, there were relatively few good roles for her. It wasn’t until she joined the all-star cast of Murder on the Orient Express (1974) that she had a solid, meaty role, and she won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her efforts.
Perhaps the best performance of her later years was given in her very last film, Autumn Sonata (1978), in which her life came full circle. It was made by Swedish director Ingmar Bergman and concerned the coming to terms of a dying concert pianist with her estranged daughter. Ingrid Bergman’s haunting, autobiographical performance, for which she was nominated for yet another Academy Award as Best Actress, was a fitting end to her long and illustrious career. She died of cancer in 1982.
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