Notorious : the life of Ingrid Bergman

468 Pages·2005·6.51 MB·English

by  Bergman

Notorious
The Life of Ingrid
Bergman
Donald Spoto
Copyright © 1997, Donald Spoto
with loving gratitude to
Teresa Wright
Tippi Hedren
Robert Anderson
All that's less cannot impart
Such blessedness upon thine art
As steadfast friends
notorious:
from the Latin notus (known): famous or celebrated; secondarily, known for
something not generally approved
–The Oxford English Dictionary
Contents
Acknowledgments
1. 1915–1929
2. 1929–1936
3. 1936–1938
4. 1939
5. 1940
6. 1941
7. 1942
8. 1943
9. 1944
10. 1945
11. 1946–1947
12. 1948
13. 1949
14. 1950
15. 1951–1956
16. 1957–1964
17. 1965–1970
18. 1971–1975
19. 1976–1979
20. 1980–1982
Notes
Acknowledgments
M
Y FIRST ACKNOWLEDGMENT IS TO INGRID BERGMAN, WHOM I knew during the
last seven years of her life. Although we had met briefly before the spring of
1975, it was then that she agreed to a series of taped interviews when I was
preparing the manuscript of my first book, The Art of Alfred Hitchcock. As it
happened, our conversations were not limited to her work with Hitchcock; she
was, I thought, astonishingly forthcoming on a wide variety of other matters—as
she was during our subsequent meetings in other cities, on various social and
professional occasions.
But I had no thought of writing a biography of her. More than a decade after
her death, my tapes of our conversations were squirreled away and my notes
duly filed—forever, I thought. But the more I spoke to those who knew and
worked with her, the clearer it became that there was a remarkable life story to
be told. And so I set to work.
Ingrid Bergman's first husband, Petter A. Lindstrom, M.D., welcomed me
to his home and granted an extended interview. Subsequently, he allowed me
unrestricted access and the privilege of citing more than two thousand pages of
letters, private papers and documents that illuminated as never before the
contours of Bergman's early life and the dozen years of their marriage. I am very
grateful for this extraordinary cooperation.
Pia Lindstrom, the daughter of Ingrid and Petter, is a much admired media
journalist and arts critic. We first met when my book The Dark Side of Genius:
The Life of Alfred Hitchcock was published in 1983; I was her guest on a New
York television show. Then and later, she impressed me with her keen insights
about the time when, not yet a teenager, she was at the center of a worldwide
media frenzy. Pia Lindstrom's assistance as I prepared this biography of her
mother is everywhere evident, and I thank her for her perception and her
confidence.
I never had the opportunity to meet Ingrid's second husband, Roberto
Rossellini, who died in 1977. But Lars Schmidt, her third husband, was most
forthcoming from the first stages of my work. He welcomed me to Dannholmen,
the island home he shared with Ingrid; to Choisel, their residence in the French
countryside; and to his offices in Paris. I must also thank Yanne Noorup, who
now shares his life, for her warmth and hospitality.
VERY EARLY IN MY RESEARCH, I WAS GIVEN IMPORTANT ASSISTANCE BY W. H.
Dietrich. He is better known simply by his surname, and is so cited in this book:
Dietrich has thus signed canvases that have made him a highly respected artist
whose work has duly won him worldwide respect. Like Ingrid, he emigrated
from Sweden to Hollywood, and during several conversations he shared
important details of that time, of his friendship with Ingrid and Petter Lindstrom,
of Sweden in the 1930s and of Hollywood in the 1940s (when he was an artist at
Paramount). He also allowed me to read and draw on his magnificent memoirs,
one of his current works in progress. Dietrich and his wife, Patty, welcomed me
on several occasions to their home in the California desert, and I am grateful for
all they have contributed, by word and affection, to my life and my work. Of
another member of that family, Greg Dietrich, more later.
Åke Sandler, son of Sweden's former prime minister, is a historian,
professor and writer who also knew the Lindstroms well. From the first weeks of
my work, he provided crucial materials and answered difficult questions
completely and candidly. He and his wife, Jane, never ceased to support and
encourage this project.
Obviously, a mountain of important material existed only in Swedish—until
I was fortunate to be introduced to the ideal translator, Gunvor Dollis. She not
only found the right words to render a difficult language into comprehensible
English, she also found the right tone for the special cadences of poetry, drama,
reviews, letters and essays. With warmth, alacrity, wit and a keen sense of time
and place, she provided me with inestimable literary support.
For any modern biography, interviews are of course extremely important.
The following people gave gladly and generously of their time, detailing the fine
points of their various relationships with Ingrid. This book would be much the
poorer without the contributions of:
Larry Adler, Robert Anderson, Pierre Barillet, Kate Barrett, Laurinda
Barrett, the late Katharine (Kay) Brown, Gene Corman, the Baron Göran von
Essen, Sir John Gielgud, O.M., Guy Green, Signe Hasso, Arthur Hill, Dame
Wendy Hiller, the late Sir Alfred Hitchcock, Griffith James, Margaret Johnstone,
Ted Kotcheff, Arthur Laurents, Roger Lobb, Tanya Lopert, Sidney Lumet, Lasse
Lundberg, Elliot Martin, Gregory Peck, Jenia Reissar, the late Ann Todd, Paavo
Turtiainen, Stephen Weiss, Teresa Wright.
For various other assistances necessary to fill in important elements in
Ingrid Bergman's life, I must acknowledge the kind help of Graham Waring,
M.D., Rick Carl, Roland Oberlin, Gene Feldman and Suzette Winter.
At THE DEPARTMENT OF CULTURAL AFFAIRS OF THE SWEDISH INFORMATION
Service, New York City, important introductions to colleagues in Sweden came
from Elisabeth Halvarsson-Stapen.
My work in Stockholm would not have been possible without the gracious
and generous help of many.
At Svensk Filmindustri (the Swedish Film Institute), I worked with the help
of Margareta Nordström, Head of Documentation; Ann-Kristin Westerberg,
Head of the Copyright Department; Elisabet Helge, Head of the Stills
Department; Maria Stenmark, Librarian; and Catharina Stackelberg, in the
Production Department.
In the Stockholm City Archives, Göran Biomberg provided important
documentation and smoothed the way so that I could access civic and family
records.
In the Swedish National Archives, Stockholm, similar assistance was
provided by Toni Fridh.
School syllabi, grade records and genealogies of Sweden are housed with
meticulous care in the Royal National Library, Stockholm. The staff there
located for me many precious documents and made copies available on short
notice.
Ingrid Bergman attended the Royal Dramatic Theater School, Stockholm,