Ingrid Bergman

by Grace Carter

  Ingrid was also mired in a complicated legal mess: “I was a married Swedish citizen hoping to divorce and marry an Italian who had had his marriage annulled, and my husband was now an American citizen living in California,” she said later. “I suppose lawyers were invented for such complications.”

  In the eyes of the Swedish government, Ingrid was still married to Lindstrom because – though her quickie divorce was finally granted by the Mexican court on February 9, a week after Robertino was born – it did not recognize a proxy divorce in a foreign country any more than the United States did. And Italy wouldn’t allow a civil marriage unless Ingrid got a Swedish divorce. Attempting to break the stalemate, Ingrid turned again to Mexico, which allowed marriages by proxy just as it did divorces.

  A plan was hatched: Their good friend Marcello Girosi, a film producer in Rome, flew to Mexico to be Ingrid’s proxy and Rossellini hired a lawyer to represent him. That created a surreal scene of one man saying to the other, “I take you, Ingrid Bergman, as my lawful wedded wife,” and then the other saying, “And I take you, Roberto Rossellini, as my lawful wedded husband.”

  On the day of the wedding, Girosi phoned Ingrid to give her the exact time of the Mexican court ceremony so she and Rossellini could exchange vows in Italy, thousands of miles away, at precisely the same moment. Ingrid picked out a small church in Rome and invited friends to come to their home afterward – without telling them that it would be an impromptu wedding reception.

  Rossellini threw a wrench into the plan by being delayed at his studio, as usual, and the church had closed by the time he arrived. But they found another venue – “a very sweet, tiny church,” Ingrid recalled – where they knelt down, exchanged gold rings, and pledged everlasting love while holding hands. Then they went home to tell their surprised-but-happy friends and drank champagne together. Ingrid later joked that, after all the trouble they went to to get married, it was a shame they were not able to attend their own wedding.

  Days after they took their vows, the newlyweds drove forty miles northward to the municipality of Santa Marinella where Rossellini had bought a house by the sea. He refused to give up their apartment in Rome and supported his servants and his race cars by selling foreign rights to earlier films and exhausting the advance he had received for his movie about St. Francis. He also borrowed heavily and ignored bills. In her memoir, Ingrid suggests Rossellini learned at an early age how to be reckless with money by his wealthy architect father, Giuseppe “Beppino” Rossellini. Once, when Roberto arrived home in a taxi with no money – from Naples, 150 miles away – Beppino didn’t scold him; he simply laughed and paid the driver.

  In their villa, Ingrid spent her summer supervising landscapers and haggling for fish at the local market. Their cool, white home on seven acres had eight rooms - including an editing studio for Rossellini - and a seafront veranda. Outside was a private beach and a garden with flowers, palms, and pines. “I didn’t have all that much to do,” Ingrid recalled later, “for the household went on by itself because the place was full of servants.”

  Ingrid wanted to go back to work that summer – partly because they desperately needed the money – but, predictably, Rossellini wanted her to make movies only with him. But he was not ready to make another film with Ingrid just yet since he was still consumed with Flowers of St. Francis. People couldn’t believe he was letting the iconic actress retire from films. “Are you crazy?” one friend asked him. “You’re like a man with a big beefsteak in front of you and you’ve lost your teeth. But you can raise all the money in the world if you and Ingrid work together.”

  They would work together again before long – but not until Rossellini’s last two films had run their course. Late in the summer of 1950, the famous couple made an appearance at the Venice Film Festival, where Stromboli had been nominated for an award and Flowers of St. Francis was being shown for the first time. Both films were enthusiastically received. The packed audience even broke out with spontaneous applause in the middle of certain scenes of St. Francis.

  In typical Rossellini fashion, Flowers of St. Francis defied convention. It was not a biopic but rather a series of episodes from the life of Francis that had no plot or character development. Critics gave it poor reviews, faulting the film for its lack of realism – ironic for a film by a leading pioneer of neo-realism – and it earned less than $13,000 in its initial release in Italy. But as with other Rossellini films, appreciation for Flowers of St. Francis grew with time. The noted critic Andrew Sarris ranked it eighth on his ten-best film list, and François Truffaut called it “the most beautiful film in the world.” Rossellini later said it was his favorite of all his films.

  On November 1, 1950, Ingrid finally got some resolution in her personal life. After months of battles over finances and custody, Lindstrom was finally granted a divorce from Ingrid by the Superior Court of Los Angeles. To speed things along and to improve her chances of seeing Pia, Ingrid agreed to give him almost anything he asked for, including the house in Benedict Canyon. Lindstrom retained custody of Pia, who would be allowed to see her mother when Ingrid visited the United States but never in Italy.

  By now, Ingrid desperately wanted to see her daughter. Lindstrom kept putting her off, saying he could not take time away from his medical practice. There was also a dispute about the meeting place. He wanted it to be Sweden, but Ingrid objected, saying she did not want to face his family in Stode. Finally, in July 1951, the three managed to meet in London. The plan was for Ingrid to spend a week with Pia and then Lindstrom would take their daughter to Sweden by himself.

  Things did not go smoothly. “The visit,” Ingrid’s memoir said, “was doomed from the outset.”

  Lindstrom insisted that the meeting be kept secret from the press, not an easy task. Fortunately, she got help from good friends - Sydney Bernstein, who had produced Under Capricorn, and a power couple she had met in Italy, the director David Lean (Lawrence of Arabia and Dr. Zhivago) and his wife, the actress Ann Todd (Hitchcock’s The Paradine Case). Ingrid took a train from Rome to a ferryboat in France, then crossed the English Channel. She sat “all muffled up in a private cabin,” as she put it, and the boat captain honored her request to keep her presence secret. Bernstein met her in Dover and drove her to Lean and Todd’s home in Ilchester Place, London.

  Soon, Lindstrom arrived with Pia. Finally, mother and daughter were reunited. “It was two years since we had seen each other, and we were both a little shy, but we were both very happy,” Ingrid recalled later. “But that happiness did not last very long.”

  On their first evening, the plan was for everyone to have dinner at the Lean residence, where Ingrid and Pia would share a bedroom. But the tension was palpable, and the hosts clearly did not want the intrusive Lindstrom spoiling the precious time Ingrid would have with her daughter. After dinner, they expected Lindstrom to leave. But he had other ideas.

  “Dr. Lindstrom asked me whether there was a bedroom for him since he was not going to let Pia sleep alone with Mrs. Rossellini,” Lean wrote in an affidavit for a visitation-rights hearing in California the following year. “I advised Dr. Lindstrom that we did not have a bedroom for him, and I asked him if there was anything that Mrs. Lean and I could do that would set his mind at rest and permit him to leave Pia with Mrs. Rossellini in our house. Dr. Lindstrom told me that his chief worry was that if he left the house he might not be admitted again. He explained to me that a situation could be created by protracted litigation in England whereby he could be deprived temporarily of Pia’s custody while the litigation was in progress.”

  Lean offered Lindstrom the key to the front door if he would leave. Lindstrom agreed and departed with the key. Eventually, everyone went to bed. At seven o’clock in the morning, the Leans’ cook found Lindstrom sitting in a hallway with a view of the stairs leading up to the bedrooms and the front door. About a half-hour later, Lean came downstairs and asked Lindstrom if he would like to come into the sitting room for breakfast. Lindstrom declined,
saying he preferred to remain in the hall.

  “Petter was not feeling charitable toward Ingrid or to any of her friends,” Lean wrote - a clear understatement. “He felt that there was a very real risk of Pia’s being spirited off to Italy.”

  When Ann Todd tried to arrange for Ingrid to take Pia to see the film Alice in Wonderland, Lindstrom agreed only if they were accompanied by Todd, her daughter, her secretary, and a friend of Pia’s who had just arrived in London. Todd also had to promise Lindstrom there would be no “tricks.”

  There were none. When the group returned from seeing Alice in Wonderland, Lindstrom arrived with a taxi to take Pia away. Ingrid asked if she could have some time alone with her daughter. “All right,” he replied, “we’ll drive out to Sydney Bernstein’s place in the country; you can be alone with her there.”

  At the Bernstein’s home, Ingrid recalled later, “Sydney was there with his wife and friends and obviously they knew something was up, but they were very kind and left us alone.” Pia went into a room with a television. “You can go into the television room and be alone with Pia,” Lindstrom told Ingrid, “and I’ll be in this room next door.”

  “But Pia will find this so very strange,” Ingrid protested. She wanted to keep things as natural and relaxed as possible, which was clearly not happening on this trip.

  But Lindstrom insisted, so Ingrid and Pia sat there watching television. Finally, Ingrid went into the next room and said, “It’s so silly, you sitting in here.” A few minutes later, Lindstrom came in and said, “I’m going to take Pia away with me. Say goodbye to her. I’ve decided we’re leaving.”

  Ingrid was shocked. They had only spent three days together. “But I was promised a week with her,” she said. “One week after two years, that’s not much.”

  “Well, I’ve changed my mind,” Lindstrom said.

  They went into the hallway so Pia could not hear their argument. Ingrid pleaded for more time, but Lindstrom refused, saying he was taking her to Sweden, where they should have met in the first place. Then Ingrid began to cry, which upset her even more because she didn’t want to weep in front of her daughter. Lindstrom responded by accusing Ingrid of ruining his life: He had been on the brink of being offered a professorship in neurosurgery and had been turned down by the dean because of the scandal. He bitterly listed all the wonderful things he had done for Ingrid and all the terrible things she had done to him. “Please stop,” she cried, “Please let’s not upset Pia.”

  The three drove back to London and stayed in two separate hotels, Ingrid by herself. “I remember the last time I saw Pia,” Ingrid said later. “She was trying to be so nice and light as if nothing had happened, trying to cover up what she really felt, and I was trying to cover up what I really felt.”

  Ingrid kissed her and said, “We’ll meet again soon.” It was an extraordinarily painful moment. “And I remember staring at her, thinking it would be soon, but it was six long years before we did meet again.”

  Over the next few months, Pia wrote letters to her mother, some of which were full of news - about her Christmas party at school and the new dress she bought – while others were accusatory. Pia had read articles that made it seem the whole affair was her father’s fault when, after all, it was her mother who left the family. “Think of what they say in school,” she wrote.

  Since working had always been the best salve for Ingrid’s emotional wounds, she realized that it was time to un-retire. With the painful summer visit with Pia behind her, she began work on her next film with Rossellini, called Europa 51. Though her life may have seemed complicated, it was about to become even more so. That fall, Ingrid learned that she was pregnant again.

  Over the course of Ingrid’s adult life, her love affairs were often deeply intertwined with the creative process whether she was with Robert Capa, Victor Fleming, or any of the leading men she had romances with while making movies. (Her husband Petter Lindstrom was a notable exception, which may explain why the marriage was troubled from the beginning.) In her partnership with Roberto Rossellini, however, this volatile intermingling of passions found its most extreme expression, with romance, artistic creation, and human procreation occurring simultaneously.

  So it was that in the fall of 1951, Ingrid discovered she was expecting again as she and Rossellini worked on their next film together. The director had pulled together enough funds - contributed mostly by producers Carlo Ponti and Dino de Laurentis - to begin making Europa ‘51 (entitled The Greatest Love in some countries), a film that since the previous Christmas he had been promising Ingrid she could star in.

  Ingrid often said she only wanted to play characters she could relate to, making it hard to avoid the conclusion that she saw much of her own life in the plight of the film’s Irene Girard, a woman traumatized by her neglect of her child. With her beloved Pia far away, Ingrid had lots of personal material to use in developing her characterization of a woman whose son feels so abandoned that he attempts suicide and survives – then dies soon afterward from his injuries. To overcome her grief and guilt, Irene begins helping poor and destitute people, becoming so deeply involved in their lives that her husband commits her to a mental institution, elevating her to the status of a persecuted saint in the eyes of the wretched souls she had devoted her life to.

  Rossellini, who co-wrote the screenplay, was again inspired by the life of St. Francis, creating this story by imagining what would happen if a person of the holy man’s character existed in post-war Italy. He also could draw on some first-hand experience with mental institutions. At the age of twenty, Rossellini’s parents had committed him to a psychiatric hospital outside Naples, explaining only – and mysteriously – that he needed a diversion from a dangerous obsession. That could have referred to any number of vices the young man had at the time, including drugs, a fixation on objectionable women, and driving his sports cars too fast.

  But things did not go well when filming for Europa ‘51 began in October in Rome, and Ingrid was unhappy from the start. Rossellini insisted she ad lib her dialogue, something she was unaccustomed to doing. An unseasonable heat wave led the director to film the movie at night, making it difficult for a groggy Ingrid to spend time with Robertino during the day. Already wracked with guilt about neglecting Pia, she did not want to do the same thing to her newborn son.

  In the end, Ingrid somehow managed to deliver her usual outstanding performance, winning the 1953 Silver Ribbon award from the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists while Bosley Crowther in The New York Times praised “her eternally interesting face.” Rossellini, meanwhile, was nominated for the Golden Lion award at the 1952 Venice Film Festival, but some felt the film’s religious, social, and political themes made the movie stilted and confusing. Though Italian moviegoers loved it and the film was a commercial success there, Rossellini had to sell his stake in it to pay his skyrocketing debts.

  After two years with Rossellini, Ingrid was realizing that not only were her acting methods incompatible with his haphazard directorial style, but he had taken control of her professional life just as Lindstrom had done. Now in her mid-thirties, her once-soaring career had come to a standstill, with her jealous and often irrational husband still refusing to let her work with other directors.

  Still, Ingrid’s commitment to her marriage was strong, as was her need to be a good mother. After years of living a celebrity lifestyle and devoting herself to her work, she was now deeply entrenched in a new phase of her life as an occasional actress and full-time homemaker and mother. Her Santa Marinella home was filled not only with family and servants, but six dogs, free-roaming chickens, doves, and various strays that came and went. (In a 1953 Italian film anthology called Siamo Donne, or We, the Women, the segment about Ingrid, directed by Rossellini, focused on her vendetta that summer against a neighbor’s mischievous hen who was destroying her beautiful roses.)

  For Ingrid, balancing work and family life meant racing to finish Europa ‘51 before her swelling belly became notice
ably large – and it was growing at a prodigious pace. After having given birth to two children already, she could not understand why she “looked like an elephant,” as she put it later.

  So she went to her doctor to be x-rayed. When the doctor emerged wearing an enormous grin, she could tell nothing was wrong. In fact, Ingrid already had an inkling of what was happening. “How many?” she asked.

  “Two,” the doctor replied, explaining that he had seen four feet and four hands.

  “I just couldn’t wait to get home,” Ingrid recalled. “I telephoned from the hospital and told Roberto. And he telephoned all Rome. He was so proud of what he had done - two at a time. My first reaction was worry. How in the world did you take care of two babies at the same time?”

  Ingrid’s belly grew so large that she couldn’t sleep or fit into even large maternity outfits. She spent a month in the hospital, being fed intravenously, wearing a big robe, and exercising on the roof. She would wave and laugh at the photographers outside the hospital. “When?” they called to her. “I hope soon,” she replied, “because I’m tired of this.”

  The babies did not come soon, which made Ingrid worried. Twins are usually born before the normal due date, and hers had already blown past that deadline. When the doctors recommended inducing birth, Ingrid resisted on the grounds that it was unnatural. “All the stars, the astrological signs, the moon, and the constellations will be confused,” she said. “Your birthday is supposed to have some meaning in the scheme of things, isn’t it? Their horoscopes will never be right if we decide what day they come.”