Ingrid Bergman's Hollywood Career Ended In Scandal
In 1949 actor Ingrid Bergman was Hollywood’s sweetheart. She'd starred in classics such as Casablanca, Spellbound, Notorious, The Bells of St. Mary's, and Joan of Arc, plus she had an Oscar for Gaslight. The Swedish star was a hot property, and the only way was up. But after shooting Stromboli with Italian filmmaker Roberto Rossellini, the star’s fortunes changed — and the scandal caused her to flee America.
Bergman was "the ideal of American womanhood"
Part of the problem was that Bergman had a squeaky-clean image on the screen. She played a nun in The Bells Of St Mary's, a wronged wife in Gaslight, and even had three separate goes at playing Joan of Arc.
Bergman was popular from the moment U.S. audiences laid eyes on her in the English-language remake of Intermezzo in 1939. Her popularity grew so much that people saw her as “the ideal of American womanhood,” according to the St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture.
The making of a movie star
Mega-producer David O. Selznick put a lot of effort into making Bergman his new star player. For Intermezzo, for instance, he micro-managed the shooting to make sure the filmmakers caught her in exactly the right light.
In one eye-opening memo, Selznick warned the filmmakers, “I think the success of Intermezzo is to an unusual extent dependent upon how beautifully we can photograph Miss Bergman. Every beautiful shot of her is a great deal of money added to the returns on the picture.”
She had the perfect on-screen image
Fortunately for Selznick, Bergman’s astonishing beauty and obvious acting talent proved a combination that audiences simply couldn’t resist. The star’s traditional marriage to then-dentist Petter Lindström was also seen as a powerful beacon of female morality.
After all, honest, faithful wives and good mothers with upstanding values were the order of the day, and Bergman’s persona seemed to embody those attitudes. Bergman had just given birth to her daughter Pia when she arrived in Hollywood.
All was not what it seemed
By the time Bergman flew off to Italy to make Stromboli in 1949, she’d won over the American public and American critics. She already had that Oscar for Gaslight, but she also had three other Best Actress nominations to her name.
Notorious, The Bells of St. Mary's, and For Whom the Bell Tolls were pretty sizable hits at the box office as well. In short, it seemed that Bergman had everything going for her. But Bergman’s success belied the tragedy of her early life.
She was “living with an ache”
Born in August 1915 in the Swedish capital of Stockholm, the little girl never really got to know her mother, Friedel Henrietta Augusta Louise. Sadly, when her daughter was just two, Friedel passed away — and Bergman was never the same again.
She was too young to understand what was happening at the time, of course. Yet Bergman later said she was “living with an ache.” She said this ache “began so early and was so constant, [she] was not aware of it.”
It seemed like she was cursed
Bergman’s father, Justus, was an artist and the owner of a photography shop. He encouraged the future star to become an opera singer. But he also wouldn’t live to see his daughter’s success.
Justus passed away when Bergman was 13 years old. Now an orphan, the young girl went to live with her aunt Ellen, who then also died of a heart attack only six months after Bergman moved in.
Finding herself in the movies
From there, Bergman went to live with her uncle Otto and his family. It seems she felt able to settle here. She attended private school, and it was there that she discovered acting. Starring in school productions, she also got her first job on a movie set as an extra.
The future star later wrote that walking onto the studio “felt like walking on holy ground.” She spent a year at Stockholm’s Royal Dramatic Theater School and finally got her first speaking role in a movie in 1935’s The Count of the Old Town.
A sign of things to come
That same year, Bergman dropped out of theater school to become a full-time movie actor. The decision was clearly a good one, as she made three more films in 1935 alone. But it was the following year that she appeared in the movie that would change her life forever.
Intermezzo — the 1936 Swedish original — told the story of a world-renowned violinist who begins an affair with the piano teacher instructing his daughter. She ends their relationship after guilt persuades her that the man belongs with his family.
She was not like the other movie stars
While Intermezzo wasn’t a commercial success, Bergman’s portrayal of the piano teacher eventually put her on the radar of one very important Hollywood producer. Although at first, David O. Selznick was not impressed with what he saw.
In a Bergman biography, Selznick's issues were summed up as: "She didn't speak English, she was too tall, her name sounded too German, and her eyebrows were too thick." But Bergman didn't change herself — or her name — to make it in Hollywood.
An ingenious marketing ploy
Selznick signed her to a contract, with the first movie they made together being a U.S. version of Intermezzo. Bergman became a star overnight, with the U.S. version of Intermezzo becoming a hit. And Selznick’s plan to introduce Bergman to the American market was genius.
According to Ransom Center Magazine, the producer asked his colleagues “to withhold all publicity on the actress” so that audiences there could “discover her for themselves.” She would be, according to Selznick, the opposite of the exotic Greta Garbo or Marlene Dietrich.
She fought typecasting
Selznick’s plan worked, and Bergman bagged a number of roles in movies such as June Night and Rage in Heaven. In 1941 she turned her talents to a far meatier role after being offered the part of Dr Jekyll’s fiancée in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
But following the appointment, the Swedish star did something rather unusual for the time. Rather than play yet another romantic role, Bergman decided that the part of barmaid Ivy Pearson suited her better.
Her talent was bigger than her roles
The only problem was that the role already had an actress assigned to it: Lana Turner. But Bergman somehow persuaded the studio to allow the women to switch roles. This swap allowed both actors to play against their usual on-screen personas.
The New York Times felt the switch was a good one, declaring in its review that "the young Swedish actress proves again that a shining talent can sometimes lift itself above an impossibly written role."
Here's looking at you, kid
Yet the role of Ivy Pearson in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde proved an outlier in Bergman’s career trajectory, for a while at least. In 1942 she played arguably her most iconic romantic role: Ilsa Lund in the Hollywood classic Casablanca.
The Swedish star never thought the movie was one of her best performances, but audiences loved it, as did the Academy. The movie earned eight nominations, winning in three categories, including Outstanding Motion Picture and Best Director.
Bergman was never confident of her ability
When Bergman took home the Oscar for her portrayal of Paula Alquist Anton in Gaslight in 1944, she revealed some of the perfectionism she was known for on set. “I hope that in the future, I'll be worthy of [the award],” she said in her speech.
It was this attitude that had led Bergman to say to a director early in her career, “I didn’t look very good, did I? I think if I did some more, I could be better later.” Everyone else could see how good she was, though.
Winning people's hearts and minds
In 1945 Bergman was again nominated for the Best Actress Oscar for her performance in The Bells of St. Mary’s, but she was beaten by Joan Crawford. Undeterred, the Swedish actress continued to put in fabulous performances — including for director Alfred Hitchcock.
Her first Hitchcock movie, 1945’s Spellbound, cast her opposite Gregory Peck. The second was 1946's Notorious with Cary Grant, and it's considered by many to be one of Bergman’s finest performances. Bergman’s screen and stage persona, then, was well and truly fixed in the minds of the public.
A stable marriage
Behind the cameras, her personal life had flourished too. Bergman married fellow Swede Petter Aron Lindström in 1937, with the couple welcoming their daughter, Friedel Pia Lindström, the following year. She was only 21 years old at the time.
In a 1943 issue of Life magazine, Lindström was described as a "stable character" who "regards himself as the undisputed head of the family, an idea that Ingrid accepts cheerfully." The magazine said he had a "professional dislike for being associated with the tinseled glamor of Hollywood."
Work and marriage were kept separate
After Bergman’s move to Hollywood, Lindström and the couple’s daughter relocated to New York in 1941. Lindström studied surgery and medicine; Bergman would visit between making movies. Her husband insisted that Bergman’s Hollywood career not intrude on their personal life.
Life also reported that Bergman's career saw her earning "at least $60,000 a year." Yet Bergman insisted, "I am an actress, and I am interested in acting, not in making money." But she did say she wanted to act until she became a grandmother — and perhaps that was a problem.
She was different behind closed doors
Lindström’s training later took him to San Francisco, California. Yet even though the couple were now living in the same state, their marriage was by no means perfect. The public didn't know at the time that Bergman indulged in extramarital affairs.
Bergman's two-time co-star Gary Cooper once said, "No one loved me more than Ingrid Bergman, but the day after filming concluded, I couldn't even get her on the phone." Many believed they had an affair.
There were many affairs
Bergman started a relationship with the director Victor Fleming, the director of Joan of Arc. She also committed adulted with the war photographer Robert Capa and the musician Larry Adler. Spencer Tracy and Gregory Peck might have been her lovers, too.
Lindström found out about the affairs during their marriage. He was later asked why he didn't just divorce his movie-star wife. He replied, "I lived with that because of her income."
The most scandalous affair of her
The straw that broke the camel's back came in 1949. Bergman felt passionately about a movie called Paisa by director Roberto Rossellini. So much so that she wrote Rossellini a letter — and that was the beginning of the end of her marriage.
The letter read, "If you need a Swedish actress who speaks English very well, who has not forgotten her German, who is not very understandable in French, and who in Italian knows only 'ti amo,' I am ready to come and make a film with you."
Rossellini couldn't wait
Rossellini replied at first with a brief telegram, “I just received with great emotion your letter, which happens to arrive on the anniversary of my birthday as the most precious gift. It is absolutely true that I dreamed to make a film with you...”
He later responded with the outline of a movie idea and the words, “I must indeed make you aware of the extraordinary excitement which the mere prospect of having the possibility to work with you, procures me... Could you possibly come to Europe?”
The backlash was emphatic
That outline would become the first film he made with Bergman: Stromboli. Filmed on location in Italy, it tells the story of a Lithuanian woman’s emigration to a desolate Italian island. But the film itself took a backseat to the behind-the-scenes drama.
Bergman and Rossellini began an affair — even though they were both still married to their spouses. Once word of their relationship got out, the Swedish star faced a backlash so strong that it took years for her to recover.
There were vicious attacks
As a result of the affair, Bergman gave birth to a son, Renato Roberto Ranaldo Giusto Giuseppe (“Robin”) Rossellini, who was born in February 1950. He came into the world just weeks prior to the release of Stromboli. The American public was shocked.
A number of women’s clubs, lawmakers, and religious groups called for the film to be banned because it would “glorify adultery.” The attacks soon became personal and, even more dramatically, political.
“Out of Ingrid Bergman’s ashes will grow a better Hollywood”
Colorado's Edwin C. Johnson stood on the floor of the Senate and publicly attacked the actress, calling her “a powerful influence for evil.” He also called Rossellini “an infamous Nazi collaborator” and said, “Out of Ingrid Bergman’s ashes will grow a better Hollywood.”
The damage didn’t end there, either. As a result of the uproar, chat-show legend Ed Sullivan refused to have the Oscar-winner on his show to promote the movie. The scandal attracted so much attention that papers reported on it all over the world.
Cast aside
Bergman apparently begged Lindström for a divorce and, when he refused, got a Mexican divorce by proxy. "The trouble is I don't feel sinful," she wrote in a letter. "I'm unhappy so that it almost breaks my heart for what Pia must go through, and also Petter, though he could have helped and finished this thing earlier."
She lost custody of her daughter, and even Bergman and Rossellini’s marriage in 1950 did little to change public perceptions of the saint-turned-sinner. The Oscar-winner’s Hollywood career then all but disappeared as a result.
Chased out of America
Bergman moved to Italy and lived with her new husband and son. Stromboli was a critical and commercial bomb, but the actress worked with her husband on four other European releases between 1950 and 1955. Along the way, she gave birth to twin girls, Isotta and Isabella. Isabella became a successful actor in her own right in later years.
In 2015 Isabella told Reuters, “She was chased out of America because they felt that foreigners and stars, we come to America, and then behave immorally and are bad examples to the younger generations.”
People thought she was a saint
"It was absolute hell," Bergman later remembered. "I didn't think it would upset the whole world, but it did. I cried so much I thought there wouldn't be any tears left... I felt the newspapers were right. I was an awful woman, but I had not meant it that way."
She continued, "It was because so many people, who knew me only on the screen, thought I was perfect and infallible and then were angry and disappointed that I wasn't... A nun does not fall in love with an Italian."
It was not happily ever after
Bergman and Rossellini’s controversial relationship didn’t last. After Rossellini had an affair with Sonali Dasgupta, the wife of a producer, the marriage was over. The pair separated in 1956 and divorced in 1957.
Bergman said she and Rossellini were "artistically bad for each other" — though some think Journey to Italy is something of a masterpiece. Yet throughout her years in exile from Hollywood, not everybody turned their backs on her.
She was still a star
In 1956 Bergman starred in her first Hollywood picture in seven years. But while Anastasia was U.S. financed, the movie was shot in Europe. And even though she won another Oscar for her performance, Bergman didn't return to Los Angeles.
Cary Grant picked the Oscar up on her behalf and said, "Dear Ingrid... I want you to know that... every one of us here tonight and in New York sends you our congratulations, our love, our admiration, and every affectionate thought."
Welcomed back with open arms
Bergman’s first public Hollywood appearance following the scandal was in 1959, ten years after she’d acted in Stromboli. As an Oscars presenter, she received a standing ovation from the audience. "If a drop of sorrow remained, it vanished the night I first appeared on the Los Angeles stage," she later said.
"All Hollywood was there and the applause went on endlessly and I didn't know what to do," she said. "I walked up and down feeling embarrassed and grateful." It was in 1959 that Bergman put in an Emmy-winning performance in The Turn of the Shrew, too.
Her personal life took center stage again
By this point, Bergman had already met and married her third husband. She and Lars Schmidt, theatrical producer and fellow Swede, wed in 1958. It proved to be her longest-lasting marriage, ending some 17 years later. In 1975 Bergman and Schmidt divorced, and that same year, the Oscar-winner received a breast cancer diagnosis.
But even after the bad news, she continued to work and in 1978 starred in her final movie. Autumn Sonata, directed by the similarly named Ingmar Bergman, earned the actress yet another Oscar nomination. The role was very personal, too.
Gone but not forgotten
She later said, "A lot of it is what I have lived through, leaving my children, having a career." She remembered how her children would cry and cling to her — but she would have to "go away" to push her career forward.
She finally succumbed to cancer a few months after wrapping the miniseries Golda. She died on her 67th birthday. Mourners turned out in their droves. Despite it all, she was still beloved.