Photo credit: Janet Donovan
The three faces of Ingrid Bergman: “I didn’t do anything I’ve never done before. But when the camera moves in on the Bergman face, and she’s saying she loves you, it would make anybody look romantic.” Humphrey Bogart. “In my whole life I never had a woman so much in love with me as Ingrid was. The day after the picture (Saratoga Trunk) ended, I couldn’t get her on the phone.” Gary Cooper. “I’m only interested in two kinds of people, those who can entertain me and those who can advance my career.” Ingrid Bergman.
This weekend, The Embassy of Sweden hosted multiple events in her honor to celebrate her Life & Legacy at the House of Sweden in Georgetown with two new exhibitions. Saturday marked the Bergman Centennial. One of the world’s greatest actresses of all time, she was both beloved and controversial. She was seen as both a role model and a danger to the morals of society of the times.
While Leamer was finishing up the touches on As Time Goes By that would become a best-seller, I was a guest in his home in Santa Monica. There was lots of anticipation as Dr. Petter Lindstrom, the Swedish surgeon whom actress Ingrid Bergman abandoned for a scandalous affair with and subsequent marriage to Italian director Roberto Rossellini and the father of her first child Pia, was expected for breakfast and Leamer wasn’t sure if he would show up. He did and related how the marriage ended in a firestorm of scandal: Her fans were horrified. The affair was even denounced from the floor of the U.S. Senate.
The book launch was held at The Marrakesh Restaurant in Washington with the theme “An Evening in Casablanca”
“The affair even reached Capitol Hill. There, on March 14 1950, Senator Edwin Johnson of Colorado delivered a vitriolic diatribe to the United States senate, denouncing Bergman for “an assault upon the institution of marriage”. He considered her to be “one of the most powerful women on earth today – I regret to say, a powerful influence for evil.” In the moral climate of the time, to bear a child out of wedlock was unacceptable, though none of the fuss might have occurred if Lindstrom had granted Bergman a divorce when she asked for it. As for deserting her husband for another man, as Bergman herself reflected, divorces and remarriages in the film community were an everyday occurrence.” The Guardian
Lindstrom remained bitter towards Bergman to the end and told Leamer that “he regretted not telling the world years earlier of an Ingrid Bergman they did not know – a hard-drinking, heavy-smoking, promiscuous woman, who, according to Lindstrom, ignored her children and lived only to act.”
Courtesy of The Embassy of Sweden
The exhibition included a video installation that reflects the three phases of Ingrid Bergman’s life, including clips from classic feature films and documentaries. Thirty premiere photographs, taken by Hollywood’s most prominent studio photographers and world photographers such as Robert Capa, Gordon Parks and Lennart Nilsson were on exhibit. Bergman is without doubt one of the best actresses of all times.
“Success is getting what you want; happiness is wanting what you get” – Ingrid Bergman
Here’s looking at you kid……
