1982 Obituary

The Lewiston Daily Sun – August 31, 1982

ACTRESS INGRID BERGMAN DIES AT AGE OF 67
By Jeff Bradley

… LONDON (AP) – In a 47 year acting career, radiant Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman won three Academy Awards, defeated the critics of her turbulent private life, and returned from ostracism to win a place among the screen's immortals.
… Her journey from Stockholm's Royal Dramatic Theater to the heights of movie stardom ended Sunday, her 67 birthday, when Miss Bergman lost an eight-year battle with cancer. She died at her London home with former husband Lars Schmidt at her side.
… "Nothing Ingrid Bergman did can be done better by anyone else," mourned longtime friend Georg Rydeberg, co-star of her early Swedish movies nearly half a century ago.
… The death of Miss Bergman, one of the screen's great beauties, was announced Monday by her daughter, Pia Lindstrom, in New York and by her agent in London where the actress made her home.
… A tall and elegant woman with brown hair, deep blue eyes and a radiant smile, Miss Bergman retained her beauty into middle-age.
… In a sometimes stormy career, thrice divorced Miss Bergman won Oscars as best actress for "Gaslight" in 1944, and for "Anastasia" in 1956, and as best supporting actress for "Murder on the Orient Express" in 1974.
… "Casablanca" in 1943 made her an international star as the object of Humphrey Bogart's unforgettable line: "Here's looking at you, kid."
… Her other best-loved films include "For Whom the Bell Tolls," "Spellbound," "Saratoga Trunk," "Notorious," "The Inn of the Sixth Happiness," "The Yellow Roles-Royce" and "Autumn Sonata."
… Her last role was an acclaimed portrayal of Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meier in the television film, "A Woman Called Golda," broadcast this year.
… Discovered by producer David O Selznick and invited to co-star with Leslie Howard in the 1939 remake of her European hit "Intermezzo," Miss Bergman quickly became Hollywood's sweetheart.
… But her public image was shattered in 1949 when she left her first husband, Swedish brain surgeon Dr. Peter Lindstrom, and a daughter, Pia, in America and went to Rome to live with, and bear a son by Italian director Roberto Rossellini. She and Rossellini later married. Besides the boy Robertino, they had twin daughters, Isabella and Isotta in 1952.
… US Sen. Edwin Johnson denounced the actress in Congress as "a powerful influence for immorality" and her career appeared in ruins.
… The marriage to Rossellini dissolved in 1958 as Miss Bergman, 43, continued making films in Europe.
… She married Schmidt, a Swedish theatrical producer, in 1958, and they divorced in 1975.
… Miss Bergman was welcomed back to the American film world in 1969. In 1972, Sen. Charles Percy put an official apology on the Congressional record for "the personal and professional persecutions that caused her to leave this country at the height of her career."
… In her 1980 autobiography, "Ingrid Bergman: My Story," the actress said: "When I was young I prayed that I may never have a dull moment and whoever is up there, he certainly heard me."
… Cancer struck while she was appearing in George Bernard Shaw's "The Constant Wife" on the London stage and filming Agatha Christie's "Murder on the Orient Express," and she underwent a mastectomy in 1974.
… In 1977, while making "Autumn Sonata" with Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, the illness struck again and she had a second breast removed, but returned to London to star in the stage play "Waters of the Moon."
… A co-star of that play, Doris Hare, recalled: "She never let the audience down at all. She was a great big shining star. I used to look at her when she came on and the whole place lit up, she was that sort of person."
… Miss Bergman later wrote of her battle against cancer: "I didn't take it as badly as I expected. Of course it is sad… I didn't want to look at myself in the mirror, that's for sure."
… She decided to keep on working, and as recently as April was telling reporters, "I'm not as young as I used to be. But my health is fine. I am not dying."
… The last time she was seen in public was in May when she walked slowly, supported by friends, her arm in a sling, her features gaunt.
… Miss Bergman, 5-foot-8, had been a magnetic presence on stage where one of her favorite roles was Joan Of Arc. She once said: "I like the stage better. It's boring to make pictures because there all cut up into pieces."
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Toledo Blade – September 8, 1982

THE REAL MORAL OF INGRID BERGMAN STORY
by William Safire

… After the death of Ingrid Bergman last week most of the commentary centered on the change in mores in one generation. Thirty years ago people became all uptight and self-righteous when a celebrated woman left her husband and had a baby with her lover, today it would not be seen as "that big of a deal."
… That misses the central point of the Bergman story. Let me tell you about an episode starring Ingrid Bergman, Roberto Rossellini, Lucky Luciano and me.
… Naples, the fall of 1953. I was Cpl. in the US. Army, in command of one private lugging around a Magnacorder, an early tape recorder, we were doing lectures and interviews around Europe for the Americans Forces Network.
… Charles Luciano, the racketeer most often described as the "international vice overlord," had been deported from the United States at the instigation of Thomas E Dewey and had taken up residence in Naples. Through a bartender at the Vesuvio Hotel I made arrangements to see him.
… With a few hours to kill before Lucky would receive us we decided to try for an interview with Miss Bergman and Rossellini. I called Miss Bergman from the lobby of her hotel and announced that the U.S. Army was downstairs. She must have envisioned a couple of divisions surrounding the hotel and invited us up.
… In the interview she turned aside questions about her personal life; Miss Bergman would talk only of her work. Since that work had included a recent portrayal of Joan of Arc, a device presented itself: If St. Joan were alive today, would she be burned at the stake for doing what she thought was right?
… That opened the way for Miss Bergman to talk about herself without seeming to do so. Through St. Joan she discussed at length the unwillingness of society to accept unpopular beliefs and the tendency of most people to become infuriated at stubbornly independent individuals. Such universal condemnation need not be feared, she argued, more important was –
… At that point Rossellini, her director and lover, entered the room. The forthright character of Miss Bergman underwent an immediate transformation. She became submissive, deferring to him on all questions, fearful of expressing herself in her director-lover's presence. The moment of self-revelation had passed.
… Late for our appointment with Luciano, we packed up our machine and hurried to the lobby of the Hotel Continental. The racketeer scowled his irritation with our lateness. When I explained the reason, his expression changed to skepticism: Had we really just come from a talk with Ingrid Bergman? He had always dreamed of meeting her, he said, especially now that they were both in the same city, but added: "The likes of her shouldn't be seen associating with the likes of me." Did we actually have her voice recorded on our machine? "Play me her," he ordered.
… There in the hotel lobby we played the tape of the Bergman-Rossellini interview for Lucky Luciano. The actor spoke of the vilification of Joan of Arc and of the cruelty of the self-righteous, his face became rapt; it was evident that he worshiped Miss Bergman from afar.
… Suddenly the scowl returned. The Luciano could hear, on the tape, the voice of Rossellini toward the end of the interview. His look of wonderment was replaced by a look of hatred: He appeared to us as the quintessential mafioso, capable of ordering a cement footbath for anybody who got in his way.
… "Can you imagine a guy," Luciana raspt, "knockin' up a woman like her?"
… There was the kingpin of white slavery, the man reputed to control the prostitution racket in the Western world, who had parlayed that control into dominance of international gambling and almost all of organized crime – there was Lucky Luciano moralizing about the "fall" of Ingrid Bergman.
… That brings us to the real point about the reaction of the previous generation to the Bergman-Rossellini affair. It was not that a movie star deserted her husband and had a child with her lover. If Jean Harlow had done that, or a few years later Rita Haworth, or a few years later Marilyn Monroe, no great hullabaloo would have been raised. No career would have been in danger, on the contrary, sex goddesses were supposed to do the unconventional, even the immoral; that was in character.
… The shock to moviegoers in Miss Bergman's case was so strong because her action was wholly out of character. On the screen she played a special kind of heroine passionately virtuous, desirably good. No other movie Queen worked that side of the street so movingly.
… That's why people in the 50s were so furiously dismayed at Miss Bergman's flouting of morality. Times have not changed that much. If Princess Di or Princess Grace or Nancy Reagan or Justice O'Connor were now to go off on a colossal toot, the shock and condemnation would be much the same.
… Luciano's reaction – ascribing blame to the man as seducer – was a minority view then and would be considered quaint today. Get there is kindness and that, as much to our own dreams as to the celebrated actress involved. I'm with Lucky: Can you imagine a guy knockin' up a woman like her?

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