Swedish Years
(The Complete Films) Ingrid was born in Stockholm, Sweden, on August 29, 1915, the only child of Justus Bergman, an artist and painter who later opened a camera shop, and the German born Friedel Adler who was as practical and methodical as her husband was dreamy and mercurial. Her mother died when Ingrid was only two, and her father died when she was twelve. She was then cared for by a spinster aunt - who expired suddenly in her arms of a heart attack six months later.
In other years, she was to say of this period, "The days and years were filled with a terrible sense of aloneness.
I became extremely shy and withdrew into a dream world of my own imagination, with creatures of fantasy who were less oppressive than the people around me. To amuse myself, I began inventing characters - villains and heroes, witches and fairies, and even animals. I made up stories as I went along, and all these characters became familiar and friendly... At school my abnormal height and clumsy shyness prevented me from making friends. I barely passed from grade to grade, due partly to boredom with the regular subjects, but mostly because of my inability to stand up before the class and answer the teacher's questions. Self consciousness would choke the words in my throat."
With both parents and her aunt gone, the bewildered twelve year old orphan went to live with an elderly uncle who had five children, four of them older than her. She had never lived with other children before, and she found the negations of her life compounded tenfold. Her cousins teased her about her appearance and awkward ways. "I retreated more and more into myself," she said years later. "I determined more than ever to become an actress, because in that world of make-believe was the sanctuary I needed. I could submerge all my inhibitions and playact at being the things I was not."
Her father had left her just enough money for her to be educated privately. At the Lyceum School for Girls, she learned about Joan of Arc and became obsessed with the legend of the intrepid girl who liberated France from the English. She sought to identify herself with the warmth, idealism and gentle humor, the classical simplicity and affirmation of Joan. She also immersed herself in romantic subjects like Tristan and Isolde. As her time of graduation from the Lycee neared, she firmly decided on the course of her futrue life.
Years before it had been preordained - she would be an actress.
All the loneliness, negations, and ingrown sorrows of her eighteen years now had a focus. She entered a scholarship competition at the Royal Dramatic Theatre School, one of Europe's best. Her uncle opposed the idea. He considered theatre evil and expressed strong doubts that her gawky exterior would lend itself to such an atmosphere. She said later, "At that time one of my good faults was a tremendous stubbornness." Her continued pleas eventually wore her uncle down.
She did scenes from Rostand and Strindberg for the committee, and was one of the few selected from a hundred applicants.
At eighteen she entered for the 1933-34 term, and a few months later, met, on a blind date, a young dentist, who would later become a famed neurosurgeon. Peter Aron Lindstrom was his name, and even at 27 he was successful at his career. His relative prosperity and sturdy enterprise impressed her. True to her life long pattern of gravitating toward a strength she considered greater than her own (possibly a search for the father image she lost at twelve), she let Lindstrom take over her life completely, and sought his advice on her every move. Once she summed up the young man's effect on her in that early period - "It was not love at first sight, but it grew into something which, to both of us, became very important and impossible to live without."
Miss Bergman remained for a full year at the Royal Dramatic Theatre School. Her classmate, the later famous actor Gunnar Bjornstrand, recalls her phenomenal health, strength and vitality. "Perhaps she wasn't that way underneath, but she gave the impression of total stability," Bjornstrand said, adding, "She has will power and an unbelievable memory. Learning was a snap for her."
Lindstrom encouraged her to think about movie work and convinced her that her clean good looks and radiant vitality would suit the medium very well. One day while visiting a friend at a Swedish movie studio, she was spotted by a director, who asked her if she was interested in a film career. She said a quick yes.
The Ingrid Bergman who debuted in the 1934 Swedish film Munkbrogreven, after signing a contract with Svenskfilmindustri, was as wholesome and lovely a nineteen year old as any film maker could wish. She also had an evident acting gift. Her role in her first film was peripheral. She was a maid in a boardinghouse who tagged along as the girlfriend of a roustabout in a Bohemian style Stockholm gang. In her second film, Branningar, she was a fisherman's daughter impregnated by a minister. In both films she won considerable notice and in 1935 she was voted the most promising newcomer on the Swedish film scene. She came to the attention of Gustaf Molander, one of the more talented Swedish directors of the period, and he took her on for several pictures. In each of these, under his painstaking guidance, Ms Bergman revealed an ever burgeoning command of acting resources and personality projection.
In 1937 she married Peter Lindstrom (she called him Petter in the Swedish style) and in later years recalled that the steady tutelage of Molander and encouragement of Petter had aided her in developing artistically far sooner than she might otherwise have done.
Molander paired her, most notably in Swedenhielms and Intermezzo, with the top Swedish film actor, Gosta Ekman. She later recalled Ekman as having been most kind and helpful, cuing her in on various acting tricks.
Her roles were varied and challenging in ten Swedish films she made between 1934 and 1939. In Swedenhielms she was a rich girl who sought to marry a proud poor boy. In Pa Solsidan she was a bank clerk with expensive tastes who is courted by a country squire. In Valborgsmassoaiton she was a secretary in love with an unhappily married man. The distinguished actor Lars Hanson, who earlier had appeared with Greta Garbo in Gosta Berling and other films, also proved helpful and kind during their work together on the two latter films.
With her assurance developing rapidly and her good looks coming into full bloom, she was by 1936 doing such challenging parts as the lovelorn young pianist opposite Ekman in the Swedish version of Intermezzo and the scarred woman who hates the world in En Kvinnas Ansikte, which Joan Crawford did as A Woman's Face in Hollywood five years later. In En Enda Natt (1938) she was an upperclass girl with snobbish ideas and in Dollar she was a frivolous young society matron.
Meanwhile, Dr. Lindstrom had decided to undertake medical studies and began a program of work that kept the Lindstroms separated during most of the week. She has described her life at the Swedish studios in 1934-1939 thus,
"I enjoyed the atmosphere, the different kinds of personalitites and the liveliness that was everywhere. The work itself came very easily to me. My uncle was very surprised at my success because I think he still had his doubts."
She added, significantly,
"I went ahead full of confidence because in the background was always Petter. Even when I didn't see him for some time, I knew he was always there to help and advise me."
Ms Bergman visited relatives in Germany from time to time. Always a natural linguist, she learned to speak and read German fluently and made one film for UFA Die Vier Gesellen, in which she was one of four girls in pursuit (with varying fortunes) of men and careers. Though the Nazis controlled the German movie industry at that time, Ms Bergman displayed her usual indifference to political matters.
In Sweden, she did Juninatten, in which she fled from a cloddish and brutal country lover to find happiness with a gentle city boy. In 1938 she gave birth to a daughter, Friedel Pia.
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Rosa Ingrid Bergman (gardening.mweb.co.za) - Rose named after Ingrid Bergman.
Evergreen/Deciduous: Evergreen
Plant Type: Rose
Flower Colour: Velvet red
Foliage Colour: Green
Best Season: Summer to Autumn
Light : Sun
Attributes: Cut Flower
Height (m): 1.5
Hybrid tea rose. Only a very special rose could honour Ingrid Bergman, and being a red rose, it had to excel. It is most fitting that this rose was raised in Scandinavia by the rose breeding firm of Poulsens Roses which has a century of traditions and experience. "Poulsen" roses are famous for their vigour and general toughness and Ingrid Bergman is no exception. 35 broad and firm petals make up the large, glowing, velvet red blooms which hold their brilliancy in the sun as no other crimson hybrid tea does.
The bushes grow into well branched specimen plants clothed with glossy, deep green leaves which remain untouched by mildew or black spot. New, bronze red shoots appear until deep into Winter, producing their shapely blooms in an abundance comparable to a grandiflora rose.
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