by Grace Carter
In the film, Ingrid played Paula Alquist, a young woman who moves with her new husband, Gregory Anton (Boyer), into the house she had, as a child, shared with her aunt, who had been murdered years before by an unidentified assailant. Suspense builds as Paula’s husband - who is, in fact, her aunt’s killer - searches for the dead woman’s jewels hidden somewhere in the house and tries to make his wife think she is going mad.
Screenwriters John Van Druten, Walter Reisch, and John L. Balderston let the story unfurl carefully and frighteningly, and George Cukor directed with great detail. The casting was brilliant. Boyer is menacing as Paula’s scheming husband, and Joseph Cotten, playing the detective who had investigated the murder when Paula was a child, is compassionate and solicitous. Eighteen-year-old Angela Lansbury, in her first movie role, steals more than one scene as the couple’s cheeky housemaid.
Ingrid’s role was the most challenging. Pretending to be a woman whose husband tries to make her believe she is insane, she has to convey love, confusion, fear, hurt, suspicion, bitterness, and strength. To prepare for the part, she read a number of books about mental illness and asked MGM’s permission to visit a psychiatric hospital, where she befriended a mentally ill woman, carefully observing her mannerisms and demeanor as the patient drifted between reason and dementia. Ingrid continued her visits even after the film was finished until the woman died of tuberculosis the following year.
She also had to warm up quickly to her co-star, Boyer. “I have always pleaded with my directors: ‘Please, please don’t start [shooting] the film with a love scene,’” she said later, noting that most films are shot out of sequence. “And I always seemed to land with a passionate love embrace before I’d been introduced to my leading man.”
Many years later, when she was making the film Goodbye Again, she brought Anthony Perkins into her dressing room and said, “For heaven’s sake, kiss me!” She wanted to get that first kiss out of the way.
The very first scene Ingrid had to shoot in Gaslight was an emotionally charged moment when she arrives at a railway station in Italy and has to race to the middle of the platform to embrace Boyer in a passionate kiss. She had to do all the running because Boyer, several inches shorter than Ingrid, had to remain still so he could stand on a box to look taller. “So I had to rush up and be careful not to kick the box, and go into my act,” she recalled. “It was easier for us to die of laughter than to look like lovers.” Ever the professional, Ingrid pulled off the scene.
In the end, Ingrid delivered a spectacular performance in Gaslight. When she finished the dramatic scene in which she begins to torment her tormenter, the entire company applauded. No one was surprised when Ingrid received an Oscar nomination, her second. The film received six others, including Best Picture, Boyer for Best Actor, and Lansbury for Best Supporting Actress.
Critics were now consistently raving about Ingrid’s work, and Americans rated her their favorite female movie star. On August 2, 1943, Ingrid earned a true measure of stardom by making the cover of Time magazine, albeit with a corny tag line: “Ingrid Bergman (as Maria) - Whatever Hollywood’s bell tolled for, she rang it.” Inside, the story gushed, “Not only is Ingrid Bergman without an enemy in the whole community: People like the way she works, too . . . Her particular kind of beauty comes from within; it is the beauty of an individual . . . She is an uncommonly well-balanced and charming woman [of] poise, sincerity, reticence, sensitiveness, charm, and talent.”
When Gaslight was released in May 1944, Ingrid had reached “the peak of her Hollywood glory,” according to the British film critic David Thomson. But the kind of mega-success Ingrid was having rarely comes without a price. It was a price she paid every time she went home to a family from whom she felt increasingly distant.
When Gaslight wrapped in October 1943, America’s favorite leading lady suggested to her husband that they buy a nice house in Beverly Hills, where Pia would have a lovely yard to play in and Ingrid would have room to entertain. Perhaps a new house would save the marriage, too. They agreed to start looking as soon as Lindstrom could get some time away from the hospital.
Though Lindstrom was as committed to his career as Ingrid was to hers, he was still spending an enormous amount of time and energy managing her affairs. In his quest to keep control of his wife, he alienated almost everyone who crossed his path. For instance, when Ingrid was preparing to record a radio version of Casablanca, Lindstrom took the script and made changes to the dialogue, infuriating everyone at Selznick International.
Meanwhile, Lindstrom overstepped his bounds at home, too. He badgered his wife to be more patriotic. “You should be doing something to help the war effort because we’ve been very lucky that Sweden is not involved, and we’ve been out of the war,” he told her. Feeling guilty, she agreed, reasoning that “Petter was working at a hospital, but I was only making films.”
So Ingrid went on tours promoting the U.S. Savings Bonds that helped finance America’s involvement in World War II – reading poetry, telling stories, and making speeches. That’s not enough, Lindstrom said, and once again Ingrid agreed. So she volunteered for the USO, the non-profit that provided services and entertainment to soldiers in far-flung places. Excited to have a star of her stature, they asked if she would consider going to Alaska, where few celebrities cared to venture; they all wanted assignments to places like the South Pacific.
Ever the faithful trooper, Ingrid said yes. With the help of Ruth Roberts, she put together a performance that included dramatizing an O. Henry short story and doing a folk dance in Swedish dress. Other actors joined in – dancing, singing, playing the accordion and performing magic tricks. “[T]he program was really not particularly good,” Ingrid recalled. . . . the main thing was that we were girls.”
After three days in Anchorage, the group flew to smaller bases around Alaska to perform their show, sign autographs, and pose for pictures. “You won’t believe it when I tell you that I and a boy from Palladium, Hollywood, danced the jitterbug in the middle of the Service Club with 500 boys around looking,” she wrote to Roberts. “Then I danced Swedish folk dances with a Norwegian boy. They have a wonderful time and say that we are the first ones to mix with them and not the generals.”
During the tour, Ingrid came face-to-face with the loneliness and isolation of soldiers living in small villages of huts surrounded by desolate landscape, with temperatures reaching twenty degrees below zero – 200 idle young men. Ingrid said: “They’re so thankful for anything you do. It is pathetic.” One man said to her, “To see a woman like you makes you want to live again.”
After a while, the rigors of the trip started to catch up with Ingrid, who often had to spend her nights on the floor in a sleeping bag. By January 20, 1944, she had become so sick she had to be flown back to California, where she spent the next few weeks in bed, tended to by Mabel, her doctor, and her husband. Her recovery was slow. With nothing else to do, she would drive to Malibu Beach or to the Santa Monica Pier, where she would sit by the water and study scripts, or immerse herself in biographies or novels - anything to stay busy.
But relaxation was never easy for Ingrid. Well-intended advice that she rest was met with a polite nod; all she really wanted was to get back to work. On Sundays - when most people spent time with their families or indulged in their favorite hobbies - she pined for Monday. The best way to manage her downtime, she figured, was to learn something new, a language or a concerto for the piano - anything that would make her portrayal of a character more believable.
By springtime, Lindstrom had completed his surgery internship in San Francisco and returned to Los Angeles to finish his residency at the Los Angeles County Hospital. Ingrid, meanwhile, would finally get to work with Alfred Hitchcock, who had found a perfect part for her on a film he was directing, produced by Selznick, that was called Spellbound, a psychological thriller set in a mental institution.
The story, based on the 1927 novel The House of Dr. Edwards by Francis Bleeding – the pen name of John
Palmer and Hilary A. Saunders - centers on Ingrid’s character, a psychoanalyst named Dr. Constance Peterson who attempts to solve a murder to save a patient she loves. Screenwriter Ben Hecht had written the script specifically for Ingrid and Gregory Peck, who co-starred as Dr. Anthony Edwardes, the new director of the asylum. Petersen notices that Edwardes exhibits odd behavior and appears frightened by the sight of parallel lines on white surfaces. She also discovers that he is an imposter who may have killed the real Edwardes. When he disappears, she tracks him down and takes him on as a patient. As they fall in love, she works to untangle the mystery of his strange behavior.
Ingrid was fascinated by the script but had misgivings about the love story between Petersen and Edwardes. It seemed unlikely to her that her character, as a psychoanalyst, would fall in love so quickly. When she voiced her concerns to Selznick, he convened a meeting with her, Hitchcock, and Hecht and argued that American audiences want love stories and the film need not be realistic in every detail because people went to the movies to escape reality. When she questioned the advisability of all the psychological jargon, Hitchcock said he thought audiences would find psychoanalysis an interesting subject. After two hours of discussion, Ingrid agreed to the script as it was written.
Filming for Spellbound began on July 10, Ingrid’s seventh wedding anniversary. Hitchcock brought in an enormous cake for the occasion, an ironic gesture given that by then he had fallen in love with his leading lady. Spellbound, the first of three films Hitchcock would make with Ingrid, marked the beginning of a close lifelong relationship – though it was also a humiliating one for the portly forty-five-year-old director because Ingrid did not return his affections.
Fortunately, Hitchcock did not retaliate against Ingrid the way he did against other leading ladies who resisted his advances. While making 1963’s The Birds, Hitchcock was so upset about being rejected by his star Tippi Hedren that for five days during the filming, he stuck her in an attic where she was attacked by live birds to the point of bleeding.
Ingrid did, however, return the affections of Peck, her recently married, twenty-eight-year-old co-star. Though they kept it secret at the time – and Ingrid never mentioned it publicly – Peck revealed the affair in an interview with People magazine in 1987, five years after her death. By his account, it began during filming and did not last long. “All I can say is that I had a real love for her (Bergman), and I think that’s where I ought to stop,” he said. “I was young. She was young. We were involved for weeks in close and intense work.”
During the filming of Spellbound, Hitchcock clashed often with Selznick; director and producer both had strong feelings about how the material should be handled, and Selznick was not pleased when Hitchcock rebuffed his suggestion that they base the film on Selznick’s own positive experience with psychoanalysis. He also objected to a dream sequence Hitchcock had concocted with the help of the famed surrealist painter Salvador Dali. It opened with 400 human eyes glaring down at Peck from black velvet drapes. Then a pair of pliers fifteen times taller than the actor chased him up the side of a pyramid; finally, he was confronted by a plaster cast of Ingrid as a Grecian goddess with a face that slowly cracks, emitting streams of ants. Ingrid thought it was brilliant, but Selznick dismissed it as nonsense, cutting all but two minutes of the twenty-minute reel.
Spellbound was a big success when it was released in October 1945, primarily because of the exceptional performances of Ingrid and Peck. Time magazine said, “Hitchcock’s deft timing and sharp, imaginative camera work raise Spellbound well above the routine of Hollywood thrillers.” The New York Herald Tribune agreed: “. . . with Ben Hecht’s crafty scenario and compelling performances by Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck, the work is a masterful psychiatric thriller.” The film received six Oscar nominations - including Best Picture - and grossed $8 million at a cost of only $1.7 million, making it the third-highest-grossing film of the year.
As Ingrid was filming Spellbound that summer, she and Lindstrom finally found a home, on Benedict Canyon Drive in Beverly Hills. Costing $65,000 (about $880,000 today), the English-style cottage was built with redwood and chiseled fieldstone and featured a vaulted ceiling, a large fireplace, and a sizeable kitchen; on its wooded lot was a small guest cottage. In a letter to her father-in-law, Ingrid said she was so excited about their new home and its furnishings that she couldn’t sleep. Later, they added a swimming pool and sauna.
Ingrid and Lindstrom entertained at their new home, but not extravagantly. Wearing her usual modest ensemble of a tweed skirt and sweater, Ingrid would serve biscuits, cheese, and cocktails. Deciding who to invite, however, was more difficult than she had anticipated. For their housewarming party, she made a guest list that included her language coach Ruth Roberts, the power couple Irene and David Selznick, a cameraman she had worked with on one film, a screenwriter she had worked with on another, various actors, and others. “This is impossible,” said Irene Selznick, reviewing the list. “Quite impossible. You can’t mix producers with this little writer, and you can’t mix stars with this unknown actor.”
“But it’s just a party,” Ingrid protested. Irene was adamant. “No one will enjoy themselves,” she sniffed. “It simply isn’t possible.”
Bewildered by the strange customs of her adopted homeland, Ingrid grudgingly made a new list of just the most influential people. Going forward, she decided that whenever she wanted to give a party, one would not be enough - she would have to give three separate parties, one for each social group she belonged to.
She also had to deal with Lindstrom’s autocratic behavior that often soured the mood of their parties. Though generally polite and friendly, he would frequently vent his strong opinions about Hollywood, creating awkward moments. He would also silence his wife when she tried to speak. “You shouldn’t talk so much,” Lindstrom would tell her after parties. “You have a very intelligent face, so let people think you are intelligent because when you start to chatter, it’s just a lot of nonsense.” After that, she tried hard not to say too much so he wouldn’t berate her afterward.
Even Pia noticed Ingrid’s submission, one day pointing out that her mother always did what her father told her. Ingrid responded that the head of their household must be obeyed because he is very smart. Soon Pia was giving her orders, too, scolding her mother when she caught her with some chocolate one day. Another time, after Ingrid gave Pia permission to go to movies with her friends, the girl said her mother’s permission didn’t count - her father’s approval was required.
For these and other reasons, Ingrid worried that her relationship with her daughter was not what it should be, and she felt guilty when she left Pia with Mabel for weeks on end. With both parents so focused on their careers, Pia said later, she was often lonely as a child and had few memories of the three of them together as a family. Ingrid was fully aware that she was neglecting her little girl. Irene Selznick later said she had never met anyone so overwhelmed with remorse about leaving her child at home when she went off to work.
The time Ingrid spent away from Lindstrom, on the other hand, may have kept them married longer than they otherwise would have been. Before they moved into their Benedict Canyon home, Ingrid’s friends in the film business would tease her about how little she saw her husband. “So you have such a happy marriage?” they would say. “But you never live together. He’s always somewhere, and you’re always somewhere else - apart! Wait till you live together in the same house. Then let’s ask you how your marriage is.”
After settling into their new home, Ingrid and Lindstrom began to find out. “I suppose it was in Benedict Canyon that our married life began to crack a bit at the seams,” Ingrid recalled later. “Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that now we were really living together.”
Longstanding tensions between Ingrid and Lindstrom, tolerable with distance, now became unbearable. She began to resent the way he put her down – to balance out all the compliments she was getting, he said, and to keep her fro
m getting a swelled head. Ingrid never thought that was a problem; she considered herself just an ordinary actress trying to improve. But Lindstrom was unrelentingly harsh in his appraisals of her and stingy with praise. “‘Not bad’ was as much as I could really expect from Petter,” she said later. “‘Good’ was something close to magnificent.”
Lindstrom also got jealous, hardly surprising given that her job was to create romantic sparks with gorgeous, rich, famous men. “You have to be very careful with all these handsome ladies’ men around,” Lindstrom warned her. “They’re all pretending to fall in love with you. They want to date you. But you must bear in mind what’s behind it – publicity - their publicity to get into the gossip columns so that people will talk about them. So be very careful.”
Ingrid was taken aback. “You mean to tell me that you’re the only man in the world who has ever fallen in love with me for my own sake and not because I’m a famous actress?”
“Yes, I believe so,” said Lindstrom. This made Ingrid very sad. “I believed him for quite a long time,” she said.
Despite her denials, Lindstrom was convinced that his wife was having affairs with all her leading men. “Some I was very attracted to, and I think they were attracted to me,” she admitted later. In her memoir, she denied getting romantically involved with any of them – though Peck’s 1987 revelation of their affair while making Spellbound suggests that she was not telling the whole truth. Her friend Roberts went along with the deception. “She’s just enough in love with him to make the love scenes look real,” she would say.
But Ingrid could not credibly pretend that she didn’t have strong feelings for her male co-stars. “Who wouldn’t be in love with Cary Grant, Gary Cooper, Spencer Tracy?” she said. “Half the women in the world were anyway.”