Parkinson: Ingrid Bergman interview

my grip Bergman was a wise and gifted woman she was both beautiful and brave the world fell in love with her in 1942 with Casablanca remain that way until she died of cancer in 1982 she was one of Hollywood's top box-office attractions when she fell in love with Roberto Rossellini the Italian film director she was married at the time and the scandal shook Hollywood this after all was the luminous beauty who in films like the bells of st. Mary's and st. Joan projected an image of virtue and decency she was denounced in the American Senate as a cheap chiseling female for years she was an outcast from a prudish and moralistic Hollywood typically she went her own way working in Europe and on stage until she outlived her critics what was most impressive about it was a strength a refusal to compromise true feelings and by the time she went back to America she'd won she's established her right to be independent of Hollywood she made the mountain come to her now what you're about to see is an interview I did in 1973 and where else to start but that marvelous moment in Casablanca when every man in every gin joint in the world knew why bogey was in love with her [Music] [Music] little days [Music] and when two lovers woo they still say I love you all that you can realize no matter what the future time I thought I told you never to play did you know when you were making that that film Casablanca that it would one day become the the cult movie that it is now no I certainly did not at all it was a great confusion during being the shooting of the picture and I'm quite surprised but I must say I saw the picture here at the Film Institute about two years ago for the first time on the screen not on television and I really thought it was a very good movie if there's a good oh oh I mean there aren't many films are that made that long you can look back at and think that's a good good movie stands up it was good also because all the parts were played by such good actors the smallest part was really a top-class factor yes so that helps a lot yes is it true it was made in in as you say some confusion haphazardly I mean nobody to rely do you know we didn't have the script it was written as we went along and to tell you the truth no one who knew how to end it so we went along until the bitter end and it was very bitter because they said I should shoot it both ways either I should go with the husband in the plane played by Paul Henreid or stay on the ground with Humphrey Bogart very difficult to act out these love scenes because I really didn't know which one of the two men I was in love with no it doesn't indeed you went off at the right feller Indian I think what about boga because he's grown into a cult figure too hasn't he yes very much what is the appeal I mean were you were able to assess it when you were working with you no of course it was an excellent actor and he always played himself of course he didn't make any character makeup or change and I think as a matter of fact I think you he wore the same raincoat on the same hat in every movie they must have been tabled to be close to addition but he had that marvelous boys fear that you could hear him right now this minute it was certainly interesting and rough boys and of course he was also considered a tough man but I think of it inside he was quite a lovable person did you say you think so didn't you get to know him at all no I really didn't I think he was as upset as everybody else about not having a script and not knowing exactly where we were going and he used to stay very much by himself and well in another interview because I've talked a lot about Casablanca ignore all the other interviews the first time you've talked to me and they used to ask me if I knew him and I said no I don't know him I kissed him but I don't know him it must be very difficult mostly particularly playing a romantic part or was it something that you literally don't know I mean you just see on the set no it isn't difficult when you look like I'm people God gonna act like he does and I think he's absolutely wonderful I mean I'm so pleased when I see that he looks at me with such love in his eyes because one of it one of the great characters in that film behind the scenes was Michael Curtiz of course it only I I mean there are more stories about kirti's in Hollywood and probably that's will be DeMille I suppose always yes it was a very colorful person and temperament fall and he told me a very funny story when he came from Hungary but that was years before Casablanca because he had done several pictures before he arrived in America by boat and he saw the harbor full of flags and band playing and ribbons were flying and he was so moved where he stood you know seeing this he said I didn't know that they knew me so well in America and I would get a reception like this and it was much later they told him it is it was the fourth of July poor devil wouldn't let go your back now costing me in the theater aren't you you're enjoying by being back on the stage oh yes I like it very much and I like it here in London because you have such interest for the theatre and people are very respectful they come on time and they listen very carefully and they are easily moved yeah and I find that they laugh easily too yeah it is not like Italy where they come about 30 minutes late and trample through the seats you know and have everybody get up and you hear ciao ciao ciao also though you think that now they are in the saris at least the intermission counts there we come back in but then they're all out drinking Express so you see so they're just as late coming in for the second act going through the same thing and when the show is over very often I have seen the audience get up and walk out applauding as they walk with you the four actors stand out and bow but they see only the back so that must be Nepal can you in focus you started off didn't you and in the theatre can you remember your first audition and yes I started traumatic school and and we have the Royal Theatre in Stockholm and that is a free school you've seen so everybody tries to get in there because it's the best education and the best teachers and also you don't pay anything and you're taking care of it you were supposed to play in small parts and so after three years of studying so you already had kind of five years ahead of you I tested to get in there and we were about 75 youngsters and there are all the actors and the teachers and the head of the theater and you came out on the stage and you read whatever you had to read and I had just begun when somebody said that's enough miss out you can go and of course I thought that I was so awfully bad that they didn't have the patience to listen through my tests well I went out and I stood looked at the at the sea in front of the theatre we have a lot of water he stuck off and I was wondering if I shall throw myself in the water and get it over with right away because I wanted very badly to become an actress however I got a message to come back to the theatre and I was engaged and later on I asked what they had done it and then it was very cruel laughter of the jury to do that and they said well the minute you got in and the way you moved on the stage we realized that that you had it we didn't want to waste any more time you were in yeah because I thought I was out yeah how did you I mean you you you then moved to the eventually you got to to Hollywood I didn't have the patience to go through the five years in the school and being engaged by the theater I went directed with movies yes in Swedish movies and stress and I worked for a couple of years and then um a picture called in to med so that you called the escape to happiness in Ireland it was shown in a small art theater in New York and David Selznick had lady who were reading books and looking for talent for him is when she went up into her office building and the offer an elevator boy was of Swedish descent and his parents had gone to see the Swedish movie and said to this lady her name is Catherine Brown my parents were very much taken by a young Swedish actress and I think you are looking for talents why don't you go and see the movie she did she sent the movie to mr. Selznick and he asked me to come over to America and do a repeat so I am I owe my career in America to the elevator boy that's how it happens in movies actually yeah did you I mean I suppose then they they got older and I suppose that it started to try to process you I mean that was very difficult in the beginning and I don't know where I got my determination and strength from my dad I was so young and I wanted so much to try my wings in Hollywood but immediately I was considered the too-tall and they were going to do something with my face and knock out my teeth put another teeth and changed my eyebrows to make them thinner and change my name and when I heard all that I got terribly frightened and I said I want to go back I don't want to do all that because it would be terrible if my first movie was a flop and I had to go back to Sweden because they wouldn't want me in Hollywood and I will come back with a changed face and a changed name I wouldn't be able to pick up my career after that yeah so I refused to refused and refused and then they accepted my name and you became of course the biggest female box of his star in the world at that time didn't know I don't know you didn't need I've been doing my homework yes indeed and in fact there was only one one male stone made models pizza made more money than you and that was being crosby you didn't know that no I didn't know that are they probably always a millionaire I wonder I wonder if in fact you've ever thought about about that feeling of life when you're so immensely popular I wonder what it was that made you so popular I think I came at the right time I mean first of all you have to have talent naturally but it's sort of a question of timing and luck I happy to come to Hollywood when all the other actresses were very artificial you know they had tremendous hairdos that never blew in the wind they got out of bed but they had absolute perfect makeup and whatever they did they looked absolutely as glamorous as you could and when I came to Hollywood as I refused to do anything particular to make myself glamorous and I wore very simple clothes and I looked like the girl next door as they used to say and it was such a shock to the audience's to see that they could identify with that person I wasn't so terribly beautiful that they couldn't you know identify oh come on yes no I wasn't that was never a great beauty note I dunno I'm in love ma and was never a marital I think the other thing about your to use say there's a blame 13 I thought it I'm doing a very sexy as well no thank you femme fatale nor section or anything I was just the the simple girl the refugee and the good girl and I got very very tired of always being so good and when we did dr. Jekyll mr. Hyde and I was given the part of them dr. Jekyll's fiance was a very good girl and lana turner played the girlfriend of mr. Hyde who was a little bar made of light virtue and I was terribly envious Lana Turner's part and I think but maybe she might like my part for a change so I took the director into switching us which he did and that was mine one of my greatest triumphs you see I managed to play the bad girl when you look back a course of that period in a movie history and you look at the film's now in fact it was in a way the age of innocence wasn't it by comparison today's movie what kind of when you're making films in those days what kind of restrictions were were placed on you know there were so many restrictions I don't know how they ever could make us good movie since they were because many of the movies are so good of course I think what they do today is completely unnecessary you don't have to have nudity and you don't have to have so much violence and blood and all that it's not necessary to make a good movie but we were so restricted but love scenes and that even for instance if you remember notorious it was a scene where I kissed a Cary Grant and Hitchcock wanted very much to have a long kind of kiss but that was forbidden they stood always with a watch like that and the seconds you see they said that stop it and it was very few seconds and you had to break it and he managed with a telephone that I talked on the telephone and I kissed him and I talked on the phone to make it go in into a quite a long love scene and the censorship really couldn't cut it because he destroyed I became an in fact at notorious in the torus as the 10-minute case didn't and a nice actors purpose at him and they know he's wide coverage yes Cary Grant was absolutely marvelous when you look back at all the movies he did and there has never been anything like you know in the comedy line no no indeed not just struck me there I mean you are you're very tall aren't you mentioned this earlier that you weren't in the sort of Hollywood dwarf mold the sort of time the perfect little porcelain jugs that used to have four leading ladies did you when you went to Hollywood did this cause any kind of hang-up in you were you very yes I almost had a complex about my height and I always thought it was necessary that the man had to be taller than the woman on the screen and on the stage too but Yul Brynner made me get out of that kind of complex when I asked him to maybe if he would be so kind to stand on the box and a certain glass scene so that he would tower over me and he said you mean I should play this whole play this sort of picture on a box and I said well you know you're not the first one when it comes to playing with me but he said no no I'm going to show the world what a big horse you are a very very nice friendship I love just like you that's all right with me and since then I have overcome that complex but tell me who the people who had to stand on boxers Warner Baxter I played with but i but dis Meredith and I did the play Lily I'm on Broadway then he's also much shorter and of course there we had more problems than on the screen because on the screen you know we're cattle here and we can spend on all kinds of things but on the stage we were always very far apart so that people look this way and there they could we never came together without one person sitting down or leaning on Southie you know but I suppose you understanding trenches as well didn't do if the man would stand on the box yes maybe ho sometimes [ __ ] made for me when I had to prompt them from an Asian garden I used to walk in a ditch all the exceptions though to the shorty brigade of either guy Cooper was very tall and graduate Beck is tall Cary Grant stole - hmm so I had I had both leading men - because she shared a sleeping bag didn't you with the guys who were in the photos that was very very clean Hey well I know because he wants the movie short so you can't make out with you two sleeping bags or one sleeping bag oh really yeah done that way well I'm sure that they must have had tremendous difficulty I know that we were talking all the time in the sleeping bag nothing happens but talk and in love scenes in those days were never allowed to be horizontal so when we had that lovely scene if you remember where the kiss and the line where do the noses go which is so sweet there that was standing up it couldn't be done in the sleeping bag look tonight we talk now about the the Days Inn in Hollywood wind as I say you were the biggest box-office star in the world of female box of his stuff Cathy now to the point in your career where it also crumbled apart which is 1950 wasn't it when you went to to make Stromboli it crumbled because I left in fact what what happened of course if it needs recapping on is that you went to to make this film with Rosselini you a madwoman you fell in love with him you had his child and he created the most extraordinary stink didn't it I mean it was certainly did yes when you look back at it now I mean what are you feeling well I feel the same thing as I felt then I felt it was my private life and people who judged and wrote and talked in the American Senate and wanted me to be forever excluded from American movies and even putting my feet in America that they didn't know what they were talking about because they didn't know me they didn't know what had happened and the only judge that I had was my own conscience there now of course I have gone back to America and I played in Washington and 23 years later another senator went up in the Senate and very kindly asked pardon for what the other senator had said and he said not only was I welcome in America but they were honored to have my visits so if you live long enough you see it all come everything is fine again well I mean that's to June about but the the moral stance that people took then isn't it because I mean today I mean if it happened today well okay yes I don't think anybody would care yeah I don't say that I approve of my behavior it's not that at all it is just that people look very so quickly already to judge without knowing the background and I think today we've heard so much and seen so much that people have just become a more callous and they don't care and they really don't care so much other people's private lives anymore hmm it was extraordinary at the readings too they pass the course at the time and there's one extraordinary you you were described as an apostle of degradation that's right that is dirty lousy and filthy I mean it's quite a story but I mean I'm sure that stuff like that must leave some kind of scar on your on some resentment they call me that I'd be I get very angry indeed yes I was but you can't be angry for years and years I also or so many people try to tell me that it was their enormous love for me which is true the American public has been absolutely wonderful to me that their love turned to hatred because I my image was the good wonderful and woman who had played but they forgot that played a saint and a nun and all those suffering women were always they forgot that I was a woman and maybe not at all what I did on the screen that was not me but as I say that you can't keep going on thinking about that anymore no I forgotten that long ago I'm back in America I've been to Hollywood and I have played both in the theater or on the screen can I ask you though I mean I mean when you look back now I mean you you in fact divorced what Selena since then yeah and you are now married again bearing that in mind if you this impossible question but if you could could go through it again would invite you to the same thing again I certainly would you would yes because I knew what I did I didn't do anything and that was just mmm huzzah or anything I knew I was very conscious of where I was new doing and I thought the following not naturally what I have to follow which is my own head I did the right thing hmm who the people at this time though I mean no but it was there anybody who stood by you you're getting in oh yes I had an enormous amount of people writing and seeing me and everybody that came to Italy looked me up you know people that I didn't know many people that I had never met in Hollywood like Chaplin and where there are so many of them calling me up and tried to comfort me and say you know that this is going to blow over and we all love you and the thousands of people that wrote to me of course Chaplin of course in particular would know very low it was like to be it's indeed what about the fans themselves did you have a body of fans who stood well they had an extraordinary group of people called the Alban gang it was because I did the Joan of Lorraine the player about Joan of Arc at the theater called Alvin and they used to stand outside that theater in rain and snow and so on and they had got the autographs they had the photographs but they still stood there just to see me go in and see if I came out and if I was happy and ask questions what my children saw now years later to this very day and these youngsters are now old people they're adults and they're married and they have children but they're still just as faithful and always remember me on birthdays and when I come to America they are there to greet me and when I came back to America the first time after I had been I don't know what I should call it but anyway when they refused to take me back in ten years later I came back to receive the Oscar and New York critics award the Alvin gang was standing at the airport was big enormous card saying welcome back we love you and they did what they could do to make me feel that I was welcome that's what that was very touching and I shall never ever say that fans are tiresome ending after you and they are in your way so I'm always very grateful yes well of course the the award that you got was fur on the stars he wasn't it yes then you made a film after that did I I happen to know I had a very profound effect and you didn't at the inner six happiness yes I mean what was the effect it had on you because it was a true story and it always touches me very much when a human being feels that she or he hasn't done enough with their lives they are kind of in the background they don't see it that they can do anything that is important and then they turn to a child and say well the least thing I can do I shall take a child and help a child to live and it then turns out as it did in Gladys Aylward case that the one child that she bought to save from starvation and death it became more and more and more she ended up with over hundred children and she managed to save all these hundred children by her enormous courage I always wanted to meet Gladys Aylward I knew she had moved to Formosa and it took me 12 years after the picture was done and I finally reached Formosa and she had died 10 days before I came her done and I saw her home and I saw the children and it seemed I was right back in the movie again with all the children there singing around me and we found in her home a big clipping book where she had saved all the clippings about the movie everything I have said and I had written her a letter and so on because she wasn't very happy that we did the movie you see Moser and this she didn't like the idea that we had written in love scenes now she told her stories and that was all right but then she only mentioned very briefly that the Chinese man was in love with her and she loved him and she there was no detail there was no dialogue she was very discreet about it and she was asked to give a little more detail to to give her something to build the scenes on but it was too sacred for her it was for her something so intimate that she didn't want to tell it she wanted to it to be theirs and nobody else's and of course they had bought the book to make a movie so we made up the love seniors he was a [ __ ] played by could be a heavy make a job poor man yet to put in brown lenses and he's very blue eyes but I always wanted to try to talk to her and explain that we hadn't done anything that in any way was any discredit to her so it made me happy to see I'm sorry to miss her but happy to see that she had saved everything and cut everything out and I think she might have been quite happy I don't know if she ever saw the movie well let's let's let's remind ourselves again of the of the movie with a clip from it now and I think it is the incident you were talking about when you started your story about the the first child yes she purchased yes which started the entire incredible orphanage you want to die that you treat it so if it does I'll get another it is easy to get babies ask your men required did you steal this child no no it's a girl child worthless a beggar gave it to me I hope to find a good woman with a heart full of pity who would take it I'll take it from you but I need money how much then i Kenyan sixpence English money no he'll get if you don't the child will die and you'll have nothing don't you see how stupid and pointless this is you can't adopt every abandoned baby in China no just the ones I'm offered what are you going to do with her Carlos sixpence I think you like it I said what are you going to do with her what do you know about babies what if they don't know what they're dirty you wash them when everyone who you feed them will find an Eden to go [Music] first not that you mentioned kurgans playing a [ __ ] there but not only that that film in fact said in China was made in Wales it was all made anyway they build all the Chinese villages and the Chinese wall and every [ __ ] in Manchester Liverpool and London was there I think all the restaurants and the laundries were closed did you in fact I know they often it still exists there you say they often you still exist that I was very touched seeing I'm very simply she lived and I saw the place where she wasn't even buried when I came but I saw where she was going to be buried and I took it upon myself to continue her work so I continued to work and hoping to find good people that will send money to the Gladys Aylward foundation to continue her good work I'd I see then what kind of position do you hold then anyone what are you oh nothing the godmother I mean I just tried to find a benefit so do charity performances give them publicity and in every ways try to help them to keep up the good work yes can we um as we come to the end of our talk together can I just sort of ask you you now in the theatre and then join that when you look to your film career in the future I mean did you see anything on the horizon no I think that more or less my film career is over I've been doing movies for about 35 years and I mean I am very grateful that it has lasted that long I will always come back and do something if it is something that suits me I am in the lucky position that I'm not forced to do anything in other words I'm not starving so I can say yes or no I can play a small part or I can play a big part I can go to the theatre or I can make it in a movie very happy very happy and and isn't it it is indeed I do I am you I wish I could retire tomorrow do you I mean you don't sort of see yourself do you by any chance they're following the footsteps of on each other very famous actresses like Joan Crawford the Imaginarium Bette Davis going to horror movies no I don't but then one should never say never naturally I just thinking that in Vincent Price at least would have a leading man who was taller than you make a couple of very cold umpires actually what you ought to do I just thinking about it is remake Casablanca would mean the Bogart Rose yeah dream on parking Ingrid Bergman died 15 years ago on her 67th birthday she won three Academy Awards and in a variety of parts on stage and screen proved herself a very good actress most of all she was a star not in that brash self-promoting sense but quietly almost without trying the writer graham greene once said of her she doesn't give the effect of acting at all but of living without makeup precisely next week we feature an interview with another Hollywood legend Bob Hope until then goodbye [Music]

Channel: Memories of Movies Past

Views: 158,625

Rating: 4.86659 out of 5

Keywords: michael parkinson, bbc, casablanca

Id: SQIRTr4Pohg

Length: 31min 58sec (1918 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 01 2019