Ingrid Ingrid Bergman, a Personal Biography

Introduction I'll be Mother," Ingrid Bergman said. She picked up the ornate silver teapot and poured. I was having tea at director George Cukor's Cordell Drive home in Hollywood with Cukor and Ingrid Bergman. Cukor had directed such films asThe Philadelphia Story, A Star Is Born, My Fair Lady,andGaslight,the film he did with Ingrid Bergman. There was a plate of rich butter cookies on the tea table, which indicated Cukor knew Ingrid well. Cukor said, "The girl always likes to make herself useful. She has such good manners. Usually. I remember once, when we first met, she talked back to me." "Oh, George," Ingrid pouted, "I never, never would have been rude to you." Cukor explained. "I had my way of chatting with actors between takes, giving them little bits of advice, perhaps a bit of encouragement to help them stay involved. OnGaslight,I offered some tidbit of un-thought-out wisdom to Miss Bergman here, and she gave mesuch a look.What a look! Then, quite unemotionally, she said to me, 'You already told me that.' "I said, 'So I did.' "'Well, I must be more careful with this young Swedish girl,' I thought. "Then, I rethought it. "No, she'll have to be more careful with me. She'll have to get used to the way I work. She did. And we became the greatest friends." Ingrid said, "Yes, that's true, except I never said what you said." "You see?" he said to us. "She hasn't changed a bit. "Ingrid was not overawed by me, then or now. No reason why she should have been. But some were. I suppose because I was their director." Cukor said it to me, "Can you imagine that our girl here made films in five languages?" "And I spoke a bit of Chinese, too, inThe Inn of the Sixth Happiness." He asked her how she managed to speak so many languages so well. She laughed. "By not speaking them so well. I admit I am very fluent in Swedish. I believe I have been able to speak the other languages as well as I do because I have such a fervent desire to communicate." I asked her in what language she thought. She answered, "I think in the language I am speaking in. It's the only way." "And when you are alone and thinking by yourself?" I asked. "English. It seems strange. Everyone would expect me to think in Swedish, my first language, but from the time I learned English, it became my thinking language. I just found it worked better for me." Cukor said he could never learn a foreign language because he was too shy. Ingrid was astounded. "You,George? I would have said you never had a shy moment in your life. As for shyness, I am the shyest person in the world. When I was a girl, I was famous for my blushes. If anyone spoke to me or even just looked at me, I changed color. But that was when they looked at Ingrid. Acting, I could be someone else. That someone else had no need to blush. That character was thrilled to have an entire audience watching, even millions." "I can understand that, my dear. Even as director, I have to play a part, and going into the part of the director allows me to say things that, as George, I would be too self-conscious to say. My public person and my private person are always both there." "Mine, too," Ingrid agreed. "My private self and my public self are one and the same. They both love being an actress. I feel most like myself when I am playing someone else. "But sometimes my private self gets in the way by being so very much concerned with finding and holding on to love." "Looking for love is tricky business," Cukor concluded, "like whipping a carousel horse." Ingrid said, "The way I see myself in my personal life was best expressed for me by Jean Cocteau: 'The dreamer is the guest of his dreams.'" Ingrid mentioned to Cukor that he had influenced the choice of a name for one of her twin daughters. "I don't think IChandler, Charlotte is the author of 'Ingrid Ingrid Bergman, a Personal Biography', published 2007 under ISBN 9780743294218 and ISBN 0743294211.