Off the Pedestal

Nothing that reached the screen last week seemed nearly so exciting to cinemagoers as the off-screen crisis in the life & love of one of the cinema's top-ranking stars. In an announcement from Rome, Actress Ingrid Bergman, drawn and upset, told the world that she was quitting not only her twelve-year-old marriage but also her lucrative and laurel-sprigged movie career.

Ingrid had teetered on her celluloid pedestal last spring when headlines carried reports of a superheated romance with Italian Cinemaster Roberto (Paisan, Open City] Rossellini. Ingrid's husband, Swedish Dr. Peter Lindstrom, rushed to see the pair in Italy. Ingrid and Rossellini stopped work on a movie and went into a huddle with the doctor, but the three emerged with a statement that left the triangle standing (TIME, May 16). Last week, goaded by day-to-day newspaper reports about her affair with balding, 43-year-old Director Rossellini, Ingrid chose to step down off the pedestal under her own power.

Malicious Gossip. "It was my desire," said her statement, "not to make any declaration until the conclusion of the picture I am now making. But persistent malicious gossip that has even reached the point where I am made to appear as a prisoner has obliged me to break my silence and demonstrate my free will. I have instructed my lawyer to start divorce proceedings immediately. Also, at the conclusion of my present picture, it is my intention to retire into private life." Hollywood, which had already written off Ingrid's marriage, assumed that she planned to marry Rossellini, though his

Italian friends said that he was more skittish than ever about marriage. The town gawked at the idea that she was chucking the movies, then brushed it skeptically aside. Next day, in an interview in Rome with the New York Post Home News's Earl Wilson, Actress Bergman backtracked a little, but left it plain that she was fed up with the life of a movie star.

Terrible Lies. "I just want to finish this picture and quit," she said, "because I am mentally and physically exhausted and very unhappy . . ." She accused the press of subjecting her husband to "abuse" and telling "terrible lies" about Rossellini ("It seemed they were just trying to kill him"). But what really decided her on quitting, she added, was what happened to her ten-year-old daughter recently on a Minnesota farm. "Some newspapermen dressed themselves as broom sellers to try to get a statement out of her. That was inhuman . . .

"Of course, [the press treatment] was my fault, too. You try to keep things quiet. The thing is that a movie star is a ridiculous commercial product, and the public tells you what to do. One women's group wrote me that I had once been a perfect example for mothers and now I was a horrible example. They saw me in Joan of Arc and thought I was a saint. I'm not. I'm just a human being."

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