Senory Senora

One day last week in raucous, dusty Juarez, just across the border from El Paso, lawyers and witnesses huddled for 45 minutes in a judge's office over a heap of official papers. In Rome, where night was falling, Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini sat side by side in church, their minds on the doings in Mexico. At Juarez, at last, Attorneys Javier Alvarez and Arturo Gomez-Trevino rose from the huddle, stood before Judge Raul Orozco. "Do you," the judge asked Alvarez, "as the representative of Roberto Rossellini, know if it is his will to take Ingrid Bergman as his lawful wedded wife?" The same kind of question was put to Gomez-Trevino, acting for Cinemactress Bergman. Then the judge announced: "In the name of the Republic of Mexico, of the laws and of this society, I pronounce Roberto Rossellini and Ingrid Bergman man and wife."

Champagne & Joy. The newlyweds were back in their luxurious Rome apartment in time to get a long-distance phone call confirming their marriage by proxy. Summoning a dozen friends, they broke the news and began pouring champagne. "I know it's a strange sort of marriage," said Ingrid, "but ... I'm glad that I'm married." She wore a wedding gift from her new husband: a gold chain bracelet dangling a gold miniature policeman's whistle. To Mrs. Renzo Rossellini, the bridegroom's sister-in-law, Ingrid looked "transfigured with joy."

More than three months had passed since the Swedish actress had borne a son to the Italian director and received a Mexican divorce from Dr. Peter Lindstrom, her husband of twelve years. But her hopes for a marriage in Rome had been dashed by law. Italy would not authorize a wedding unless Sweden certified that Swedish Subject Bergman was free to marry. And since the Swedish courts do not recognize Mexican divorces and have not yet acted on Ingrid's application for a divorce in Sweden, she was still the wife of Dr. Lindstrom. (In fact, Lindstrom last week shrugged off both her divorce and remarriage, still planned to go ahead with his own suit for divorce in California.)

Persecution & Talk. The Mexican marriage certificate was promptly mailed to Rome, where Italian law apparently binds officials to accept it as valid. Then, as the wife of an Italian national, Ingrid will be an Italian subject, no longer under Swedish jurisdiction.

The actress fervently hoped that the marriage would end "the unwarranted persecution by the international press which has made our life hell by destroying our privacy." Only the week before, during one of her rare excursions from her apartment, Rossellini had had a brawl with photographers waiting to snap them. Complained Ingrid: "I cannot even take my baby out of this house because I know there will be a battery of photographers badgering us. I cannot even go to take a peep at my baby on the terrace because [of the] photographers . . ."

At week's end, as the Rossellinis planned a honeymoon trip to Paris and London, with their baby, a friend of Ingrid's let it be known that Ingrid was hoping to resume her movie career soon--as soon as all the talk blows over.

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