Ingrid Bergman was the almost incandescently beautiful star of the screen whose roles stretched from Joan of Arc to Golda Meir; she is perhaps most fondly remembered as Ilsa in the 1942 classic, Casablanca. Ingrid Bergman was already a leading actress in Swedish film when she arrived in America to star in 1939’s American remake of her Swedish movie, Intermezzo. She went on to star in such well-known films as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Notorious, Gaslight, and The Bells of St. Mary’s before going off to Italy to work with director Roberto Rossellini in his 1950 movie, Stromboli. Their adulterous love affair and her out-of-wedlock pregnancy made her a pariah at a time when she was at the top of her game: she was an Academy Award winner and an international star; she was married to a fellow Swede, a surgeon, and was the mother of a ten year old girl. Ingrid divorced her husband, leaving her daughter behind with him, and married Rossellini, making her home in Italy for the next several years. Consequently, she was denounced on the floor of the United States Senate, and in just as serious a move, she was disinvited on the Ed Sullivan show. To the twenty-first century sensibility, this is quite a lot of overkill, but it was devastating at the time. It wasn’t until after her second Academy Award for Anastasia that she returned to the United States, in 1958, having had two more children by Rossellini and having separated from him. By this time all was forgiven, and she went on to numerous stage, screen and television roles, and earning a third Academy Award (for best supporting actress) in Murder on the Orient Express. When she died of cancer at the age of sixty-seven, she was truly mourned by all.
