Ingrid: Ingrid Bergman, A Personal Biography (Thorndike Press Large Print Biography Series) [LARGE PRINT] (Hardcover)

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Key Phrases: Ingrid Bergman, New York, Joan of Arc (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The author of many Hollywood biographies, Chandler (Hello, I Must Be Going: Groucho Marx) offers a straightforward account of one of the more intriguing Golden Age stars. Bergman died young of cancer on her 67th birthday in 1982. Her husbands, lovers, children, and the directors and actors with whom she worked, have been generous in granting interviews, and while there's not much new or exciting—aside from the well-known scandal Bergman caused when she deserted her dentist husband (Petter Lindstrom) for Italian director Roberto Rossellini (father of her twin daughters Isabella and Isotta)—there's a lot of warm reminiscences . Chandler's book will be nicely timed with Turner Classic Movies, which has made March Bergman month. 40 b&w photographs not seen by PW. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Review

"Ingrid Bergman. What images just the name evokes! But behind the icon on the screen and the scandal in the headlines was a real, flesh-and-blood woman all of us would have liked to know. Meet her now in Charlotte Chandler's "Ingrid," a biography more exciting and dramatic than most novels."

-- Sidney Sheldon

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 531 pages
• Publisher: Thorndike Press (May 2, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786294833
• ISBN-13: 978-0786294831
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.7 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #930,131 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Personally..., March 17, 2007

By	E. A Solinas "ea_solinas" (MD USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Ingrid: Ingrid Bergman, A Personal Biography (Hardcover)

Ingrid Bergman was that actress in a million who really enjoyed acting, was brilliant at it, and who seemed as pleasant as her public image would suggest, even when hypocrisy almost destroyed her career.

Charlotte Chandler tries to add a more human dimension to Bergman in "Ingrid Bergman: A Personal Biography," which contains in-depth interviews with Ingrid and many others who knew her. Chandler's style is pleasant and easy, but the book moves a bit too quickly at times -- I mean, how long were these marriages?

Daughter of a photographer and his beloved wife, Bergman originally got into acting when her late dad's girlfriend got a small role in a movie. In just a few years, she became a major star in Sweden, and married a rather humorless doctor. When a studio head saw her movie "Intermezzo," he invited her to come to Hollywood, and star in the English-speaking remake.

Her down-to-earth beauty, kindly personality and massive talent made her a massive star. But when Ingrid went to make a movie with her favorite director, Roberto Rossellini, they began an affair and she became pregnant, shocking hypcocritical Hollywood and causing her to be blacklisted. But Bergman remained honest and open, as she went through divorces, children and many more wonderful movies.

Donald Spoto already wrote the definitive Ingrid Bergman biography, but Charlotte Chandler does manage to provide some intriguing new information and details. And it definitely lives up to the "personal" aspect of it, which was more than most biographies manage to do.

If there's a flaw, it's that it goes by too quickly -- each of Ingrid's marriages seems to take place in just a few years, tops. But Chandler manages to retell Bergman's story with a warm, easy style, full of filming details and pleasant little anecdotes, such as Bergman pretending to be one of the hired help at a Hollywood banquet. And it also approaches less-handled aspects of Bergman's life, such as her daughter Isabella's fight with scoliosis.

What's more, Chandler does manage to make this biography personal -- it has many interviews not only from Bergman, but with her children, costars, friends, and many others. And not only does it focus on Bergman as a person, but on her own thoughts, such as how she never regretted leaving her first husband, since it led to the birth of her son and twins. And Chandler offers some perspectives on the people around her, from Charles Boyer to Rossellini himself.

"Ingrid Bergman: A Personal Biography" is rather bare-bones as a biography, but offers fascinating looks at Bergman's personality, and anecdotes about her life. Definitely worth reading.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ingrid Bergman, a Personal Biography, April 6, 2007

By	Barbara J. Schroeder "bookworm" (Minneapolis, MN) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Ingrid: Ingrid Bergman, A Personal Biography (Hardcover)

This was a well-written story about Ingrid Bergman...I had seen her in several movies but did not know about her background. Just things I had read and heard about her. The author really captured her fascinating life in detail from her birth until her death...and revealed how Ingrid Bergman felt about the things that were happening to her throughout her life. I thought the book was a page turner and I couldn't put it down.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Kevin Thomas Review from LA Times, March 9, 2007

By	Catherine Meyer "cranium93" (USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Ingrid: Ingrid Bergman, A Personal Biography (Hardcover)

OVER the years, writer Charlotte Chandler's friendships with an impressive array of figures of the American and European cinema have resulted in a series of revealing and engaging biographies on Federico Fellini, Billy Wilder and others. Her latest is "Ingrid," a personal biography of Ingrid Bergman. Chandler avoids analyzing her subjects and their careers, instead bringing them to life through their words and those of relatives, friends and colleagues gathered over many years. Chandler's tenacity drove her to seek out a nearly 100-year-old Leni Riefenstahl, who assured her that the reason Joseph Goebbels did not make a pass at Bergman when she made a film in Germany in 1938 was that she was too tall for him.

Chandler got her director friend King Vidor to persuade Greta Garbo to talk with Chandler about her two brief encounters with Bergman. Chandler also has amassed in this book a treasure trove of revelations from Bergman; her second husband, director Roberto Rossellini; their twin daughters, Isabella and Ingrid; and countless others. Clearly, Bergman, who died on her 67th birthday in 1982, intended Chandler to tell her life story, and Chandler's description of this book as a "personal biography" is apt, although it ends up being as much a biography of Rossellini and is all the richer for it. Bergman and Rossellini emerge as individuals of much passion and generosity of spirit, inspired and cherished by those whose lives they touched. (Anthony Quinn was forever grateful for Bergman's efforts in getting Fellini to cast him in "La Strada.")

Bergman was born in Stockholm in 1915 to a mother who died when she was 3. Her devoted, loving father died when she was 12. Bergman discovered her passion for acting as a teenager and swiftly attained screen stardom in Sweden before arriving in Hollywood, where she would become a major star of the 1940s in such films as "Casablanca," "For Whom the Bell Tolls" and "Gaslight," which won Bergman an Oscar for her role as a young wife whose husband (Charles Boyer) tries to drive her mad. She made three films for Alfred Hitchcock: "Spellbound," "Notorious" and "Under Capricorn."

As wholesome as she was talented, Bergman was much admired for her naturalness, her beauty and unpretentiousness. By the mid-1940s, Bergman was a top box office draw, yet, according to Chandler, was growing unhappy with her devoted but controlling husband, Swedish dentist-turned-physician Petter Lindstrom, who was tall, handsome and athletic but short on passion.

Seeing Rossellini's landmark neorealist "Open City," a gritty, jagged epic shot in the streets of Rome as World War II ended, changed Bergman's life, plunging her into one of the great scandals of the 20th century. Bergman famously sought out Rossellini, offering her acting services, which resulted in the film "Stromboli" (which was grievously cut by RKO for its U.S. release) and in her pregnancy by Rossellini. Lindstrom proved unforgiving. And when Bergman gave birth to a son out of wedlock, the beloved star, whose most recent Hollywood picture was "Joan of Arc," was denounced on the floor of the U.S. Senate for immorality. She would not see daughter Pia Lindstrom for six years.

Curiously, the star famed for her naturalness found it agonizing "to act natural" for Rossellini, who liked to work without a script, because she was used to the meticulous planning of the Hollywood studio system at its apex, Chandler writes. The failure of their five films together doomed their marriage, although their love for each other clearly endured. At the height of the scandal, the American public couldn't understand what Bergman saw in an already balding, stocky Italian who was shorter than she. Yet Chandler describes Rossellini, one of the giants of the world cinema, as a man of both profound depths and unsurpassable charm. Although there was a growing critical reappraisal of their films together by the early '70s, their failure at the time had been so painful and costly to her emotionally that it was cold comfort to her.

Hitchcock, who kept his lips sealed during Bergman's marriage to Rossellini, afterward told her that Rossellini had ruined her career; she countered that she had ruined his. Gratifyingly, neither was the case: Rossellini embarked on a fresh career in his awe-inspiring, documentary-like historical dramas -- he died in 1977 at age 71. And Chandler recounts how America forgave Bergman, who went on to win two more Oscars, return to Sweden for Ingmar Bergman's superb "Autumn Sonata" and make the extraordinary two-part television film "A Woman Called Golda," which won her a posthumous Emmy for her portrayal of Golda Meir.