Customer Reviews

Ingrid: Ingrid Bergman, A Personal Biography

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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.

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.

Having had a close, sweet friendship with Ingrid the last 12 years of her life, I can easily say that Ms Chandler's remembrances of Ingrid, marked by numerous interviews of family, friends & collegues rings very true!
Being privy to many personal aspects of Ingrid's life, visits to Choisel, dinners in Paris & London, etc., I was swept with nostalgia & memories of dear Ingrid as I read this marvelous story picturing Ingrid as she really was in her life.
Following a less than nice review of a play in London, Ingrid was appearing in, she wrote to me about that notice & said: "Let the dogs bark
the caravan moves on!" Typical Bergman.
Unpretentious, caring, sweet, natural, I loved Ingrid dearly, as a friend!
This book says it all!

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.

This book tells a very human story about the life of Ingrid Bergman from the time of her parents before she was born, to her early life after her mothers death, to being an actress in Sweeden Hollywood and Italy to being a wife three times and mother of four including Isabella Rossalini.

Great Book, Very interesting life!

This book was purchased as a gift, and the recipient was very well pleased.
It has great interest to people, women particularly, who were living during the period of Ingrid Bergman's stardom and scandal.

There must be some literary sweatshop someplace where enslaved people crank out this author's biographies for her. Seldom more than glorified outlines, filled in with remembered conversations with subjects always conveniently dead, she rushes ravenously from corpse to corpse, cha-CHING-ing her way through Hollywood's most elite dead, leaving little of actual substance for readers to sink their teeth into.

You could write books of this caliber simply by going to Wikepedia for your basic story, Google Images to illustrate it, and then plumbing the most money-hungry depths of your own imagination for all those remembered conversations that never happened!

The really sad part is, I love almost everyone she's ever written a book about. I just hate her books.

I enjoyed this book very much. It is another of the many books I own on Ingrid Bergman. When I bought this
book I said to myself, "What more can be said about Ingrid that hasn't been said before?" Well, I did find out
more about Ingrid in Chandler's book. It is well written and the print type is not small, but easy reading.
Chandler interviews many of Ingrid's friends and, of course, her family. For those who love Ingrid Bergman
and want to learn more about this great star, this book is a must.

Charlotte Chandler's INGRID BERGMAN: A PERSONAL BIOGRAPHY doesn't even begin to be considered amongst the comprehensive books on Bergman's fascinating life and career. Rather than delving into her subject with fresh eyes and a unique perspective, Chandler has instead chosen to re-hash information and interviews from older books. Precious little will be surprising or enlightening to Bergman's fans if they've already read "Notorious" by Donald Spoto (or even better, Ingrid's autobiography, "My Story", co-written with Alan Burgess).

Factual errors abound (indeed, you need to worry when some of Bergman's film synopses are littered with mis-remembered plot points, "The Inn of the Sixth Happiness" being the worst offender). Has Ms Chandler even SEEN this film? Ingrid Bergman is one of the most fascinating figures in the world of classic movies. Her performances in "Casablanca", "Anastasia", "Gaslight" and "Notorious", to name but a few, have yet to be equalled. She was truly a class act. It's just a pity that Ms Chandler didn't bring her own objective voice to Bergman's story. Fans will buy it nevertheless, but this book comes nowhere near to unveiling the "real" Bergman.

This book is the "personal" bio Chandler is known for, complete with in-depth quotes from key players. It is also an occasionally random writing style with a touch of gossip in its nature. This is largely because Chandler mixes sensible with unrelated anecdotes and quotes from heavy hitters, choosing to spread the wealth of strong quotes rather than tie all material to events as they happen, such as an intriguing Anthony Quinn quote on Bergman's marital scandal presented nearly a decade later when Bergman had remarried and relocated. Compared to some of the best bio authors--such as Persico, Spoto Notorious: The Life of Ingrid Bergman, and Meade's excellent Buster Keaton book--Chandler doesn't make the top echelon, but her biases are fairly contained and the information is beyond skin deep. Her decision to mix life story with half-page movie descriptions is wise, and a few pages of in-depth behind-the-scenes storytelling come with major films like Casablanca, Notorious, Anastasia and more. While she falls on the admiring side of Bergman, she does not flaunt that stance, though you may believe a thing or two is left out of this account of stunning ups and downs with no regrets. But the large number of quotes from Ingrid, her family, and other key players give this book legitimate value. Chandler knew them all.