Modern Screen (Feb-Dec 1959)

Ingrid's Fifth Child (Continued from page 61) Lonely, timid of other humans, she peopled her universe with imaginary characters — the witch, the villain, the donkey. "I didn't have to be afraid of them." Her father was a merry, sweet man who indulged her fancies. "I remember telling him I wanted something when I grew up, something that would get me a lot of attention in the newspapers." The lip curls, faintly. "Well, I certainly succeeded." At twelve, she was an orphan. Her Aunt Ellen Bergman moved in to take care of the stunned child, after her father's death. Seven month's later the aunt had a heart attack and died in the little girl's arms. The relatives she lived with didn't approve, but nothing could have held her back. She was the star pupil at the Royal Dramatic Theatre School in Stockholm, and while she was still a student, she married a dentist named Lindstrom. "She was a strong woman looking for a stronger man," a drama school classmate says. There was a baby, Pia. The letters of the name stood for 'Peter, Ingrid — always.' Years later, Ingrid spoke of this. "She doesn't call herself Pia any more. She hated the name we gave her. So she's Jenny Ann — it's so hard for me to remember that." In Hollywood, where Ingrid became a star, the Lindstrom marriage floundered. She paid the bills to put him through medical school, and his male pride sought ways to get even. He ran the household like a dictator. He yelled about Ingrid's clothing bills, and insisted on absolute obedience from Pia. "What's the use of your telling me I can go to the movies?" Pia would say to Ingrid. "You know I have to wait for Papa's permission." Lindstrom would badger his wife. "Pia doesn't respect you — " Ingrid would fight back. "I don't want her to respect me, I want her to love A hopeless situation "If Ingrid was coming home at eight o'clock, Lindstrom and Pia would eat at 7:30," producer David Lewis recalls. "If Ingrid was coming home at 6:00, he and Pia ate at 5:30. I don't know, maybe he was deliberately trying to hold the child emotionally, just in case something happened. I remember going on a six -hour auto trip alone with Pia in 1951. She talked all the time — almost as if the wind would tear her words away and no one would hear them. She told me how much she missed her mother, but that she didn't want to hurt her father. In many ways, Ingrid was more of a child than Pia." As if the wind would tear her words away . . . Long, long afterward, Ingrid herself spoke of that tearing wind. "It blows this way and that way," she said, "and you have to take what life gives you." It was January of 1957, and she had not seen her daughter Pia for six years. Somehow she'd never believed it would happen. "When I left Peter, I never thought I would lose my child completely," she said, bewildered. I A good mother doesn't desert a child and go tootling off to make a movie with some Italian genius. But Ingrid did. Poor, pretty Ingrid. She fell in love on the island of Stromboli. She hadn't meant to, but she didn't see how she could help it, or change it. Even from Lindstrom, she expected compassion. She wrote him to say she was staying in Italy. "I know how this letter falls like a bomb on our house, and now you stand alone in the ruins, and I am unable to help you. Poor little papa, but also poor little mama." Lindstrom flew abroad, discovered Ingrid was pregnant, refused her pleas for divorce. It was an act of cruelty by a bitter man. He finally agreed to let Ingrid file for a mail-order Mexican divorce, but his consent came too late. Ingrid's son Robert ino was born on February 2, 1950, before Ingrid was legally free. Still Lindstrom's anger raged. He was awarded custody of Pia, but he wasn't satisfied. In 1952, when Ingrid filed for permission to have Pia visit her, Lindstrom went to court, insisted he didn't want Pia 'exposed' to Rossellini. The judge addressed the thirteen-yearold, "Do you love your mother?" "No," Pia said gravely. "I don't love my mother. I like her. I love my father. I don't want to go to Italy." Very sure, very self-contained, the voice of a young lady. And then, suddenly, the misery breaking through. "I don't think my mother cares about me too much. She didn't seem interested about me when she left — " The judge ruled against Ingrid, but castigated Lindstrom too. "Children are not chattels to be passed back and forth between parents." Chattels, to be passed back and forth between parents . . . Now there are three new chattels, Robertino, Isobella, Ingrid. Again the courts resound with charges and counter-charges, as Ingrid and Rossellini war in France and Italy. "No matter where Mr. Rossellini tries to obtain possession of my children, no matter in which court or what country, I will fight him," Ingrid said, last January. Love — and violence For this man's love, she had defied convention, had been denied her daughter, had given up her career, yet now they stared at each other blank-eyed across a wooden table, while lawyers spoke, and a judffe pondered. "He was alive," she'd said once, "and he made me feel alive — " Those were the good days. The French director Jean Renoir remembers Ingrid and Roberto rolling on the floor with their three babies. "Ingrid was like a mother dog with puppies — " In Rome, where she'd built a new home, Ingrid set aside a room for Pia. It stayed empty, but Ingrid always hoped that Pia would come. "We wrote to each other," Ingrid said. "I used to telephone her, but it was too painful to hear her voice and never be able to be near her. I'm not forcing anything. She was unhappy. Children want to be the same as other children, and there was so much fighting. Now everything was peaceful — " Ingrid and Rossellini were inseparable, and their children went everywhere with them. "So they will know we love them," Roberto said. "But what about their education, later?" Ingrid said. "I will teach them everything they have to know," Roberto said. "All they have to learn is love and violence." For seven years, there was love and violence and laughter. Summers at Santa Marinella, and a stone Robertino found and kept as his talisman. The day he lost it in the ocean, he was inconsolable, but Ingrid, skin-diving, found it. Disaster! The mother had given up any thought of working again, except with her husband, but the movies they made together were artistic and financial disasters. "Maybe I bring him bad luck," Ingrid worried. Finally, she agreed to act in a movie for Jean Renoir. He was a family friend, and it was all right with Rossellini. 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