Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1959)

and went towards the front door. Just before they reached the street, Ingrid turned to her friend, the woman who had been weeping throughout the ceremony, and gave her back her handkerchief. “Here,” she said, “wipe your eyes. Don’t be sad. I couldn’t be happier.” Then Lars and Ingrid Schmidt walked out into the bright sunlight. This time they did not get into separate cars. Ingrid and Lars climbed into one limousine; her friend and Lars’ business associates entered the other. Across the street, the photographer gunned his sports car and started to follow them. The chase was brief. Lars Schmidt’s chauffeur was skillful and nerveless. He soon left the photographer’s car far in the lurch. At Westminster’s Swedish Church, the limousine pulled up to the vestry entrance. Inside, the Vicar, Reverend Sven Evander, was waiting for them. He pronounced the benediction and gave the Church’s blessing to the union of Ingrid Bergman and Lars Schmidt. When they returned to the street, Lars helped Ingrid into the car. Then he bent and kissed her hand, just beneath the wedding ring, and said, “Wait a moment. I’ll be right back.” He went up to a woman who was selling flowers in front of the church, pressed a bill into her hand, and returned with an entire tray of violets. Ingrid took one bouquet, held it up, and buried her face in it. When she raised her head, she was crying. She fumbled in her pocketbook for a handkerchief, realized she had returned it to her friend, and reached over and pulled Lars’s out of his vest pocket. He whispered something to her, she laughed, and the car pulled away. At a swank London hotel the other members of the wedding party were waiting in a private dining room for the Schmidts. And the photographer, the same one who had crashed the wedding, was waiting there, too. “How did you get here?” Lars asked. “I followed the wrong car, the other car,” he answered, “but I guess this is just my lucky day.” “Looks like it is,” Lars answered. “Well, if you can’t lick them, join them. Won’t you be our guest for lunch? But no pictures while we’re eating. All right?” “Fine,” said the photographer, “I’m hungry.” And he had plenty to eat, as did all the rest. Lobster and turkey salad and Swedish cheese and bottles and bottles of French champagne. And when the wedding luncheon was over, Lars invited him to accompany them to the airport in their limousine. “Just as far as the airport,” Lars emphasized, “not to Paris. We don’t want you following us there.” “I may be there before you,” he said. “Oh, no,” Ingrid groaned. In Paris during their two-day honeymoon, they managed to dodge photographers— the persistent one who had tracked them down in London, and all the others as well. But when they went to their home at La Grange aux Monines (Harvest Barn) near the village of Choisel about 25 miles from Paris, things began to go badly. After her first joyful moments of reunion with her son, 9-year-old Robertino, and her twin daughters, 7-year-old Isabella and Isotta, Ingrid discovered that her most dependable servants, Jeannette and Pierre, had left her without notice. The nursemaid was still there, but the house was quite a mess and someone had to clean up a bit. So Ingrid, without unpacking her bags, began to straighten up. And Lars, not to be out done in the emergency, went into the kitchen and began to cook dinner. When the cooking was well under way — and the house was beginning to look livable again — Ingrid and Lars gave the children the presents they had bought for them in Paris and London. And then the entire family took a short walk around the estate. First they visited the stables and Lars gave a piece of sugar to Robertino’s special horse. Then they went past the chicken coop and sheep pen and strolled through the gardens. Ingrid turned to Lars, as the children ran ahead, and said, "We must plant violets, lots of violets. From now on, they’re my favorite flower.” Suddenly there was a huge commotion down by the front gate. Lars ran down towards the high wall which protected the house and grounds from trespassers. The watchdogs were barking and bellowing, and men’s voices could be heard from the It teas altvays the children who suffered most, Ingrid thought. First, it had been Pia. Now, would it be Robertino and her twins, I sotta-I ngrid and Isabella? top of the wall. When Lars arrived, he saw they were photographers and he asked them to leave. Instead, they pointed their cameras at him and started snapping pictures. Lars stood still, helplessly, and then turned and motioned for Ingrid and the children to return to the house. Some of the cameramen had turned telescopic, long-range lenses on Lars’ wife and the children, and were clicking away. One photographer jumped down from the wall onto the grounds of the estate. This was too much! Lars unleased one of the huge watchdogs, and the cameraman’s friends pulled him up to safety. But they did not go. They just stood on the wall, shooting picture after picture of Lars and his retreating family. Back in the house, Ingrid called their friend, Robert Frelon, the mayor of Choisel, who also happened to be the contractor who was converting their estate of 22 little rooms into less and larger rooms. In a matter of moments, the gendarmes arrived and drove the newsmen off the walls. At the height of the commotion, Ingrid reappeared on the lawn and cried hysterically to Lars, “Can’t they ever leave us alone? At our wedding! Even in a hospital! And now they are at our own home.” Even in a hospital! Lars knew exactly what she meant. She had told him all about it, and of course he had read about it in the newspapers at the time. And as he led her past the herb garden, the vegetable garden, and the flower garden, past the tennis court he was building for Robertino, towards the house, she remembered the day that Robertino was born. The day that Robertino was born . . . February 3rd, 1950. Four months before her divorce became final from Peter Lindstrom, the day she gave birth to Roberto Rossellini’s son in Rome. And the same photographers and reporters who had followed her and her lover to Stromboli, after she had left her husband Peter and her child Pia in Hollywood, and who had prowled up and down outside her apartment in Rome during the eighth and ninth months of her pregnancy, wouldn’t even leave her in peace for a few hours now that she was actually having her baby. She heard screams and shots, and one of the nuns told her that a photographer had tried to scale the walls of the Villa Margherita Clinic and had failed. She heard scuffling in the hall and shouts, and another nun told her that a reporter had disguised himself as a doctor and had tried to get to her room. And then she heard nothing at all as they wheeled her into the delivery room, nothing until the doctor leaned over her and said, “It’s a boy.” But later she heard yells, and screams, and the sound of feet running up and down the corridors of the hospital. Two hours after Robertino was born, the mob of people outside the walls had battered down the front gates and poured into the hospital halls. Photographers and reporters had raced through the rooms, hunting for her. The nuns had formed a human wall outside her door and that alone had stopped them from breaking in. That — and the Carabinieri who had finally got the mob under control. During the remainder of the time she had remained at the hospital, armed guards stood in front of her room day and night. She was forbidden to open her windows, for in a building across the street photographers took turns in training telescopic cameras on her room, hoping to get pictures of her and her baby. . . . The memory faded as she saw Robertino and his sisters standing in the doorway of their home. Ingrid dropped on her knees and cradled the three youngsters in her arms. The little girls began to cry. Robertino squirmed uncomfortably for a moment, and then he dropped his head and buried it in his mother’s hair. In the excitement, they had all forgotten for a moment that it was Christmas eve. The next morning the children were up bright and early and Ingrid and Lars joined them in opening the presents. Robertino had given his mother a camera, and she laughed and cried as she held it. The girls insisted that she take their pictures. So soon the whole family was out in front of the house. Ingrid posed Lars and Robertino and Isabella and Isotta together. Out in the sunlight, with the huge wall protecting them from the outside world, all was peaceful, all was safe. She laughed . . . and snapped the picture. At noon Roberto Rossellini’s chauffeur arrived and the children were taken to Paris to spend the rest of the holidays with their father there. This was the agreement between Roberto and Ingrid, but as usual when she saw them drive away, she had the horrible feeling, for a fleeting second, that she would never see them again. Lars put his arm around her and said, “They’ll be back in a week. Don’t worry. Let’s go in. I have to cook lunch.”