Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1948)

? H 0 T 0 P L A T jewelry » IS A shining weapon for conquering hearts Designed with an antique treasure look you'll love. About $2.00 plus federal tax. design patented Coro, Inc., New York ■ Chicago Los Angeles-San FranciscoMiami. TorontoLondon How Ingrid Became Joan ( Continued from page 36) As she climbed toward the top of the list of box office names, she also neared the end of her contract with David Selznick. And one thing she kept constantly in mind was that when she had worked out her contract she would be free to do a picture about Joan. The only difficulties were that everybody in Hollywood, except Ingrid, was afraid of the subject, 'and that she had no script about Joan that she liked and could offer to a director or a studio. Without knowing any of these things, I wrote “Joan of Lorraine” in the fall of 1944, and began to think about the casting sometime in December of that year. My wife’s advice, when she had finished typing the script, was to try to get Ingrid Bergman to play it. Ingrid had been a neighbor of ours at New City, New York, a few years before. When she first came to the United States she played “Liliom” with Burgess Meredith, and that acquaintance led to her renting Burgess’s house for a time while he was in Hollywood. Ingrid and her husband, Dr. Lindstrom, came to lunch with us, and we talked about many things — including the imminence of the second World War, which was then looming over us and the possibility of American participation. Ingrid was at that time much more silent, much less assured, than she has since become. Her beauty was breath-taking, but whether she could act or not I had no idea. She did not have any of the superficial aspects of an actress. She was reserved, poised, seemingly without temperament, seemingly just an amazingly beautiful Swedish girl. BUT when you saw her on the stage 1 (and she played in both “Liliom” and ‘‘Anna Christie”) this impression vanished. Out of this girl who seemed to have no temperament came a steady flow of emotion to fill and illuminate the parts she played. She would have triumphed as overwhelmingly in the theater then as she did later in pictures if she had been more fortunate in the roles assigned to her. It just happened that Burgess Meredith (who played opposite her in “Liliom”) is not tall enough to play opposite Ingrid — and it happens, too, that Ingrid is not at her happiest when playing a prostitute, as she was in “Anna Christie.” She is so pure, so clean, so uncontaminated as a person, that to do her best she must essay a less bedraggled character than the unfortunate girl who gives her name to this early O’Neill play. Nevertheless, her ability and her amazing emotional power came through in both these revivals, and she convinced me and my wife that she was a stage actress with great possibilities. It was the memory of those two performances that made my wife certain that Ingrid was first choice for “Joan of Lorraine.” And I agreed about that. The only question in my mind was whether Ingrid was still ambitious to appear on the legitimate stage. She had become so famous in pictures since we last saw her, she was so obviously the rising star, that it seemed most unlikely that she would gamble her future on a Broadway appearance. But I went to California, taking the play with me, and when I told Ingrid what it was about, she told me the story of how long she had been trying to get herself cast in the part of Joam As soon as she read “Joan of Lorraine” she said she wanted to play it. She promised to play it, in fact, as soon as she was through with her pictufe commitments. She wanted to play it not only on -Broadway Original by in straw -textural 8PIINIV0VEN* or 100% virgin wool NEEDLEPOINT* WHITE PINK NAVY POWDER BROWN BLACK Town & Country casual to top everything you own . . . to wear with country clothes or city prints. Light as air, and it packs like a handkerchief! EVERITT HAT CO. 812 S. 6th St., Milwaukee, Wis. Please send me Everitt's Town & Country casual at 3.95 COLOR Needlepoint* □ Spunwoven* □ NAME ADDRESS ... , ^ money order P] USE COUPON check □ or write for store in your city 106