EDITORIAL FROM MARY

Since the last issue appeared we have had another Ingrid Day - August 29th. This year it was on a Sunday, which also happened to be the day of the week on which Ingrid was born in 1915 and the say on which she died in 1982. There was much activity in the Chat Room in our new Yahoo Club and e-mail messages flying back and forth!  I never know whether to feel happy or sad on that day - usually part of the day I feel sad, then I think, well, Ingrid isn't really dead and she gave us so much joy with her films and plays - we should be HAPPY!!!!!

Thank you once again for all your new via e-mail messages and for the continuing and growing friendship between Ingrid's fans. I am sure she would be pleased about this. She used to be rather overawed by us and couldn't understand what all the fuss was about, but I think that, now, she DOES understand what a significant woman she was and accepts that she is, and always will be, our goddess.

NEWS

I suppose the most important news is that we now have a club on Yahoo - and it's thriving very well! I would like to thank Pat Webb for suggesting this to me. I think  the minds of Ingrid fans must be linked in some way, because Pat started a club [just in case I didn't] and Matt also started one. We agreed that we should keep only the one and call it Ingrid Bergman International. I also joined the Cary Grant club on Yahoo and the two that are there for Julie Andrews -just to make comparisons, really. I have also looked at the Katharine Hepburn club. Not wishing to make us TOO big-headed, but ours is definitely the most active. We now have a significant photo album, started off by Pat and added to by Mika and then by myself. Please, if you have any photos you would like to add, do upload them. More on this below.

My dear friend, Lucy Trapp, went to South Carolina for her holiday this summer and, on her way back to her home in Indiana, visited Gatlinburg, where "A Walk in the Spring Rain" was made. She sent me a detailed account of her "detective" work there and included some fascinating photos of the locations. I have decided to edit Lucy's account and ask Matt to put it on the Complete Ingrid Bergman Page as a separate article.

Mika Raatikainen visited Stockholm this summer. He told me that the weather was remarkably warm and sunny - just right for taking photos. And that is what he did! He visited all the addresses where Ingrid lived in Stockholm and photographed them. Now, that really IS a labour of love! He has created a special album on our Yahoo Club for the Stockholm photographs and they really are unique. If you haven't joined the club yet, you simply HAVE to, if only to see Mika's photos. Thank you again, Mika!

Willem Smit, who lives in the Netherlands, sent me photographs he took in Cheyne Gardens, Ingrid's final home in London. I thought it would be a good idea to create another small album for these on our Yahoo club and I have started on that. At the time of writing I have only uploaded one photo, but the others will be there shortly.

"The Turn of the Screw" was shown on one of the American television stations earlier this year. This was a significant and exciting event - Ingrid's first television play and it won her an Emmy. I would like to thank Malinda for making the video available and especially to thank Michelle Fryou, who copied the video for several of us fans. Michelle also has many of Isabella Rossellini's television appearances on chat shows, on video, and has copied them. For your kindness in sharing all of this and for the time it takes to copy these videos, many thanks, Michelle!

I am gathering information for my "Making of The Inn of the Sixth Happiness" article. As a result of an e-mail which I sent to the Beddgelert web site, I have been contacted by four people in the area. Beddgelert is a beautiful village in the heart of Snowdonia and was the centre for location filming. The sets and locations were, however, spread out around the mountains and are difficult to find without "inside information". I wish to thank Tim Harvey, Ruth Orkney-Work, Phyllis Morris and Chris Davis for the information they have already given me. More about them next time..... I doubt if the article will be ready for the page by then!

Look out for the Intermediate Level Quiz, which Matt will be putting on the page shortly. One contributor to the guestbook suggested that we needed a new quiz, so I sat down and wrote one and "It's much harder!" as Ingrid said of the second reader she handed out to the people of Pei Chu in "The Inn".

Pia Lindstrom moderated some American Theatre Wing seminars, which were broadcast in May on CUNY – TV, which is the cable station of the City University of New York. She moderated two Performance seminars. These seminars also appear in the fall, so Ms Lindstrom may be appearing again.  Information from Michelle Fryou

CASABLANCA

Ingrid's most loved film -at least to those who are not, perhaps, serious fans - is being shown on a satellite television station next week. I thought I would share with you this alliterative description of it from today's Daily Mail: " Memorable, moving and magnificent". That sums it up!!!!

Many people, when you say "Ingrid Bergman" will automatically say "Casablanca", as in those word association tests which psychologists do!  I think that, for many of us, another film would spring to mind. I know we have our special favourites. Please write about the one that's special for YOU, for the next issue!

NOTORIOUS: A brief review for Sky Television

“In Forties Rio de Janiero, loyal American Ingrid Bergman, whose father has been convicted of espionage, falls in love with U.S. agent Cary Grant, who then coolly uses her to catch the head of the Nazis’ Brazilian spy network, Claude Rains. Hitchcock’s superb thriller, one of the best films he made in Hollywood, bears all the familiar hallmarks of the Master of Suspense but, as usual, it is just as much about the games that people play as about conventional thriller techniques. Most of the tension arises out of Grant’s cruel manipulation of Bergman’s fragile emotions, driving her to despair; and the shifting relationships between the characters are based on less-than-noble motives. In clever contrast to all these unpleasant goings-on, the film looks magnificent, slick and polished with stunning set pieces, including one memorable image: an overhead shot down a long staircase, slowly zooming in to Bergman standing with her hands behind her back holding a key – which plays a significant part in the plot – tightly in her hand.”  Yvette Huddleston

“A WOMAN CALLED GOLDA” by Yelena Severina

"A Woman Called Golda" is one of my favorite films, where I think Ingrid
Bergman gave her audience the unforgettable and very moving performance. She
played Golda Meir, Israeli Prime Minister, and she managed to portray this
strong and powerful woman beautifully.Sadly, for Ingrid Bergman it became
the last role in her remarkable career,and she finished this film less than
a year before her death.Every time when I watch it I always admire
Ms.Bergman, who decided to act in this miniseries despite her severe illness
and battle with cancer.She played Golda Meir in later years as Prime
Minister, where Golda Meir also had to face the fatal illness.Perhaps,
because of this similarity in the lives of these two different women, I
always think that playing Golda, Ms.Bergman was also playing herself, saying
her 'good bye' to camera and to all of us.
For her performance in "A Woman Called Golda", Ingrid Bergman was
posthumously awarded with Emmy.In her interviews Ms.Bergman always said that
all her life she wanted to change and to play different characters.I think
that in "A Woman Called Golda" she was different from all the other
characters that she'd ever played.Although, it is very sad to watch this
film, knowing that there will never be another one after this, Ingrid
Bergman made it very memorable, by playing "one of the greatest women of the
century" and always being one.  Yelena Severina, San Jose, California

THE TURN OF THE SCREW  [Television play; 1959]  by Mary

As always, Ingrid gets right into her character – this time as the governess to two children, about whom she knows nothing, in a house about which she knows nothing…. until she begins to discover evil. Ingrid’s facial expressions tell everything about her gradual awakening to the fact that Miles and Flora are possessed by the devilish ghosts of the former employees – Peter Quint and Miss Jessel. At first Ingrid displays a kind of intellectual enquiring which reminded me of her performance in “Spellbound” – that determination to get at the truth.

Then – as she sees the ghosts and Mrs Grose [the housekeeper] does not, the fear that she herself may be deluded, the self doubt, begin to appear. The scene where the knows that Flora sees Miss Jessel and she sees Miss Jessel, but Mrs  Grose fails to do so. Is nothing short of tremendous [and tremulous!]. Ingrid throws herself on the ground in a torment of anguished frustration. Then – she takes hold of the situation again. She is strong. Flora and Mrs Grose must leave so that she and Miles can lay the ghosts once and for all.

In the final scene, Peter Quint appears to them both – Ingrid forces Miles to confront him – the final turn of the screw -  and Quint disappears, gone for ever. Simultaneously, Miles dies in Ingrid’s arms. It’s the end of a drama that grips and torments the viewer and leaves one exhausted. Ingrid has carried her audience along with every word, gesture and expression.

For her performance in “The Turn of the Screw” Ingrid received her first Emmy Award .

CHOICE OF POEM

Phyllis, one of my new friends in Beddgelert, sends me the parish magazine each month. It was in one of these that I found the anonymous poem, which I’m sure I’ve read somewhere before. Here it is:

“Do not stand by my grave and weep;
 I am not there. I do not sleep,
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
 I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning’s hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die.”

Ingrid has no earthly grave:her ashes have long mingled with the sand and tiny rocks that move in the sea between Denmark and Sweden, but thus she has become part of the sea, part of our planet Earth – and will be with us for all time. So, she did not die and, when I look out on a clear night, Ingrid is the brightest star I see. This is not sad; it’s as Ingrid said when she heard she had won the Oscar for “Anastasia”:  “Happy, happy, happy!!!”

If you have any comments on this issue of The Ingrid Chronicle or would like to contribute to future issues, please e-mail me at mhutchings@taunton-cyber.co.uk
Always for Ingrid!   Your editor, Mary