Ingrid Bergman’s letters up for auction at Chiswick Auctions

Ingrid Bergman in Intermezzo, the film that made her a star in 1939; IMDb

Letters to a friend reveal the depths of the Hollywood actress’s money problems after she split from director Roberto Rossellini

Letters from the actress Ingrid Bergman to a friend, revealing the depths of her money problems after she split from director Roberto Rossellini, and her pain at being separated from her eldest daughter, are coming up for auction at Chiswick Auctions salesroom.

She confided in British actress Ann Todd, whom she met at the beginning of her Hollywood career and with whom she was friends for many years; 17 of her letters to Ann are now going under the hammer next month, with an asking price of £2,000 – £3,000.

Ingrid Bergman with Ann Todd in Intermezzo, the film production on which they met, in which Ingrid played Ann’s piano teacher; IMDb

The Swedish actress who won three Academy awards, two Primetime Emmy awards and a Tony award, became famous in the 1940s for a string of hit films which included Casablanca (1942), For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), Gaslight (1944) and Joan of Arc (1945).

She made three films with Alfred Hitchcock: Spellbound (1945), Notorious (1946), and Under Capricorn (1949).

She arrived in Hollywood in 1939 to make Intermezzo with director David O Selznick, not speaking a word of English, and expected to make one film and return home to her husband Petter Aron Lindström and baby daughter Pia, who had stayed behind in Sweden.

Once Intermezzo made Bergman a star, her family moved to the States but Petter, a doctor, had a “professional dislike for being associated with the tinselled glamor of Hollywood” according to an interview in Life magazine.

He developed his medical practice in New York, but she was largely based in LA working continuously in Hollywood for the next decade making hit after hit.

Ingrid Bergman with Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca (1942); IMDb

She fell foul of the disapproval of conservative America when her affair with the Italian director Roberto Rossellini became known. It caused such a huge scandal in the United States she was denounced on the floor of the Senate.

Senator Edwin C Johnson announced that his once-favourite actress had “perpetrated an assault upon the institution of marriage” and branded her “a powerful influence for evil”.

Audiences felt betrayed, wrote one commentator, and she received mailbags of letters calling her a ‘bitch’ and a ‘whore’.

The severity of the backlash caused her to leave America for several years at the height of her career.

Her husband refused to let her see her daughter, or to grant her a divorce, so Ingrid Bergman’s first child with Roberto Rossellini was born when she was still married to Lindström. A week after her son was born, she divorced him under Mexican jurisdiction, and married Rossellini by proxy on 24 May 1950.

Stromboli, the first picture she made with Rossellini, bombed in the States and the couple retreated to Europe where their relationship was considered less scandalous.

In one of her letters to Ann, she wrote on July 7, 1951:

‘I am still completely shut off from my ex family. They never write, and if I didn’t telephone now and then, I would never hear from them.

‘They are supposed to come to Europe this summer, but Peter won’t take Pia to Italy, or let her be with me in this country, “this sordid country” as he puts it’.

She did not see her eldest daughter again until 1957.

Bergman and Rossellini had three children together but separated in 1956 after making a string of films that were commercial failures.

Ingrid Bergman on the set of Stromboli with Roberto Rossellini, her director and at the time, her husband; IMDb

On 21 December 1958, Bergman married Lars Schmidt, a theatrical entrepreneur whom she met through her publicist, Kay Brown. She remained married to him until 1975.

She writes movingly of her relationship with Lars:

“I am so happy with Lars that the whole world outside is almost forgotten. We live so much with and for each other. How happy I am that I finally I could experience what marriage was meant to be.”

Ingrid Bergman with Lars Schmidt; photograph Henk Lindeboom/ Anefo; IMDb

She had returned to Hollywood and won her second Academy award, for Best Actress, in 1956 for Anastasia, though Cary Grant picked up the award for her and she did not make a public appearance until three years later, when she presented the Academy award for Best Picture and received a standing ovation.

In May 1959 she wrote to Ann:

‘I am looking for some work because in the fall I must do something. Robert doesn’t pay a penny and Lars alone can’t pay for my big family.

‘So far not one good script. I was offered ‘Separate Tables’ for Theatre de Paris. After some hesitation, I turned it down. Too much work and too little money. I might do some TV instead’.

Bergman made her television debut later that year in an episode of Startime, an anthology show which presented dramas, musical comedies, and variety shows. Her second TV show, Twenty-four Hours in a Woman’s Life, was produced by Lars Schmidt in 1961.

The following year he co-produced a joint CBS and BBC television production of Hedda Garbler in which his wife starred with Michael Redgrave and Ralph Richardson.

The correspondence also throws an interesting light on some of the films Bergman and Rossellini made together and the prevailing political climate of the time.

She wrote to Ann in July 1951:

‘We have come back from Paris without making the film. Now we will make it here in the Fall instead.

‘After a good beginning with the whole cast set, very good French actors, a fine French producer, the censor just said “Everything is allowed in France but political discussions in our pictures”. And that was just what we had. You can imagine Roberto making a picture called EUROPE 51 and not talk politics?’

Ann Todd in The Seventh Veil (1945); IMDb

Ann Todd, who achieved fame through her role in The Seventh Veil (1945) and was married for eight years to director David Lean, died in 1993 at the age of 86.

The letters, which will be auctioned on 27 September, come from her estate and have not been made public before, though the details of Ingrid Bergman’s life, both her career and her personal life, were laid out with great candour in her autobiography Ingrid Bergman, My Story, published in 1981.

Ingrid Bergman’s letters to Ann Todd, up for auction at Chiswick Auctions on 27 September