Selznick feared Bergman's German-sounding name and thick eyebrows
When Ingrid Bergman reached Hollywood in 1939 for Intermezzo, producer David O. Selznick worried she was too tall, spoke little English, and looked insufficiently glamorous. He ordered makeup artists to leave her alone—and her unaltered face became the look of Casablanca’s Ilsa Lund.
Born in Stockholm on August 29, 1915 to Swedish photographer Justus Samuel Bergman and German mother Friedel Adler, she was named after Princess Ingrid of Sweden. Orphaned young—mother dead by age two and a half, father of stomach cancer around 1929—she lived with relatives and staged plays in her father’s empty studio. A scholarship to the Royal Dramatic Training Academy, once also awarded to Greta Garbo, lasted only a year before Svensk Filmindustri hired her for films.
Swedish work built range: eleven films before age twenty-five, including Intermezzo (1936), crafted by Gustaf Molander as her first lead. En kvinnas ansikte cast her as a burned blackmailer in heavy makeup and won Venice Festival praise in 1938. One UFA picture in Berlin, The Four Companions (1938), ended her German work; she later said party membership seemed required for film careers there. She returned to Sweden and gave birth to daughter Pia.
Selznick’s English remake Intermezzo premiered September 22, 1939 opposite Leslie Howard. Hollywood followed with Casablanca (1942), an Oscar for Gaslight (1944), and three Hitchcock collaborations: Spellbound, Notorious, and Under Capricorn. A 1950 affair and pregnancy with Roberto Rossellini sparked U.S. scandal and European exile before Academy Awards for Anastasia (1956) and Murder on the Orient Express (1974). She acted in five languages and, in 1999, ranked fourth among AFI’s classic female screen legends. The unretouched look Selznick finally accepted became a template for natural screen beauty that later stars still cite.
Source: Ingrid Bergman
