Conversation with Ingrid Bergman

The following program is from NET, the National Educational Television Network. During the run of Eugene O'Neill's more stately mansion, more stately mansions in Los Angeles, Cecil Smith, drama critic of the Los Angeles Times, talked with international film, stage and television star, Ingrid Bergman,

on stage at the Amundsen Theatre. This program, as long as we're on your set, this is Deborah's Garden, and really the center of your life and the play. I thought we might play itself more stately mansions. Yes. The play that brought you back to this country to the American stage for the first time in 21 years. How do you feel about it now? You've been in it three months and working close with it? Yes, so I love it more and more. It's so rich and material in thoughts and it's so profound and it's so... You discover every evening, we discover something new. And as a matter of fact, we continue to work on it and put in lines and take out, because as you know, the origin of script is so much longer than what we do, I think. And when it was produced first in Sweden, it ran about five hours. Yes, it was almost five hours. And of course, it was done in Sweden because O'Neill, like the Swedish people, I think it was because it was so influenced by Strenberg.

And the Swedes have grown up on that type of theater and they understand O'Neill, maybe better than the Americans, I don't know. However, he himself had decided that his wife could give the plays to Sweden first. So that's how it happened that it was first done in Sweden. But I remember you telling me when you first started rehearsals, you were almost with anguish. You wondered, are you doing the right thing? Are you doing the right thing to do this play? Yes. And O'Neill said that it should be destroyed. Yes, of course, when you have read that he actually sat down and decided as he had not finished his plays, he had not trimmed them down to the size that he wanted. And also throws down a lot of ideas and he has notes on this and that and maybe rewrites the same scene several times. That he himself wants to choose exactly the right phrase and put that together and he wouldn't let anybody else do it. So all his plays he destroyed except touch of the poet, which he had. You mean in the cycle?

In that cycle. Of nine plays. Yes. What was the title of it? The tale of... The tale of possesses himself disposed of. That's right. It is the tone. It is very different. That's why I wanted you to say it. So in that cycle, only touch of the poet, he had finished. So you don't know if he really wanted this play to be produced or not. But I feel that he had come so close to a finished play. The only thing was that it was extremely long and it was repetitious in places and you have a feeling that if the right man could come with the feeling for O'Neal, he could just take out the unnecessary bits of it. And I feel that for some strange reason this man who has never met O'Neal and he's not American, but he has a tremendous sensibility and a feeling that comes right from his heart. It is not with his brain. It is with his heart. He feels every word. And it is wonderful to work with him because he can explain better than anybody that I have ever worked with what the author meant as if he felt it himself.

Now, almost everything. Now the play has been alternately, as you well know, damned and praised. Yes. But almost everything I have read about it, almost everything that has been written about it, has been as this last remnant of America's greatest playwright, this lost play. Yes, but that is why I feel that we are doing the right thing. We are playing it because how can you keep the greatest playwright, at least I consider him that? How can you keep his play in a drawer for 30 years and is that never going to be shown? Of course, you can go to Yale University and read it, but how many people do that? And in his minuscule handwriting? Yes. How do you feel about it as a play? Suppose O'Neill, you had no idea who the author was. This was a new play that came up. I've never read any judgment of it as a piece of theater and entity of itself, not as part of a cycle. Well, I must say that if I had just been given this play as it is,

and not knowing who had written it, I would still accept to do it, because it is an extraordinary part, my part, and the other woman's part, and I also naturally think that even the man's part is excellent, but I have read in certain critics that they consider the two women's parts so important and that the men... Why would O'Neill's women anyway? I think the women are the most powerful. Yes, maybe they are, because I remember several other parts that I would have liked very much to do, and maybe it's not too late. My point. Morning becomes the lecture, but of course you have done that quite recently, but I think it is absolutely wonderful. And, oh, there are lots of them. But, I mean, I would have accepted that play anyway, just on the basis of these extraordinary parts. And I think that it is a theater. I think it's very good theater. When you were growing out the one thing, were you conscious of O'Neill and Sweden? Yes, or yes, we have played... I would think every one of his plays. And...

As long as I can remember, since I came into the theater myself and started dramatic school in Sweden, they were playing strange interlude, for instance. And I remember seeing that and then following all the others. I haven't seen Anna Christie that I played myself years later, but I saw Gerva in the movie. But when you came to this country, I really was the second time you came to this country. Yes. You met O'Neill. Yes, I met him. But did you knew the reputation? Of course, I had seen something. But really, you had just a very young actress at the time. Yes, but as I say, I had been in Sweden after all. I went to the theater always, even before I started in dramatic school myself. In Sweden, we have a very nice thing. I don't know if it exists now, but it didn't my days. You could buy tickets in school for very, very little money. And you got a season ticket. And you went to all the theaters. You know, from musical comedies and to dramatic shows. And I don't remember.

Maybe it was ten performances during the winter. And it was one prize for the ticket. And you could sit in the front row on one performance. And the next time you were way up, we are up there. Many of the city theaters, like the Almonds and even Los Angeles, have to do a student program. Certainly. And it was very cheap. So that already, at that time, young people started to get an interest in the theater. It wasn't just movies because you could afford to go to the theater. And you had the chance of getting a very good seat one day. And the next time you got not so good. But you know, among these ten... You were just on the sole seats. No, it wasn't evening. One evening a week. The theaters gave the theater to... To the children. Or it was a matinee, for instance. They would put up a matinee at four o'clock, and do an extra shows for the students. And it was... I know from the actors when I acted on the stage in Sweden myself. The enthusiasm was wonderful. It was wonderful to play to these young people because they were more grateful than the audience that came with night. I remember him crying one time telling me that he was playing Richard the Third. And they had just finished with a series of student performances. And they were beginning the adults.

And he said, now we've had the hip. Now we'll have the square. Oh, yes. Well... I mean, I learned on Neil already in those early days because I went to see the place that they gave then. So I knew when I did Anna Christie, I knew I was doing. And tell me about the real work. This was right at the beginning of the war in 1941. Yes. You'd come to this country. This was the second trip here. Yes. I came in 39. But then I only came for that one movie. It's an intermezzo. Intermezzo that you'd made earlier in Sweden. Yes. And then you came back really on the last boat out of Dinoa, wasn't it? Yes. Yes. With your daughter. With my daughter. Yes. And she was just one year old. From where I was. And then... And then you played Lilliam on Broadway with... Where I just married it. Yes. Now I've heard a story that the producer and my don't know and don't remember well. Vincent Fried. Vincent Fried. Yes. I actually thought he was hiring Signe Haasel. Yes. Well, it came about that.

Signe. Not a brilliant Swedish artist. Yes. We all the same age, went to dramatic school together. And she went into the theatre. And I, right after the dramatic school, went into the movies. Though I came back and did two plays in Sweden before I came over to America. But it was a limited engagement, you know, temporarily. And she went in for constant theatre, theatrical work. And after she'd been at that for a couple of years, she went into movies too. And then she got an engagement in Hollywood. And then she came over to America about six months after I came. And he got us confused. And Signe Haasel had done... She does have a very beautiful woman I love there. Yes. Yes. And, you know, they couldn't tell one's sweet from the other, I suppose. And she had done all this theatrical work and was very good in the theatre. So he thought that he was safe hiring her. And then when I started to rehearse, and I was complaining that I was so nervous because it was years since I had been on the stage, and that I had done very little stage work

and just limited time in two plays in Stockholm. You know, he realised that he had made a mistake. He had thought it was a dance. Did you have a good reaction? Yes, or yes, we did. However, that was a little late. It was just before the opening night. He had to go ahead with it. Anyway, it worked out alright, and it was very nice. Of course, I was very worried because my English was so poor. I had worked and worked and worked to get that part right. But I still do work and work. I know. You want to say that people forget that English is not your native time. Yes, they forget it absolutely. They, you know, kind of surprised when now and then comes in the wrong pronunciation. But of course, it is a double work because opening night I am not ready with the playing. Opening night I am about where the actors are after two weeks of rehearsal. Because of the language? Because of the language. I cannot perform until maybe another month later. When, you know, there are different muscles that work when you speak a different language.

And until you get it absolutely... What do you have to translate in your mind? No, I don't think so. No, the thoughts are the language that you are speaking. And if I speak French, I'm sure if I would think about, you know, give me glass of water or whatever. It would be in French because it follows what you are talking. But, you know, it is just to get the mouth and everything is so easy. And the words come so easy that you can think. You know, opening night I keep thinking of the words still. And now, when I get into the play and I have had more time with it, I can think of what the words mean. I want to know about that first meeting with Elil. They themselves brought you to Hollywood but they didn't have a picture for you. Yes, he had an intervention. Oh, then you mean when I came back the second time? No, the war had broken out. And of course, everybody in Hollywood was terribly concerned. And they went into the army and they did all kinds of army work. And the entertainment world, for a moment, dropped completely out. So I went back to Broadway and tried to find a job.

And that's how Lillian came up. Then you came back out and persuaded David to produce an acoustic for you. Yes, then I came back and did some movies, Rage in Heaven. And Dr. Jacqueline Mr. Hyde or something. I don't quite remember now how many Adam had four sons there. However, there was a period and I had nothing to do. And I was very worried about getting too far away from the theatre, which I have always wanted to stay close to, because I know that the day will come when the theatre will mean more in your life than the movies because you cannot stay in the movies forever, because there are no parts for you. There's a certain period. And so I persuaded him to let me do a play. And this lovely theatre in Santa Barbara was there. And the empty, yes. So we did Anna Christie. And then I took it up outside New York to make the wood. But that was only for a week and that was all. But in San Francisco, when Mrs. O'Neill, Calato O'Neill, came to see the play and came back.

Yes, she came to see the play. And didn't see it because he was killed and he was kind of hiding already then. So he was living in Tower. Yes, wonderful Chinese. How so she came picked me up and drove me there. Because he wanted to meet you. Yes. He must have seen some movie or I don't know. And I sat there in the room and I will never forget when he came down because he was such a beautiful man. He was very tall and very slender. And this long face, but his eyes are what everybody talks about. And I like to repeat it too because it's just something that you can never forget. The eyes were so deep and so dark. And it was just like you got lost looking at him. It was like you had a feeling that you could read his soul. I've met poets. You look, you talk to Robinson Jeffers was one. You look like he saw so much more than you. Yes, exactly. And you had a feeling you didn't have to say anything because he already read your thoughts somehow.

So he took me up to his study after we had tea or lunch or whatever it was. And there he showed me all these plays. And he was working at all of them at the same time because it was the same family in different generations. And I think it would have been so wonderful if we could just have read them even if they were not finished because even in more stately mansions, you know, Sarah and Simon have four sons. And the father says one will go into the shipping, one into banking, one into politics. And the fourth one probably will be the poet again. And then those four plays would come out there. However, he was working on it all. And then he asked me. It was a portrait of an American family for 100 years of American life. He was 160. And that far he wanted to go back and bring it up to today. In those days, I mean, 30 years ago.

And he asked me if I would sign up and work for him because he wanted the same company to do all the parts. You mean you as a character in the first play would repeat as your daughter and granddaughter? Yes, and then maybe play a distant relative or play a new character that came in. And that somebody said you look like. I don't know what he had in mind, but he wanted the same faces. And he wanted also, naturally, he wanted a group of people that understood him and that would play well together. And that, like any theatre, you know, you have the same people. And certainly they get used to each other and work easier together. But they know each other. But the whole cycle he told you would take six years to perform? Yes. That was the trouble that I was very, very flattered and very happy when I heard that he was... ...anxious to have me. But he said I had to sign up for six years because before he had produced and directed all these nine plays, six years would have gone by. And I had just come to Hollywood and I saw that career ahead of me. And of course I had signed up with David Satsnik.

I couldn't break it. And when your younger or six years seems like a long time, it's a long time. So that's why I was very touched when Jose Quintero called me and said here is one of those plays. And you know, I said it comes beyond somebody's calling me from the beyond. This play, Debra, the character of Debra herself, who goes into this summer house at the end of the play. And it really retreats into allusion. Does she retreat into madness? I had this feeling in the program. Well, that's up to you because he left it open. And you never know, we know that she was able to hypnotize herself into a state of dream, where she dreamt she was this beautiful woman and the men were so in love with her. And she was very clever and she was... This would be more of her sign, isn't it? This allusion that she brings them back into the dreams before...

No, she brings herself back into this country because everything that was of today, which is 1840. She felt was horrible and there was business and it was greed and it was trying to doggie doggie. So she went back into this lovely world, even though she realized that even in those days it wasn't much better, but somehow it had more of a elegance over it. It was more beautiful. It was a dream world. No blur, yes. And then there was a dream world. And of course I think that she didn't have any love of the kind of love that she had expected from her husband. And she was too dignified and too well educated to ever try in any way to get out and have any kind of love on the side. So her concentration became the love for her son. And in her dream world she surely mistook now and then the face of the king or somebody who was in love with her. It was her son's face.

So she was able to hypnotize herself into these. I used the word hypnotized, but I don't know. I mean, we can all dream ourselves back into a state of fantasy. That when she goes into the summer house, she has been torn between... For the love of her son, these two women have been so torn between themselves. To fight for him, which is a duel to death, that the man has put them up to no. He fights. He lets one woman fight the other. Because they were in perfect unity. But united, they were too strong for the one man. He couldn't fight the two women, so he divided them. And now they fight each other. I don't think they have the two elements of all women. Of course. They are. They aren't the sexual, sensual, and the elegant and beautiful. No, exactly. That is exactly what he wanted, but they were unfortunately two women. And he had to divide them. And so she is naturally in her fantasy and her mind.

She is weakened. But we will never know if she was weakened to such a point that she goes into complete madness. In the six weeks that the play has been playing on this stage, in our fangiless, I mean, you continually worked on that. Continually worked on it. Yes, because it has such possibilities. And it can be played that she, herself, renounces her son. Because she realizes that the greatest love that you can have is to give your life for the one you love. So she gives up. But by that time, when she does give up, she can also have in mind that I will give up, but he will never forget me. You know, she can be that nasty or she can be very... Very rational when in your interpretation. Well, sometimes I play it completely, but I tell you, even if I have in mind one evening that I am completely mad. And I don't know anything. I don't know where I am.

The king is in here. And I'm going to live with the king or the emperor or the Zaro who is in there. It comes out about the same. The words are the same. And it is up to you. You feel mad or you feel rational. It comes out about the same. Because if I try to play madness to you now, how will you ever know if I play it? Or if I really am? You would say I could see in her eyes that she was playing it and acting it out. She was not real. And I could see she had a glint. You know, maybe you can. Maybe I'm such a good actor and you will not know. You know, years ago, and I've always loved it. And maybe it was a press agent line. I don't know. You said that you wanted to live to be a hundred. You wanted to act every day of your life. And that you wanted on your tombstone, your lies. You know, she acted every day of her life. Your lies are good actors. Well, I remember saying that sometimes in the very first years of my career here in America, when somebody asked me what, you know, what would I like to, at the end,

what would mean your whole life? Well, as I only had acting in mind. And I've had that all my life. Naturally, the idea was that I would act as long as I could stand up, you know, till the audience will lift me off the stage. You still feel it? Yes, I still feel that way. I have exactly the same enthusiasm for it, the same love for it. And I would very unhappy if they said, look, we don't want to look at you anymore and get off. But tell me, will you? But this thing with the tombstone, I said, yes, I said I would like to. I didn't say anything about 100 years. I'm sure I didn't make the amount of years. It's just that here lies a good actress. That's what I said. That's all. Until her last day. It's just like one year, you know, died on the stage. Yes. But the, at the age of 15, they're about to wrote, directed, and started to play, and stuck on which really, again, the career. So even as a child, you were thinking of the universe. I was terribly happy that I can destroy that completely loose.

Really? It is a complete lie, and I have no idea where it comes from. But that happens very often, because people pick up these magazines and they read them. I can't believe that they think it is the truth. Some of it is. Some is absolutely no truth at all. One little thing can be said and misunderstood. I mean, you give an interview and they don't write it down, or they write it down, but day later, when they read the article, they don't quite remember how that came in. So they give a wrong question. No. I have no idea. I've read this several times. I never wrote or directed or did anything at the age of 15. What I did, I wanted to act. I knew that since I was very, very little. And... See, I should put you in the summer house. We keep the illusions. Yes. Well, I did learn a lot of poems. And I had read plays and I did monologues out of plays. And at school, what do you call it? Well, no, Christmas and Easter when you had some school entertainment and the parents came to sit down.

I was always there offering my services. Either we did a little play, but I didn't write the play. We took a play that children acted, you know? Or I read some poems. Or a monologue from some play. And that I did at the age of 15. But I don't know where the other story came from. And then when I finished school, I went into dramatic school. And then I acted in other people's plays. You went into the Royal School of Drama and Stockholm. Yes. But you went into pictures very shortly after that. I did because, as you said earlier, you know, I was 18 and I felt that I was so old I had no time to wait. And the school in Sweden, this very famous school was all the Swedish actresses that have come to this country. They have all gone through that school. It was three years of learning and you had no parts on the stage. You could, by the third year, maybe be in the crowd, something like that, just to have the experience, just walk on, but never say anything.

Then the two next years, if you were any good, if they realized that they had some talent, they would engage you for two more years, when you still had half-schooling, but you also had the experience of getting the part of the maid coming in saying tea. You had to go through auditions and everything. Five years to get in, you go through auditions. But then even to get a part after that in the school. After those two years? Yes, I suppose so. They auditioned. They came up to the school to see this. But you went into pictures after less than a year. I did because what happened to me was that I passed in the corridor of the school. A very famous Swedish director called Alf Schurberg saw me and he was casting a play that he was doing. I had only been in the school for a couple of months and I just started. So he went to somebody and said, what is her name and sent her to me and I'll talk to her. He talked to me and he said, I think I'll ask for you to do the young sister in this play.

Which was a tremendous, what shall I call it, I don't know, feather in my hat. In a very little hat I had to get a part already after a couple of months in school. And he accepted my audition and I was cast in the part and it became a revolution in school. Because those had been there for four years or five years or the actresses that were engaged as actresses wanted that part. And why should I get it? I just got into school. I hadn't even learned how to talk or to walk. So it became a terrible disaster. Everybody was furious and everybody hated me. And they got after the director and said he had to give me up. And I had to go back to school and five years were in front of me. And of course that was very hard for me to take. That I had had that part. It was taken away from me and I had to go back to school. It was almost like a red flag. Yes, exactly.

And then of course in the summer you could either go on the road or some road company or you could go and try to get a job in movies. So I thought well I'll drive out to Swedish film industry and see if I can get a test if there are any parts that I can do during the summer. Oh, you did this on your own. Yes, I went out on my own because I thought in September I would go back to school. So I went out to the head of the Swedish film industry and asked how do you get a test? Where do I go and how do I go? So they told me how to go and I came and I read one of my poems. And they said fine, we'll do a test of you. They did a test and they engaged me and they talked me out to the dramatic school. Now I had already, as I told you, felt that the five years were very long and I wanted to get parts right away. But I still realized that you do have to have school and you have to have some base. You cannot just go out on a stage and act. Did you go back and study then? Yes, I worked in the movies. No, I couldn't go back to school because if I didn't come every day they said well you know she's out.

So I took private lessons. But I took private lessons from the same teachers I had in school and I took everything the others took in school. I took privately. And then I added other teachers. I thought it was very interesting. Tell me a little about technique. You divided your career very well between the stage and the motion pictures. Even lately some television, some brilliant work like Turn of the Screw and the Human Voice. Yes, yes. The approach to each of these different mediums is completely different, isn't it? Yes, I would think so. It is different. But it is just different gears, like in a car. You know, this is the theater. It has to go out there and this is the television and it has to go fast. And this is the movies. We can take more time but I'm sure to be protected and I can do very, very little because the camera is running. So once you know that you switch into a different... But is your preparation your approach to the role? That's exactly the same. I would think. Yes, I think so. Of course, as I was telling you, when you're on the stage you can grow with your performance and in the movies there isn't much time to grow.

You have to do it very quickly. You come there, you rehearse it and you play it very much on an immediate feeling and almost you know a frantic delivery to get it right. In those few times that they shoot it. You know someone once told me that I once thought that an automated world that the theater is perhaps the last of the handmade arts. In other words, it's an anachronism in our time because you have to go out on the stage and do it every night. No one can do it for you. In motion pictures and doing a great extended television, you have the feeling that this is not really the actor's medium. That by cutting and changing the sort of thing is not your responsibility. No, it's true. And of course you have that wonderful security that you yourself can look at yourself and you say I don't like what she's doing up there. Could I do it again? And now I know how I can change it. On the stage I'll never know what I look like and I won't know when it's good and when it's bad.

I can't say to the audience, excuse me, I like to do that. You know I've got it wrong there. I've seen that happen. I think I really had. No, I think it's marvelous. And after I went back and said I don't want to do that again. Frank Soverak, who was a fine nigh record, really an actor, came up to the front of the stage and said really would you think I would like to read this entire speech over again. And they gave him a standing ovation. Oh, how wonderful. You know the opening of more state dimensions here in the Aminston Theatre in Los Angeles is more than just an event in the theatre. But Los Angeles, it's an enormous important because this is the first drama I ever done in this theatre. Yeah. And it's enormous isn't it? 2100 seats. Yes, it is enormous. And yet the acoustics are good. So they say they say it's very good. The higher up you get it seems to you here very well. There must be some dead spots right down here or maybe under the first valve when you have spots that's always a problem in the big theatre.

But what can we do? We try to speak as loud as we can. At least partly for on the only great deal from us Bergman. There's never been an empty seat since you've been here. No, isn't it wonderful? What's the term of the front? Yes. By the Indian. Yes, I'm delighted to have been part of this because as you say it is the first time this beautiful theatre has opened and I'm very glad that I have the opportunity to be part of it. One thing about this stage, this stage that you're playing this, the O'Neal play on, is built down virtually into the laps of the audience. Yes, I suppose it's over the orchestra painting that they have made. So we are very close to the first drawer people, which frighten me terribly the first night when I saw all those faces because you're a nurse and it's all empty and then suddenly there they are. And you are not more than a yard away from them. And you recognize faces through the... If I looked at them but I looked like that, I looked over them. I don't dare because maybe it's a friend who will say hello there. But the level of the stage actually comes down almost to the ceiling.

Well, they put their programs and they're acting coats on it and everything, not realizing that we are going to come and walk right past them. I don't think the view of us is very good because they look straight up like that. But of course we play back here too. But it is because the theatre is so big and to try to reach them from here we go down there so at least they can have a chance to see us. What's the idea that you don't really like this kind of theatre that moves down into the audience? Because you'd like more of a separation of golf, wouldn't you? Yes, I do. But then maybe I'm an old-fashioned actress. I do like the ramp and the separation. So the curtain goes up and you see into that world. The wall goes up there. I think the idea that the audience should be so much part of the show that they're almost on the stage. It's a little too much but I hear that in America they like that. They want the audience to get so involved that they actually feel that they are in the play themselves. One thing I really love about the theatre is that you never do it alone.

Well, of course you feel the audience and you know when they are interested and you can hold them, you can sometimes feel a pause, you can hold it longer than you ever thought. Because they are right with you and they read into your face something that you didn't think they could so far away. And of course with laughter all that, which sometimes is a surprise, they laugh at things that you didn't think that they would laugh at. So you adapt yourself to stopping and let them get the laugh out so they don't lose the next line. But do they laugh at different times? Do they pull me quite often? Very often it is very strange. I've always thought that was the most peculiar thing that you have for instance hit 2000 people in another theatre that would be 700. That all of them react like one. Sometimes they all laugh at one line. And how come that the next evening no one laughs? And you say what at least two or three should be like the other audience, they react like one.

Now once in a while naturally the actor blurs the line, they can't hear it, he says it badly or something. Somebody coughs on it. Yes or somebody coughs on it and they don't get it. But there are times when a group of people react like one. And I don't know why. You've told me that audiences all over the world are the same. The Los Angeles audience, the New York audience, the Paris audience, the Stockholm audience. Yes, I think so. I can't really divide them except they are maybe more outgoing in their applause when you come to Latin countries because they have screened bravo and they throw flowers on the stage or something like that. That happens to something that's more open, whatever it is, admiration or dislike for you. And here they applaud but I must say that they are very warm in their appreciation and I think that if it is good, whatever the nationality people have they react in the same way. Do they have the same sorts of senses of humor and that sort of thing?

For instance, usually I'm sorry. Suppose so. It shouldn't be because I have noticed in a simple thing like cartoons, little drawings. And the Anglo-Saxon humor in the cartoon, little drawing. And the French and Italian, the Latin sense of humor are different. Sometimes I can't laugh. I don't know what is funny in the cartoon that I look at because their sense of humor is a little different. But I think in a play it could be that they laugh at certain things and you know very often American plays come over to Paris. And they have huge successes here and they fail in Paris. The same thing. There was a play called Patat by Michel Asshard. Do you remember? It ran for six years or something like that in Paris and it came over here and a week or something like that and it was... I was thinking of Barefoot in the park which is tremendous success in this country and which your husband produced in Paris. Yes, it was all right but it wasn't any more than all right because you see the joke was one joke and it was coming up nine flights.

What was five in this country I think? Five. That's right. And what is five flights in Europe? We walk up more than five flights every day. Nobody thought that was a joke. So I think they augmented it up to 11 flights and it still didn't make them laugh because just so what. You walk up a couple of stairs, you walk up Piazza di Spagna in Rome. But sometimes this food you, for instance, when Robert Anderson's tea and sympathy opened in Paris, a play concerning a woman's bringing to maturity a boy who felt peace. And you have no idea how many people were against my playing it. It was absolutely awful and I went into that play and I would think I had two people that say I would take a chance at it. One was the direct threase of the theatre. She was a woman, a Romanian woman, called Popesco and she believed in the play. And there was one more person that ever said to me I think it could go over.

Everybody else said it's a disaster. You're going to be laughed off the stage and it's going to last a week if you'll ever get to the end of the week. Because this is a problem with that. We just don't have in France. You mean this sexual problem between the ones who I who doesn't believe that he's future. And for some strange reason they sat through it and were deeply involved in it. I'm often feeling good, but it was one of the reasons. I don't know, I think it's a very good play. When you make a film do you miss that audience? No, I don't miss the audience because I don't accept them to be there and if they were there I would be terribly bothered. Sometimes people bring in friends and they sit around, they move and they look. And in a film you're not giving the finished performance. Who are you working for? It's like having people come in and see a rehearsal. But are you working directly for the director? I work for the director because he knows what he wants.

And he's there now, if other people come in they will not realize that we are trying to get this scene as good as we can. So you shoot it once, twice, you know, you go up to as many times as you want. You come up to 15 takes and these people are saying, well, you know, she doesn't know what she's doing. They don't realize that we rehearse to play more than 15 times before we allow the audience to see it. So you work for that one person and for the cameraman. The angle says to be right, the lights have to be right. You know, everything else around has to... So very often the actors can be perfect, but it's a lot burst or something. So we have to do it again. And then you're very embarrassed having people think it's always your fault. But so it's a different, it's a different idea. You work for many of the greatest directors in the business. George Cooke-Corp from Gaslight. Yes, I've had luck. And Hitchcock, of course. Yes. And then the screen is one of your favorite pictures, isn't it? Yes, I do like it very much because it was comedy. And as I told you before, I like very much to do comedy. Nobody about you do it.

No, very, very seldom. Even your own husband, didn't you want to do the mother? Yes, I was in the park. In the park, yes. I thought the mother's role was perfect for me, but I was talked out of it. Now you want to do cactus flower. The plays that learn, but also the very... Yes, I think that's a very amusing play. I laughed at it very much. I only read it and I thought it was terribly funny. Well, I have my ideas that maybe in one day I can play comedy, but I'm very pleased with O'Neill because in more stately mansions, there is much more comedy than you expected, isn't it? People laugh and laugh. And it is wonderful for actors to have the audience laugh. I mean, either they should laugh or they should cry. But when they just sit there and say, well, just sit at home. They should do both really. They should have fun in the end. At the same time, it should break down. Yes. Well, that's what we're always looking for. You see it to get a lovely combination. Among the great directors you work for, particularly Hitchcock, in Cooke Corps, in Lepvac, in Rosalini. Yes.

Did you find complete differences in these? Oh, yeah. You did one of your best pictures for the same work? Yes, oh, yes. They're all different. Just as an actor is different from another actor, naturally, the directors are very different, too. And some directors work out everything at home. They have it all prepared. They know exactly how they want the actors to move, how the expression and exactly the tone of voice never thing, which is Hitchcock. No, he works everything out at home. And comes and has it all clear in his mind what he wants. Other directors come and have no idea. They get it from the actors. They start to look at the set and the actors start to move. And it is built from the non. Somehow the actor gives the director an idea, the director gives the actor an idea, and they do it together. And some directors are not very concerned with the performance. They are concerned with what it looks like and the big action behind. So they give very little personal instruction to you. And another director will be only concerned about the actors

and doesn't care a bit about the other things around. So it is very interesting to work for them. You told me interesting story about camera angles, one side of the face. Yes, of course that is an American idea that I had never heard in Sweden. But when I came here to do my first picture in Tibet, so I was asked the very first day on the set, which was my best side of the face. And I didn't know. So they photographed the dedu-test and they said, well, one side was better than the other. I won't tell you which. And they said this side is better. It was all important close-ups or anything. They were very anxious to do the best side of the face. Well, I was taught that idea. And of course that stays in your mind. You want to look your best and you think that maybe the difference is so enormous that I must be very careful and watch out for them. My best side. Then I left America and came to Italy and the very first time that Mr. Ocelini put up his camera to shoot me. I said, you know, my best side. And he looked at me and he said,

you're the best side. I'm making a movie. And I mean, I couldn't care less. You're going to be on the side and that suits my action here. And I thought that he was right. It is right. I mean, actors shouldn't be so vain that they always always have to look their best. They should try to be good in the part and play it as truthfully as they can and try to forget about how they look. You know, you've been in the theatre in films, in television, in motion pictures. Yes. And on the stage, since you were a girl, since you were a teenager, tell me about the life of a woman in the theatre. You mean her private life combined with the actors? How is that? No, it's difficult. And you love to be a half-wife, don't you? You love to clean. Yes, I love to do all that. But at the same time, I also want to be an actress. And it is difficult. There's no question about it. It is just that you have to try to fight your way through it. And you know, they ask me all the wonderful thing,

young girls, to be an actress and what she has to do and all that. It is a lot to give up your private life. You cannot be the best mother in the world, because you are away and you come home tired and you are preoccupied with what has happened and you couldn't do this well and you have to go to sleep. You have to get up in the morning and there are a little child that wants to play with you and have you read a story. So you have to divide yourself and try to. And the same thing. Now here I am in America and I have my husband in Paris. And of course it's unhappy. But there it is. I won't give up my life as an actress and my husband knows that. The children know it too, so they have patience with me. Did you have one of the twins with you now? Yes, now I have one with me and the others will come for Christmas. She is so beautiful, I saw her last night. Now anyway, you see you can't divide it. I mean there are trains since they were small. And then I try to say to myself maybe that they are happy

that I am an actress and they come to the theatre. They have an exciting life. They are here. They can see what goes on. They see the play not only from the house. They see it backstage. They can see rehearsals. They can come on movie sets. They come on television sets. They know so much about the business and it's very exciting. Peas in San Francisco. Yes. And there is a television reporter there, isn't it? Yes, there is a television reporter. Yes, she came down here with the original idea to make the opening. She was going to introduce her mother on her television show. But it was blown up into so much publicity that she had good taste of saying I think I better not. I know your work. I watched you in rehearsal for this play. And it is such a total concentration. You said you don't even like to go to parties because if people are not talking about the play, you think they're idiots. Yes. Yes, you become so involved in it and the same thing if you are in a picture, whatever actors do.

Now I talk about actresses if they were all like me, maybe they are not. But I have found that many are. But they get so involved with their work that it's very hard for them to break loose and talk about other things until it is over with. And in a play it becomes routine or something. But during the rehearsal period and during the shooting of a picture you are very much engrossed in that. And that's what I meant, family suffers. I know how can you operate your house under those circumstances? Yes, it's probably not very good. The three children are outside Rome, don't they? No, they live in Rome. They go to school and live in Rome. I see. And I have my home in France, but I go back and forth because of us right, you know, I am in both places all the time. But well, it is the same problem forever. And now I don't know if other people who work, I mean other women who work in different jobs now take a lawyer or whatever the doctor, she must have the same problem, she has her patients, she has her clients and she is busy with them.

And she is not all the way home hovering over her children and cooking in the kitchen. So it's a job like any other job. Tell me about the great roles. You played Ibsen's head of garbler, which must have been an enormous ambition if you were to play that. Well, it wasn't my idea, my husband brought it up. And from the beginning I thought that Ibsen's head of garbler had been done so much and was old fashioned. And then I discovered that it was terribly interesting. And I fell in love with it. I had done it on television and then I decided to learn the part in French. And we did it in Paris. Yes. Well, I would like to do classic plays. You see, because somehow I went in for the theatre as being what I really wanted to do. But as I told you, I took the shortcut into movies because I could get there faster and get bigger parts. But it would be wonderful to do some of the real classical things. Have you ever done Shakespeare? No, I have never. Because I don't know what language I could do it except in Swedish. My English has to be perfect to say those lines.

And I don't know. I've probably never really. Are there many parts you've missed, like Roswell and Juliet? No. Only the Shakespearean rose that you would like to have played that you've not been doing pictures? No. No. I mean, I've read some of it. Of course, I haven't read all of Shakespeare's play. But I mean, I've read those most common plays. And certainly I've thought about playing Porsche. And things like that. But it never came my way. It didn't happen. I was so involved with movies all the time. And then when I have gone in for theatre, it has been always a limited engagement. So that I could go back to the family as this thing is. You know, I cannot take too long an engagement if it isn't. Well, where? Because if I have an engagement in Paris, it's true my husband is there, but my children will be in Italy. And so I try to make it limited. Actually, this production could not have happened except under these circumstances. That is the blessing of a civic theatre, non-profit, underwritten.

Yes. Because you only agree to stay in this country for six months. Yes. And that's the agreement that you're keeping. Yes. Yes. Three months from now you will be back in... Yes. I suppose so. The back home in France and the back and forth to Italy. What's next? What do you want to do next? I have no plans for the future. I've been very fortunate never having to go and search. And search and look, it's somehow they have just come. They come. The right period and the right role. And that's why I hope I can continue to be as lucky. And I'm sure that something will come along after this play, but I don't know what it will be. Today I have no idea. You played St. John on three different occasions, in three different mediums, really, or three different plates of play. It's true. John of Lorraine, the motion picture, John of Arc. Yes. And St. John at the stake, I was particularly interested in the opera. Yes. Did you sing in the opera? Very little, but there is just a tiny little part which is sung. It is an auditorium, so all the parts are sung, except John of Arc and Father Dominic, two talking parts.

But at a certain moment, Hannager and Paul Claudel wrote the words, knew that if they got an actress to play the talking part, they couldn't also expect her to sing very well. So it is a very beautiful little piece of a child's song, very simple, but for a moment she sings. And Hannager brought down his orchestra so that she could be heard. So I can always say that I have sung at La Scala. I have sung in several opera houses in the world, including Paris and Stockholm and London. It was in Spain. I sang at the opera. That was the greatest tour you ever made. It was more than a tour. It was many, many appearances in many countries. Yes, because we started in Italy and then other people came and saw it and engaged us to do it in different countries. And I loved it so much that I forced myself to learn it in different languages. And so I took one engagement after the other and played it in different languages and different cities.

Now what about an opera audience? Isn't that entirely different thing again? Yes. And they still have, I don't know if they now have it because this is many years ago too, you know. They still have the old fashioned clock. And I remember the day before the opening when a man entered my dressing room and asked if I wanted to have an applause as I entered on the stage or if I would prefer to start talking without an applause. So I said, well, you're asking me, I said, I don't know what's going to happen. And he said, well, I am the head of the clock. I give the sign. If I don't give the sign, they don't applaud. And of course, from then on, I never thought that any applause was sincere. I could see him go there and everybody was applauding and then he did this and they stopped. So I told him that it would be better if I didn't have the applause because this opera started out in a very beautiful moment and an applause would have ruined it. And also you have to be in temple with the music and the music can't stop and delay themselves because.

And sure enough, he controlled a clock and the clock brings the audience with them. But I know that doesn't exist in America, but it is in our press. I don't think they have it in the theater, I don't know. Are you superstitious? Do you feel these portents for this play? No, I'm just half superstitious, not really, but I have a lot of good luck pieces in my dressing room. And I have certain things that I have carried with me all my life and I would like to have them. I was thinking of this, though. I mean, I walk under a staircase and I do certain things that I don't even know that I shouldn't do. But for instance, in the way that your life went, you came to this country to make decelting pictures. You went to Germany and made a picture for UFA at the same time. Before? Yes, that was before the war. And then you went back to Sweden and the war really sent you back to this country again, didn't it?

That's right, yes. Yes, I only signed up for one picture because I didn't want to have the fate that so many other European actresses had. They were good actresses and stars in their own right in their country. And then they were engaged by Hollywood, they came over here, they changed their looks, their hair, their eyes, their teeth and everything. And then send them back to their own country. So I said, no, I'm coming there for one picture and I'm going back to my own country. And I did a picture after I did intermittent. Did you think your career might have gone in a different way, had there been no one? First instance in the theatre in the stage? No, I don't think so. No, once I had started in the movies and I was very fortunate to write away after the little test that I told you about earlier in our conversation. But the part, and it was a big part. And from then on, I always got the leads.

I have been a very fortunate actress. I never played small parts. So of course, I was so pleased with the movies because the parts were so good. But when I came to America, the same thing. My parts were very good, leading men and directors were first class. Of course, my career would have been the same even if there had not been a war. I would have stayed on in Hollywood. And worked in pictures. Yes. And tried to go back on the stage now and then. Because I do believe that we have to, our roots as the stage. What do you like that you've done? Really like? Well, I am... Are you so much involved in what you're doing? This is what you really like? Yes, the last one is always the best. But no, I couldn't take out one particular thing because I've had so many pictures and so many plays that I really like. And another thing I've been fortunate in not being forced to do things I don't like. I have had the possibility of saying no. I don't have to do this.

I don't like it and I don't have to do it, you know? So much of this audience, so much of the American audience. And particularly since television. Because all your old films are back on television. Yes, so I've noticed. There you go, I've been here. I've already had five of them on television. But I'm surprised. Working with Bogart in Casa Blanca. And working with Gary Cooper in From the Bell Tolls and the Crop here. These are wonderful memories to me. And it's marvelous to have them come back again. How do they feel to you now? Oh, wonderful, too. I must say there are so many wonderful memories involved with all those pictures. So they accept that I noticed that they cut them. They cut them and I think, well, if they cut what is good to cut. But I mean, they were completed to be in the best form. And now I don't know who it is that just says this is too long and we need commercials in here. And of course, I think your commercials are just killing. I don't understand how the American people can have the patience to have every picture broken up every five minutes.

You dare with it if it's a good picture. If it's Casa Blanca, you will stay along with it. I don't know why they can't collect the commercials in the beginning and in the end or break it once in the middle. Why should we be broken up all the time? I think that. Thank God we don't have that in Europe. You don't have it all? No. You see the whole entire picture. And then you have commercials in the end or connected. That's it. And then the picture flows. The same thing with a play, any kind of documentary. There is no cutting in and chopping it up like they do here. How did you enjoy the television work you did? Yes, you see, I enjoy television too. I like it all because television combines the theater and a movie. Well, that's live television. No, it's taped or filmed. I mean, it makes no difference. If something happens that goes wrong, the audience sees it and they feel sorry for you. In television, if they suddenly see the actors something is wrong, they don't know what it is.

They say, well, what is going wrong? You know, they don't bear with you. They don't know why. Now, the other evening here on the stage, you miss you, hers, to place my daughter-in-law, lost her slip. And it was terribly funny because it is one of those nightmares that can happen to you. And she suddenly feels this enormous slip coming down and it fell around her feet. Of course, she couldn't go on with her performance. Now, had it been television, they would never know what happened. They would only see these two actresses getting all confused, not remembering that trying to go on. I just want to let thank you for doing the things you do so well. I hope you come back and do them again. Thank you for being so wonderful for the theater in Los Angeles and doing everything that you have done. But people like you on the stage is no problem. This is NET, the National Educational Television Network.

This is NET, the National Educational Television Network. Thank you very much.