Saturday, August 29, 2009

Here's Looking at you kid


A bit more of a lightweight hero today, but then again who is not lightwieght compared to Goethe? Also a first for today, our hero is actually a heroine. She is the lovely and talented lady above, Ms. Ingrid Bergman born this day 1915, in Stockholm, Sweden. Certainly lovely enough to have been a member of the Swedish bikini team, had such a team existed back in her day. She started acting at the age of 17 with the Royal Dramatic Theater, by the age of 24 Hollywood's David O. Selznick "discovered" her. He then made the mistake of telling her to get her teeth capped, change her name, and have her eyebrows plucked. Quiet rightly, and thankfully she refused to do any of the three, and a star was born. Her appearance in her films was almost entirely natural, with little or no makeup an at five foot nine she was one of Hollywood's tallest leading ladies. And what a leading lady she was, drop dead gorgeous with more acting talent in her little finger than most people have in their entire bodies, she went on to win three Academy Awards, two Emmys, and a Tony award. The woman was so talented and gorgeous that even Alfred Hitchcock had a crush on her. Talk about out of your league! Watch her in Notorious, and you will lose focus of anything else around you. She filled the screen, and the room your sitting in watching her on the screen. Breathtaking is an understatement. She is probably best known for playing Ilsa Lund in Casablanca with Humphrey Bogart, whose wife was convinced they were having an affair during the filming. In 1949, while married to her first husband, she became pregnant by director Robert Rossellini, and gave birth to his son in 1950. Showing once again was a bunch of Purtian pukes they are, the American Senate had her declared "person non grata." Basically forced into exile in Italy for six years because of her affair, she eventually make a return to American film with her Oscar winning performance in 1956's Anastasia. She continued to act right up to her death in 1982, winning her second Emmy posthumously for her role in A Woman called Golda. She was so big that Ferrari has a custom made colour fashioned after the colour of her eyes. If you have the means, you can go order one in the colour of "Grigio Ingrid." So, for all those wonderful on screen performances, and for still 65 years later managing to make me gasp at your beauty, Ingrid Bergman (August 29th, 1915-Augst 29th 1982 on her 67th birthday of breast cancer) you are my heroine of the day.

1 comment:

Lindsay said...

Stoked to see a chick make the list, mixed feelings about it being an actress. World leader, world leader, explorer, cartoonist, revolutionary film maker, financial genius...actress. Hope there's an Elizabeth I, an Ayn Rand or even a Mata Hari in there somewhere.