INTERVIEW de Larry king (suite)
(CROSSTALK)
ISABELLA ROSSELLINI: I'll tell you who she had an affair with that I'm jealous of.
KING: Who's that?
ISABELLA ROSSELLINI: Robert Capa, the great photographer. The great photographer of the Second World War, Robert Capa. They were -- mother was very much in love with him, and he was in love with her,and they kept it quite secret until mother wrote her autobiography and then she revealed it.
LINDSTROM: But she also said that he didn't want to marry her, because he turned her down. He turned her down.
KING: That was the basis for "Rear Window," right?
LINDSTROM: Exactly.
(CROSSTALK)
ISABELLA ROSSELLINI: The Romance was -- because Hitchcock was a friend of theirs, so he probably knew and inspired "Rear Window."
KING: Why did she like acting so much, Pia?
LINDSTROM: I don't think she liked herself in her real life. I think that when she was a young girl, she was very shy. She explained that her lips would swell, her fingers would swell, she was so frightened.
You know, she was an orphan. Her parents had died, and she moved in with aunts and uncles and so on. And so she really was very lonely. And I believe her father took her to the opera, and she saw a stage and said immediately, that's what I want to do.
And I believe she was one of those people who liked to put on the clothes and the makeup of another person and to become that person. And when you become that person, then you're brave, and then you can talk and then you can do lots of things. But deep down, I think she was very frightened.
INGRID ROSSELLINI: Funny, what she was saying, that in the theater, remember going to the theater and being backstage and say, and then looking, it was so terrifying the idea of being on stage, and so many people looking at you. You can't see them in the dark. And I said, mama, how can you do that? She said, I can do that because I'm very shy. And I said, what does that mean? She said, because I'm someone else when I'm on stage, and it's an interesting question.
ISABELLA ROSSELLINI: I think that's why people like that have to keep working, and why they can't really do family life so well. You have to get into this other part, to be another person, to express your emotions through some other vehicle.
KING: By the way, Pia, did your father put her down to you?
LINDSTROM: Well, he was deeply, deeply wounded. In fact, I think that it, in a sense, destroyed an inner part of his heart, that he could never recover from. I don't think you -- people talk about closure and getting over things. Some things you just don't get over. And he never recovered completely from the humiliation and the grief -- and you know, he was a serious man, and was a surgeon, and it was fodder for gossip mills, and it was -- he was the cuckold. It was a joke, you know, and some people have a lot of pride, and he did, and I think in a certain sense, a very deep inner part of himself was destroyed.
KING: I can attest to the brilliance of your mother, Isabella, because I interviewed someone she played. She played Golda Meir on a television show that won her an Emmy, and that was an incredible performance. Did she enjoy doing that, getting that accent right and everything?
ISABELLA ROSSELLINI: She loved it. They offered her the part when she was quite sick with cancer. She accepted the part. She decided to play -- she decided there was something about her personality that felt quite close to Golda, maybe a down-to-earthness and a simplicity.
She just put a wig to look like Golda, but no fake nose or double chin, and she was quite surprised that a big Protestant Swede was going to play this fantastic lady. And I went to visit her in Israel when she was shooting. My mom, due to the cancer, she -- her left arm would swell enormously, bigger than the rest of her. It was a huge thing, and she would hang her arm up all night, sometimes staying awake, so that the arm could not be as swollen and she could play Golda.
Especially she had certain gestures that she wanted to do, Golda Meir I remember when she was elected there were some newsreels and mother copied gesture by gesture, so she made sure that she had both arms to do the gestures.
KING: And she was brilliant. Golda Meir, the Milwaukee school teacher who became prime minister of Israel, and won an Emmy for Ingrid Bergman playing her in that television special near her death. We'll talk about the end of her life and what the girls are doing right after this. Don't go away.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
I. BERGMAN: Isn't it possible that we could put all our efforts, our energies, into 1 single purpose, the betterment of all our lands and all our people through the blessings of peace.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: We're back with Isabella Rossellini, Ingrid Rossellini and Pia Lindstrom. The occasion is the 60th anniversary of "Casablanca." Isabella, were you with your mother at the end?
ISABELLA ROSSELLINI: No, I wasn't. I had seen her, and I know the end was near. Mother went to Sweden to be with Lars, her third husband that she had divorced but was very close to him, asked a friend of hers to drive her throughout Sweden, to see all the places that she had been when she was a child, and when I heard that, I thought, that was a bad sign. And then the night of her birthday, I received a call. She died the day of her birthday, at the end of the day.
KING: And where were you, Ingrid?
INGRID ROSSELLINI: I was in New York with Isabella. We received the call together. I remember that day we called several times to wish her a happy birthday, but Lars was with her, and her cousin, and they said she's not feeling well. She can't come to the phone, but we'd give her a hug from you and your love. But it's hard because, yes, we didn't have a chance to be with her and just hold her hand at that moment.
KING: Pia, where were you?
LINDSTROM: I was in New York, and I spoke to my mother that morning, and she said, I have a lot of pain in the back and I can't walk, and I said, should I fly over? And she said, no, don't come. And I regret that, that I listened to her, and when I had a similar message from my father, I went and stayed there and had the gift of being with him when he died, and I regret deeply that I just didn't listen to my instinct. I think my mother did not want us there. You know, sometimes people like to let go when their children aren't there.
KING: Isabella, we mentioned earlier about "Autumn Sonata." That closely related to her life, right?
ISABELLA ROSSELLINI: Well, mother did not think it was so related to her life. She thought that the character of this very ambitious pianist, that probably Bergman did try to shape after mother or being a great star and an actress, maybe a little bit neglectful of her children. Mother thought that it was way too harsh. And I sort of agree with her. I mean, I think the character that she plays in "Autumn Sonata," if there is any similarities with mother, mother was much nicer.
KING: Ingrid, what are you doing now?
INGRID ROSSELLINI: I teach Italian literature. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) professor, and I am teaching at NYU, and Princeton, different places, so and I'm enjoying very much. It's a completely another world from what my parents...
KING: Isabella, what are you doing?
ISABELLA ROSSELLINI: I'm an actress and a model. I had a very big career as a model, and I am acting, and I'm a mother of two.
KING: And Pia?
LINDSTROM: Well, I left NBC after over 20 years, and now I am working on a program that I'm going to do with Maria Cooper, who's Gary Cooper's daughter, on doing something like this, talking to the children of filmmakers about their family life, about the work that they do. At the moment it's called "Pia and Maria" so we'll see.
KING: I like that.
LINDSTROM: If it still gets another name, I don't know.
KING: How will your mother be remembered, Isabella? How do you think she's remembered?
ISABELLA ROSSELLINI: I think she is remembered for "Casablanca." And the film is extraordinary,but there are other films that are as well,sometimes picked like "Notorious," or in Italian, which my dad did. There are other masterpieces, but "Casablanca" somehow became the film that I think she will be remembered for.
KING: Ingrid, how do you think she will be most remembered?
INGRID ROSSELLINI: Well, yes, because when I talk to young people, they -- sometimes they don't even remember the name, it's incredibe, because 19 years old, they're not sure who she is, but when you say "Casablanca," they know the movie. It's incredible.
But it was -- last night it was these, you know, we watched the movies, there were so many people, and there are still many people who still remember her, with great, you know, with great love, and that's nice to see.
KING: Pia?
LINDSTROM: Well, the scandal is gone. She won't be remembered for the scandal. That's disappeared, which is odd to me too, because at one point it seemed as though the whole world was just focused on this one subject, and now it's blown away and it's gone.
She'll definitely be remembered for "Casablanca," because it's got a mythological place now in our society. People know the words like they used to know the Greek tragedies, or grand opera, and the audience says the words along with the film. So I think she is permanently going to be remembered in that film.
(CROSSTALK)
KING: Woody Allen had a lot to do with it, too, didn't he, Pia, with that hit play and movie.
LINDSTROM: That's true. That's true. Yes.
KING: "Play It Again, Sam."
LINDSTROM: "Play It Again, Sam."
ISABELLA ROSSELLINI: "Play It Again, Sam" was a wonderful movie.
KING: Did she like "As Times Goes By," Isabella, she liked that song?
ISABELLA ROSSELLINI: Oh, yes. I think, I don't know, you know, every time we went to restaurants if there was a piano player he changed the song to "As Time Goes By." See, mother was terribly shy. It didn't please her at all to be underlined with music as she quietly walked into a restaurant.
LINDSTROM: I'm not sure she would have been happy that "Casablanca" is the one.
KING: I know.
LINDSTROM: She had so many movies she loved, and this is, you know, isn't life strange, isn't destiny odd.
KING: Wonderful having this hour with all of you. Thank you so much.
INGRID ROSSELLINI: Thank you.
LINDSTROM: Thank you.
ISABELLA ROSSELLINI: Thank you for having us.
KING: Isabella Rossellini, Ingrid Rossellini and Pia Lindstrom, the daughters of Ingrid Bergman. On the occasion of 60th anniversary of "Casablanca" now out on DVD.
Don't go away.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BOGART: I've got a job to do too. Where I'm going, you can't follow. What I've got to do, you can't be any part of. I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of 3 little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that.Now, now. Here's looking at you kid.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Hope you enjoyed this fascinating hour on the life and times of Igrid Bergman.
We invite you now to stay tuned for more news on CNN, your network for news, all the time, 24 hours a day. See you tomorrow night on LARRY KING LIVE. Thanks for joining us and goodnight.
END
