Connemara connection to Ingrid Bergman as Sweden remembers movie icon

Sweden is preparing to celebrate the centenary of their greater screen legend of all – but Connemara too has its own footnote in the story of Ingrid Bergman.

The Casablanca star – Ilsa Lund to Humphrey Bogart’s Rick Blaine – will be remembered in her native Sweden later this month to mark the 100th anniversary of her birth.

And among those present will be author and translator, Ann Henning Jocelyn, who has lived in Connemara for the past 32 years.

She will be remembering Ingrid Bergman, not alone as an actress and a screen icon – but as a close friend.

Ingrid Bergman’s autobiography “My Life” will be re-published as part of the commemoration and an epilogue written by Ann Henning Jocelyn has been appended to the original version of the book.

The epilogue is entitled: “Ingrid Bergman – A Good Friend”.

Ann Henning-Jocelyn . . . Bergman connection

It happened in London 35 years ago.  Ingrid Bergman’s autography was being crafted by Alan Burgess; the publishers wanted a simultaneous version of the book in Swedish.

“That was how I came into the picture”, says Ann Henning Jocelyn.

A native of Gothenburg in Sweden, Ann had come to London to study drama and she was also a proficient linguist.  She was asked to translate the Bergman autobiography text to Swedish and the task also involved going through the film actress’s letters, diaries and Swedish source material.

Ingrid Bergman liked the translation but decided she wanted to tell the story again.  She asked Ann Henning to join with her in doing the work.   It was an unforgettable and almost awe laden assignment.

Ingrid Bergman is described by one film history source as “one of the greatest actresses from Hollywood’s lamented Golden Era. Her natural and unpretentious beauty and her immense acting talent made her one of the most celebrated figures in the history of American cinema”.

Bergman role in the 1940ies war time film “Casablanca” is legendary but it is only one of her major films: “Murder on the Orient Express” and “For Whom the Bells Toll” are others that remain etched in the popular memory.

Ann Henning-Jocelyn has fond and abiding memories of that spring and summer of 1980 in London.

“Ingrid had great charisma. She was warm and also forthright.   She said what she meant and she meant what she said.  I found this very comfortable as you had no difficulty in trying to work out how she felt about something,” says Ann.

Both of them were Swedish and Ann Henning-Jocelyn says this help in established a bond between them.  As well as that link, Ann and her family had holidayed for four generations in Fjallbacka, a small fishing village on the west coast of Sweden.

Ingrid Bergman and her third husband, Lars Schmidt also had a home there and Ann, as a young girl, remembers Bergman coming shopping to the village.  “We shared a nostalgic background in that way”, Ann explains.

During that summer of 1980 Ann Henning-Jocelyn worked with Ingrid Bergman, often outdoors on the roofed terrace of the film icon’s home in Chelsea.  Sometimes it was seven days a week; it was hectic but fun filled and exciting.

“She always encouraged you and brought you into circles of people” says Ann.

Sometime ago Ann Henning- Jocelyn went back to Cheyne Gardens in Chelsea to see the Bergman homestead again.

It was spring, a cold wind blew and the skies were dark and “three dark windows looked gloomily down on me”…the scene had changed.

Ann Henning-Jocelyn writes in the republished epilogue to Bergman’s autobiography: “How different from my first visit to this Chelsea street!  On that occasion the fruit-trees were in blossom, a southerly breeze played softly over the river Thames and curtains billowed around the three windows, left open to let in sunshine and warm spring air.

“I was filled with happy anticipation, for I was on my way to my first ever meeting with film star Ingrid Bergman.  On my way to the start of a treasured friendship that was tragically cut short”.

Ingrid Bergman was already in the early stages of the cancer that killed her when the book was finished.  Ann Henning-Jocelyn met her on occasions in the following years as the film star’s vitality and energy drained away.

It was about this time that Ann Henning-Jocelyn got married and moved to live in Doonreagan House in Cashel in Connemara and it was there on the morning of August 22 1982 that she heard the news on radio; Ingrid Bergman had died.

It was her birthday – she was 67.