In the spring of 1952, Ingrid Bergman’s daughter Pia Lindström was thirteen. Summer was approaching, the time for her annual trip to Europe. Her parents’ divorce settlement called for her to visit her mother during time off from school. The previous year, Pia’s mother had seen her in England. This year, Bergman wanted to see her in Italy, at the home she shared with director Rossellini. Pia’s father, Dr. Petter Lindström, thought this custody arrangement was potentially dangerous. He was concerned that Bergman might not return her; courts in foreign jurisdictions were not required to follow other courts’ orders regarding custody. He also thought that Pia should not be forced to spend time in an environment he considered amoral. Bergman disagreed. In 2011, Pia Lindström recalled the dispute: “My mother rejected a proposal to meet in Sweden, and my father was concerned that they would not be able to guarantee my return from Italy, because an Italian court would not force a mother to send her child out of the country. Then my father offered to have Phyllis Seaton, wife of director George Seaton and one-time mayor of Beverly Hills, take me to see my mother someplace else. But that was not accepted. My mother insisted on Italy. I was told I needed to say something definite.”
Bergman instructed Bautzer to file a suit that would clarify visitation rights. She was able to do this because the divorce settlement agreement had failed to specify where visitations were to occur. Like the sequel to a blockbuster movie, the Lindström family went to court again. This time there would be a full-blown trial.
Bautzer knew he was taking a major risk going up against Lindström’s lawyer Isaac Pacht in a rushed trial. It was like stepping into a boxing ring with a heavyweight champion. Pacht wasn’t just a wily trial lawyer with nearly forty years legal experience; he had been a judge himself. This not only gave him insight into the way evidence would be received but also earned him respect from sitting judges. Any advantage the court could give, he would get. Why Bautzer didn’t run away from the fight is an enigma. Perhaps he couldn’t resist the publicity. Perhaps he was prideful and considered himself infallible. After all, he had never lost a trial. Or perhaps he had no choice, and Bergman demanded that the matter go to trial. Whatever the reason, when Bautzer walked into the courtroom, he knew he was in for the fight of his life. He had handled many public scandals, but he had never handled anything like this. If he lost, it would be reported on the front pages of every paper in the country.
From the start, he knew there was a potentially fatal flaw in his case. Bergman could not come to the United States to attend the trial, because she was nine months pregnant with twins. Celebrity lawyers know that it is difficult to win a trial without the client present. It gives the impression that the star doesn’t care about the outcome—that she thinks she’s superior and not subject to the same rules as common folk. Even with a good reason for not attending the trial, it is hard to shake the prejudice. As always, Bautzer exuded confidence, but inside he had to be scared.
The hearing began in early June with Judge Mildred L. Lillie presiding. The outcome would be determined by the judge herself; custody matters are not for a jury to decide. In order to enter the courtroom each day, Lindström and his daughter had to run a gaunt-let. “There were dozens of reporters and cameramen, gawkers, fans,” Pia recalled. “I hadn’t seen anything like that before. To me they looked like crazy people who were going to trample us.”
Bautzer anticipated an attack on Bergman’s fitness as a parent, so on June 9 he called two character witnesses. The first to testify was Superior Court judge Thurmond Clarke, a fellow USC Law School alumnus who had been the presiding judge in the divorce proceedings. He had visited the Rossellinis in Italy the previous year and had observed the director demonstrate “kindness and devotion” toward both Robertino, his child by Bergman, and Lorenzo, his child from his prior marriage. “Did you observe anything detrimental to the children?” asked Bautzer.
“I did not,” replied Clarke.
Judge Lillie did not give much weight to Clarke’s testimony. Only two weeks before, Clarke and his wife had sat with Bautzer and Ginger Rogers at a benefit dinner for the Pasadena Children’s Hospital. This was an error on Bautzer’s part. The judge’s presence at the dinner was picked up by the press. It was clear that the judge was starstruck and potentially influenced by the company he was keeping.
The next to testify was producer David O. Selznick, who had also visited the Rossellini home. “I have seldom seen a man who was more a playmate with his children,” said Selznick. “I was enormously impressed. While we were at dinner, he had a desperate anxiety to get back to the boy Robertino. Ingrid seemed a very contented wife. It was characteristic of Ingrid that she helped with the chores, served the guests, and seemed to be the same person as when she was here.”
Pacht cross-examined Selznick about Bergman’s salary from 1940 to 1945. “I’m sure Dr. Lindström has the figures,” Selznick answered. “He took care of her money.” Pacht asked Lillie that the remark be stricken from the record. Selznick tried to clarify his dig at Lindström, saying that his primary interest was in defending Bergman. “I think her standing is first rate,” he said. “Her public is with her. I think she’s been persecuted enough, and I’m interested in her as a human being. Rossellini is extraordinarily generous and talented, a fine father, a good husband, and generous. He’s given money to the poor. They regard him as a god in the south of Italy.” Pacht moved to the question of morality. This touched a nerve, causing Selznick to raise his voice. “His morals I know nothing about, and neither do you, and neither does that Dr. Lindström, or he wouldn’t have had him in his house as a guest!” Pacht then read from the July 1950 Congressional Record in which Senator Edwin O. Johnson had accused Rossellini of Nazism and drug addiction. “May I ask who wrote this script?” snapped Selznick.
On June 12, it was time for Pia Lindström to be called to the witness stand. Since there had been no pretrial discovery, this was the first time she had encountered Bautzer. “My impression of him was that he was very handsome and very confident,” said Pia. “But he was condescending and I felt he thought of me as a child he could manipulate.” Pia saw Bautzer as someone unaccustomed to dealing with children. “He made me uncomfortable. He was not interested in what I was saying, only in what he could make me say to fit his purpose. I thought he was setting traps for me to damage my father. I did not want to help him in any way.”
Bautzer’s examination was reported in Time magazine:
Q. Miss Lindström, do you understand what this case is about? What your mother is seeking?
A. Yes. She wants me to go to Italy. And I don’t want to go to Italy. I just saw her last summer in England.
Q. You realize that your mother is not making a request that you go to live with her, don’t you?
A. Yes.
Q. When you told your mother that you loved her and missed her when you saw her in England last summer, you said it only to be polite?
A. I don’t believe I said I missed her. Well, I—I guess I did. We saw each other several days. Mother asked me: “Are you happy?”
Q. Didn’t you say you had missed her and would like to see her?
A. I don’t believe I ever said that. She never really asked me: “Do you miss me?” And I never said: “Yes, I do.” Even if she did, I couldn’t very well say that I didn’t love her.
Q. Don’t you love your mother, Pia?
A. I don’t love my mother. I like her. I don’t want to go to Italy to be with her. I love my father.
Q. Have you ever written your mother, telling her that you love her?
A. I always sign my letters “Love, Pia.”
Q. Does that express the way you feel about her?
A. No. That’s just the wording of the letter.
Q. Do you feel that your mother doesn’t care about you now?
A. Well, I don’t think she cares about me too much…. She didn’t seem very interested about me when she left. It was only after she left and got married and had children that she suddenly decided that she wanted me.
Bautzer then questioned her about the period in 1949 when Rossellini had been a guest in the Lindström home.
Q. Did you have any conversations with Mr. Rossellini at that time?
A. Well, he lived in our house, so I guess I talked to him, but I don’t remember anything we talked about.
Q. Did you find him to be a considerate, gentlemanly man?
A. I don’t remember. I didn’t find him anything.
Q. What sort of discussions have you had with your father about Mr. Rossellini?
A. We discussed that he used to stand in front of the fireplace and tell us how religious he was, and he used to … he borrowed all my father’s money and bought presents for me with my father’s money.
Bautzer finally asked Pia if she missed her mother. “No,” she answered. “I’d rather live with my father.”
After Pia stepped down from the stand, the court reporter, Ms. Breska, said Pia had delivered her testimony “like a little Ingrid.” Bautzer’s cross-examination had backfired and he knew it. Trial lawyers typically avoid asking questions that they don’t know how the witness will answer. Unfortunately for Bautzer, due to the speedy nature of the case, he had not had the opportunity to take Pia’s deposition beforehand. As such, he had no choice but to wing it. The result was disastrous. Each time Pia answered a question, the judge lost sympathy for Bergman. The thirteen-year-old had beaten him.
For her part, Pia did not view her testimony as a victory. “I felt ashamed and embarrassed,” recalled Pia. “I felt sad for my mother and regretted that I hurt her. I felt sad for myself, too. But I wanted to be faithful to my father. Having seen the personal and professional humiliations suffered by him, I felt a strong need not to add to his sorrow. My father was a serious and accomplished neurosurgeon. The scandal was a shattering experience. It changed the course of his life. And after my mother left to go to Italy, my father had been both mother and father to me.”
Next, Dr. Lindström was called to the witness stand. For the first time, the public got to hear all the lurid details of his divorce from Bergman. In testimony that lasted four days, he gave a step-by-step description of the events. It started with his going to Messina in May 1949 and attempting to convince Bergman to give up Rossellini. He had then spent weeks in England hoping she would change her mind or at least meet him to discuss Pia’s future. Marta Cohn, wife of Stromboli screenwriter Art Cohn, had told the court she had met Lindström in Paris on July 15, 1949, and begged him to give Bergman a divorce. Lindström further testified that Mrs. Cohn had warned him that Rossellini had threatened suicide if Bergman saw her husband again. “She said she had to take the revolver away from him,” Lindström testified. “I said, ‘This sounds like nonsense. If he would wave a pistol and then let a woman take it away from him, there’s not much substance to the man.’”
Lindström also took Bergman to task for not meeting Pia in person to break the news of their divorce. “I told her it is impossible to write a ten-year-old child and tell her you’re not coming home,” said Lindström. He had also told Bergman that he would meet her anywhere she liked so that she could talk to Pia in person.
Pacht offered into evidence newspaper reports that Bergman had become pregnant with Rossellini’s child while still married to Lindström. Bautzer objected, calling the articles “scandalous.” Pacht explained that the articles were offered to show that the publicity had affected Pia. Showing deference to Pacht, and trusting her own abilities to separate which facts were significant and which weren’t, Lillie overruled Bautzer’s objection and allowed the papers into evidence. Lindström testified that Pia’s schoolmates were taunting her. “When some boy had done something bad,” said Lindström, “he’d ‘done a Rossellini’ or he ‘was a Rossellini.’” Pia had complained to him several times.
“This is something we can’t do anything about,” he told her. “Just pretend you don’t understand or hear. Go on about your play. Time will take care of it.”
Without his client present to defend herself, there was little Bautzer could do to counter Lindström’s testimony. He sat there for four days knowing that he was fighting with both hands tied behind his back. He needed Bergman by his side, not thousands of miles away in Italy. Whatever remained of the public’s sympathy for Bergman was lost. It was frustrating and humiliating, and there was no way to stop it.
Finally, all that remained to be done was to have expert witnesses testify. Pacht called Dr. Charles O. Sturdevant, a psychiatrist, to the stand. He characterized Pia as a normal, healthy child who had nonetheless been traumatized by her parents’ separation and by the scandal. Bautzer called psychiatrist Dr. Mandel Sherman, who told the court that Pia’s trauma could be cured by seeing her mother. It was a very mild counter at best.
On June 24, Judge Lillie issued her ruling. For a half hour, she read her eleven-page opinion, which counted points in both Lindström’s and Bergman’s favor but chastised both of them for their “pride and selfishness.” Lillie ruled that the child could not be forced to go to Italy against her will. The determining factor in her decision was Bergman’s failure to visit Pia in the United States since her divorce. This was an unpardonable sin. There had been nothing to prevent Bergman from exercising her right under the divorce settlement to visit Pia in California. Lillie expressed regret that Pia or “any child must be subjected to publicity of the kind arising out of litigation such as this. Unfortunately, the parents in this case seem to be more interested in what each deserves or what each is entitled to under the law than in what would be for the best interests of the child, regardless of the law.”
Lillie was critical of Bergman’s much-quoted claim that she had “bargained and paid for” visitation rights. “The court wonders how long it will take her to realize that although she and the plaintiff might be able, between themselves, to place a dollar-and-cent sign on the rights of visitation and custody of a child, neither she nor anyone else can bargain for and buy the affection, love, and respect of a child.” Lillie had interviewed Pia privately and found her charming, well mannered, and vital, but indifferent to her mother. In Lillie’s opinion, Pia was almost lost to Bergman. Lillie urged Bergman to visit Pia and she cautioned both parents against ever again exposing her to protracted litigation. “The court is not alone in its belief that a reconciliation must take place between mother and child in order to give Pia proper security.”
After the judgment was read, Bautzer fled the courtroom immediately. He did not want to answer questions for the press. He hated losing more than anything, and now he had lost badly. Moreover, he had to call Bergman to tell her the news before someone else did. Lindström stayed and gloated over his victory. For the first time, he allowed the reporters to take photos of Pia. He told the press he planned to take Pia to Pennsylvania, where he had accepted a position as chief neurosurgeon at Aspinwall Veterans Hospital.
The next day, Bautzer realized that he needed to make a statement to try to repair Bergman’s image. The divorce had made her seem to the public like a cheating wife; now the fight over visitation rights convinced the world that she was also a terrible mother. Bautzer told the Los Angeles Times that Bergman intended to visit Pia in the United States for six weeks. Bautzer also tried to give the impression that the fight wasn’t over. He added that he had hired Jerry Giesler as consultant. Giesler made his own announcement: “All I can say now is that there undoubtedly will be some sort of action.” The prediction was a hollow one. Neither lawyer could think of a way to appeal the court’s decision or put pressure on Dr. Lindström to send Pia to Italy. The Bergman-Lindström visitation rights case would go down as the only major courtroom defeat in Gregson Bautzer’s career.
It should not have happened. The location of Bergman’s visitations was probably never discussed by Bautzer and Pacht during the final negotiations of the divorce settlement. It is not unusual for a court to refuse to allow a divorced parent to take a child outside the state in which the court resides, let alone to another country. Perhaps it didn’t occur to Bautzer until after the divorce settlement was signed to ask Bergman if she wanted to see Pia outside California. Perhaps Bergman, not knowing how courts treat such issues, assumed that she could see Pia in Europe at her discretion. The bigger question is how Bautzer could have counseled Bergman that she could win this dispute.
He knew the odds were against him. For three years Bergman had not visited her oldest daughter in the United States. The inescapable impression was that she was too absorbed in her new husband and baby to spend time with her daughter. It also appeared that she was trying to hurt her ex-husband by yanking their child away from him. Her sincerity was suspect. How much time could she spend with Pia in any case? She was nine months pregnant. The trial was still in session when, on June 18, she gave birth to twin daughters Isabella and Isotta.
It is conceivable that Bautzer continued with the case on Bergman’s terms because she forced him to do so. Bergman was known to be stubborn. The production of her last Hollywood film, Joan of Arc, was unnecessarily difficult and expensive, in large part because of her temperament. It is also conceivable that Bautzer didn’t tell his client that she had a bad case. Lawyers who represent major stars are frequently afraid they will lose a client if they tell them things they do not want to hear.
In the end, however, it was not Bergman’s intractability or Pacht’s cleverness that lost Bautzer the case. It was the testimony of one witness. Pia Lindström had, with her simple, honest answers, won Judge Lillie’s support.
The decision could not, unfortunately, resolve the family’s discord. Contrary to Bautzer’s statements to the press, Bergman did not come to visit Pia in Pennsylvania or anywhere else. In the five years that followed, her only contact with Pia was in writing. “I had no communication with her except for a few letters,” said Pia in 2011. “By then, she had three children with Roberto Rossellini and a new home in Italy that she said she loved. In spite of Mr. Bautzer’s statement, my mother did not come to the United States. I went to Paris to meet her when I was eighteen.” Bergman remained in Europe, making films there. Despite her self-imposed exile, American audiences forgave her, and she won her second Oscar just five years later for Anastasia. Bergman did not return to Hollywood for the ceremony; Cary Grant accepted the award on her behalf. She went on to win her third and final Oscar in 1974 for Murder on the Orient Express. “I’ve gone from saint to whore and back to saint again all in one lifetime,” she said.
The next time Pia Lindström saw Bautzer was many years later, at a party in Beverly Hills. By this time, she had a career in broadcast journalism. Bautzer walked up to her and proclaimed, “You are the only person to ever lose a case for me.” This was hardly an icebreaker, given the trauma the trial had caused her. Pia was surprised he didn’t take more responsibility for the outcome. “I did not lose the case. He lost it. He might have suggested a compromise like visiting in Sweden or England. My father was willing to take me there.” There is no way of knowing whether Bautzer did suggest a compromise and Bergman refused. Oddly enough, despite her displeasure at being reminded of a painful time in her life, Pia could not help noticing that Bautzer had retained his charm. “He was just as handsome. Later, when I read how many women fell in love with him, I could see why.”