Glamazon Jungle

Why do you always have to run after girls? I’ll tell you when your voice changes, Junior.

Ingrid Bergman, 1952

“I made my own image because I refused to change my name or my hair. They wanted to change me completely when I first came over because that was the standard thing to do. They took stars from Hungary, Germany, France, and tried to change them – to make them more beautiful to American eyes, I suppose. But then they became just like all the other American stars that were there. Lots of publicity stills in bathing suits and hats and all that.

“Well, ….when I came over, they started in on me: ‘The name’s impossible to pronounce,’ ‘The name’s German and there’s a war on,’ ‘You’re teeth, eyebrows and hair are wrong.’ But I said I wouldn’t change anything. I told them they had got me over here because they’d seen a picture called Intermezzo and I was here to do a remake, and I was staying how I was because that’s the way you liked me in the picture. Then they started on the publicity. But I didn’t want any of it – I wanted the public to discover me. I didn’t want to be pushed down their throats, because I’ve seen that: ‘MARVELOUS STAR FROM HOLLAND, A GREAT ACTRESS’ and then out she comes and just does what everyone else is doing.

Remembering “The Master” Alfred Hitchcock on his birthday (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980)