Bergman (Ingrid)

Autograph letter signed ('Ingrid') to George Cukor, reading in part "How nice of you to send me the clipping about Ibsen. Of course I know where Lovborg shot himself, as it is clearly state in all Scandinavian versions. I fought hard to have it clear in our TV show, but unfortunately the English language has no ‘polite,’ factual word for this part of the body, no word that doesn’t make the public smile, if not burst out in histerics [sic]!! We have a word that you can say as unshockingly, as if you would say ‘he shot himself in the kidney.’ Even in French we are ‘stuck in stomach’! But of course the French are very quick and might get the idea even quicker than Ibsen!!", one page, large 4to, La Grange Aux Moines, 11 October 1962.

Cukor had directed Bergman in the 1944 movie 'Gaslight', for which she won an Oscar. The actress had just completed a TV adaptation of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler and the letter concerns exactly where the character Eilert Lovborg accidentally shoots himself. Academic work suggest breast, abdomen, groin and genitals. Bergman, with the benefit of having read the original Scandinavian version, clearly points to the latter.