The 80th Anniversary of the Film Casablanca. Lindstrom and Bergman in Rochester, New York

First published Feb. 15, 2022

Casablanca, released in 1942, is having a re-release to celebrate its 80th anniversary. Few films have been dissected as thoroughly. Its history, superb cast and number of awards are noteworthy. I will not revisit them. It is on most of the top movies of all time lists and is sometimes at the top of that list, competing with Citizen Kane for number one. It has more mass appeal than Citizen Kane, but aficionados consider Citizen Kane the better movie. When Casablanca was being filmed, Ingrid Bergman lived in Rochester, New York, where, later, I was on the faculty of the University and from where Alice Jo and I moved to Fountainview Gonda after nearly 60 years there. Bergman spent much of her time in Hollywood since Casablanca was filmed at the Warner Brothers Studio in Burbank. Why was she living in Rochester? Petter Aron Lindstrom (1907-2000) had joined the University of Rochester School of Medicine, class of 1943, in the fall of 1940, after coming to the United States from Sweden. He had been a successful dentist and teacher of dentistry in Stockholm. He had met Ingrid Bergman (1915-1982) on a blind date in 1933, when she was 18; she was enrolled in dramatic school at the time. They fell in love and married in 1937, she 21 years and he 30 years old. Her movie career started in Sweden but she was brought to the United States in 1939 by David O. Selznick to film an English remake of Intermezzo, her sixth Swedish film, made in 1936. When the Swedish version arrived in New York, it was considered the best Swedish film ever sent to the United States. Selznick saw in the original film the makings of a star. By this time, Bergman had a 7 month old daughter, Friedel Pia Lindstrom. Friedel was Ingrid Bergman’s mother’s name and Pia was an acronym constructed from Bergman’s first name and Lindstrom’s first and middle name: Petter, Ingrid, and Aron. By 1938, Lindstrom had cut back his dental practice in Stockholm and began studying medicine. This experience explained his finishing medical school in Rochester in three years. After returning to Sweden for a time following the making of Intermezzo in Hollywood, Ingrid and Pia, sailed again for the United States in 1940, as a wider war engulfed Europe. From New York they travelled to Hollywood by train where they acquired a small home. Lindstrom decided to complete his medical studies in the United States and could have gone to the University of Southern California, School of Medicine, as he, Ingrid and Pia were living in Hollywood by that time. He would have had to wait a year to start school, something he did not want to do; so he considered three medical schools that would allow him to start in the fall of 1940: Yale, Chicago, and Rochester. He eventually chose Rochester. Selznick made much of his role in getting him into medical school in Rochester because of his acquaintance with Alan Valentine, then president of the University, but Lindstrom had a fine record and had published research in dentistry; there was no outside influence in his admission. It was evident, later, that Selznick only wanted to ingratiate himself with Bergman. Lindstrom took up residence in Rochester as a medical student and Ingrid and Pia lived with him at 985 South Avenue, a 25 minute walk to the medical school. (Figure) Bergman was back and forth between her films; her visits were for periods of weeks to months. They always had domestic help to assist with the care of Pia who sometimes accompanied her mother to film locations in California. Bergman described her home town thusly: “Rochester was a quiet, plain city and it was wrong for me to have expected more. But it was unbearably dull, with nothing to do.” In winter, however, her love of ice skating and skiing made Rochester more tolerable. She performed in one play and made six films during the time Lindstrom was studying medicine in Rochester, one for the Office of War Information; notable among the films were Casablanca in which she starred opposite Humphrey Bogart and For Whom the Bells Toll in which she was coupled with Gary Cooper. Lindstrom went on to become a prominent neurosurgeon in Los Angeles.

Figure. Petter Lindstrom, Ingrid Berman, and Pia Lindstrom at play outside their home on South Avenue, Rochester, New York in the winter of 1942-43. From the University of Rochester Edward G. Miner Medical Library Archives.