Harriet Bosse - Independence

Independence

Both before and after the divorce from Strindberg, Bosse was a Stockholm celebrity in her own right. Her independence and self-supporting status gained her a reputation for being strong-willed and opinionated, insisting on, and receiving, high pay and significant roles. She left Dramaten with its conventional repertoire and began working at Albert Ranft's Swedish Theatre, where she and the skilful but more modest actor (Anders) Gunnar Wingård (1878–1912) formed a popular co-star team. She travelled frequently, particularly for guest performances in Helsinki, leaving little Anne-Marie with Strindberg, a competent and affectionate father. In 1907, Bosse made theatrical history as Indra's daughter in Strindberg's epoch-making Dream Play. She and Strindberg met weekly for dinner at his house, and remained lovers until she severed connections in preparation for her marriage with Gunnar Wingård in 1908. In 1909 the Wingårds had a son, Bo. This marriage was also brief, ending in divorce in 1912. According to rumour, the cause of the divorce was Wingård's infidelity. However, Strindberg also heard gossip that Wingård's large debts threatened Bosse's finances.

In 1911, a divorced woman with two children to care for and support, Bosse returned to Dramaten. Strindberg was at that time fatally ill with cancer; he died on 14 May 1912. 1912 was altogether a year of death and disaster for the Bosse and Strindberg families: Alma Fahlstrøm's son Arne went down with the Titanic on 15 April; Strindberg's first wife Siri von Essen died later the same month; von Essen's and Strindberg's daughter Greta, a promising young actress, was killed in a train crash in June; and Bosse's divorced husband Gunnar Wingård shot himself on 7 October. Strindberg's funeral was a national event. Gunnar Wingård, a popular and charming actor, was also the subject of public grief. Throughout these shattering events, which left both her children fatherless, Bosse kept up her busy schedule, apart from a few days off, distraught and grief-stricken, after Wingård's suicide. For months after it, she received anonymous letters and threatening phone-calls, blaming her for Wingård's depression and death.

Bosse's third marriage, 1927–32, was to Edvin Adolphson (1893–1979), fifteen years her junior. Adolphson had abandoned his stage career in order to become instead a film director and one of the best-known Swedish film actors, a ruggedly handsome matinée idol whose screen persona Nils Beyer referred to as a combination of "apache, gangster and gigolo".

Bosse made two films, ambitiously shot and directed and based on novels by well-known writers. The artistic achievement of Sons of Ingmar (1919) has been highly praised. Directed by and co-starring Victor Sjöström, it was based on a novel by Swedish Nobel Prize winner Selma Lagerlöf; many years later, Ingmar Bergman referred to Sons of Ingmar as a "magnificent, remarkable film" and acknowledged his own debt to Sjöström. Bosse, who played the female lead Brita, called Sons of Ingmar "the only worthwhile Swedish film I was involved in." However, the film failed to give her career the kind of fresh start that the Swedish film industry had given Edvin Adolphson, and it was seventeen years before she made another film. This was Bombi Bitt and I (1936), her only talkie, based on Fritiof Nilsson Piraten's popular first novel with the same title and directed by Gösta Rodin. Bombi Bitt was a successful though more lightweight production, with a smaller Bosse role ("Franskan").