The Tragic Life and Death of Inger Stevens

If you are a fan of The Twilight Zone, you are familiar with Inger Stevens. She portrayed Nan Adams, a young woman who did not realize she was dead, in the episode The Hitchhiker and played Jana, who was unaware she was a robot in The Lateness of the Hour.

The talented actress had a tragic childhood, and her career was cut short due to an illness that took her life at an early age. Looking back with the knowledge we have today it appears Stevens was dealing with mental health issues.

In the Hitchhiker, the man in the left of the top cover photo represented death who was stalking Nan. At one point he is in the back of her vehicle and asks "Going my way?" Some people believe death was stalking Inger because of situations later in her life.

Stevens was born on October 13, 1934, in Stockholm, Sweden. She was the oldest child of Per Gustaf and Lisbet Stensland. When she was six years old, her mother abandoned the family, taking Inga's youngest brother, Peter, with her. This was the first traumatic event in her young life.

Soon after, Gustaf moved to the United States, leaving Inga and her brother Ola with the family maid. The children later lived with an aunt in Lidingö, an island near Stockholm. Both of these changes no doubt affcted the little girl.

Stevens and her brother endured yet another this time to the US. In 1964 they came to live with their father and his new wife in New York City. When she was 13 the family moved again, to Manhattan, Kansas.

Inga did not get along with her stepmother, and at 15 ran away to Kansas City, and began working as a waitress. She later joined the chorus girls in a burlesque show. When her father heard about it brought her back home.

She was in school plays, and after graduating from high school at 18, she remained in Kansas City when her family moved to Texas. She performed in fashion shows and modeled until she moved to New York City, where she worked as a phone operator, model, and cashier while going on auditions.

She studied with the famous Lee Strasberg. while working as a chorus girl. She married her agent, Anthony Soglio and she said her wedding day was the worst day of her life. The marriage ended after only six months.

Soglio suggested that she change her name from Stensland to Stevens and secured many roles for her, but she had to pay hm 5% of her earnings. After the divorce, she moved to Hollywood and in 1957 starred with Bing Crosby in Man on Fire.

The duo fell in love, which set a pattern for Stevens having affairs with her co-stars. Crosby wanted to marry her but she refused to convert to Catholicism. She was said to be devastated when he quickly married Katherine Grant. From this point disaster seemed to follow the actress.

While filming a scene in a subway tunnel for the film Cry Terror!, in 1958, Stevens and her co-star, Rod Steiger began choking on carbon monoxide fumes and came close to dying.

Steiger later revealed that the actress initially refused lifesaving assistance, saying she wanted to die. She later left Hollywood and moved back to New York, where she took a handful of sleeping pills.

She was found three days later and allegedly had also ingested ammonia. Blood clots formed in her lungs, and her legs swelled up three times their normal size. She was also blind but eventually recovered. It was assumed this was related to the breakup with Crosby.

In 1961 Stevens was on a plane headed to Lisbon, Portugal that made an emergency landing. Inga was the last passenger to exit and immediately there was a explosion. She had escaped death again.

In November of that year, she traveled to Tijuana, Mexico to marry actor, producer, and businessman, Ike Jones who was Black. They agreed to keep their marriage secret and live separate lives to preserve their careers.

Although she was married Stevens had affairs with leading men like Dean Martin whom she starred with in Five Card Stud and Clint Eastwood while filming Hang Em High.

Stevens spoke to Jones one last time to tell him the marriage would not work and that they should live in separate homes they owned. On the following morning of April 30, 1970, hairstylist, Lola McNally, who lived with Inger found her unresponsive on the floor. She died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.

On arrival, medics removed a small bandage from her chin that revealed a small amount of fresh blood oozing from a cut that appeared to have been a few hours old. Los Angeles County coroner Dr. Thomas Noguchi attributed Stevens's death to "acute barbiturate poisoning"[19][20] and the death was eventually ruled a suicide.(Wikipedia)

Abandoned by her mother, temporarily deserted by her father, left with a maid and relatives and not getting along with her stepmother. Any one of these could cause trauma for a child.

The breakup with Bing Cosby and not being able to tell the world about her husband for nine years added to the stress. Inger Stevens died at 36 and the world will never know her full potential. After her death her brother confirmed that she was married to Jones who became the executor of her estate.