HOLLYWOOD MYSTERIES AND SCANDALS - What happened to Inger Stevens_
HOLLYWOOD MYSTERIES AND SCANDALS - What happened to Inger Stevens_
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00:00Well, there.
00:01That's it?
00:02All done.
00:03Except for one little thing.
00:04Yeah?
00:05You forgot to put on your wedding dress.
00:06Margo.
00:07That's not fair.
00:08You can't expect a bride to remember everything.
00:09Ingrid Stevens.
00:10The award-winning actress charmed audiences in the TV series The Farmer's Daughter, and
00:13played opposite Clint Eastwood in the 1968 Western, Hang Him High.
00:16Stevens had killed a man in a car accident.
00:19Ingrid Stevens.
00:20The award-winning actress charmed audiences in the TV series The Farmer's Daughter, and
00:25played opposite Clint Eastwood in the 1968 Western, Hang Him High.
00:29Stevens had killer looks, genuine talent, and a bright future in Hollywood.
00:33But, on April 30th, 1970, the lifeless body of 35-year-old Ingrid Stevens was found face-down
00:39on her kitchen floor.
00:41The official cause of death was suicide, but why would a rising young actress cash in her chips?
00:46True, if Hollywood had a mascot, it would be a sexy blonde starlet with a death wish,
00:50but the news of Ingrid's passing caught her friends and co-stars totally by surprise.
00:54I was just shocked, and stunned, and saddened, and bewildered.
01:00But I, in terms of anything other than just the suicide note, that never entered my mind.
01:06Not everyone agrees that Stevens took her own life.
01:09Some say her death was an accident.
01:11Others insist the beloved actress was murdered.
01:13It was ingestion of pills and alcohol.
01:15I think that whoever forced her to take them forced her to drink some wine or something
01:19to wash them down.
01:21On this episode of Mysteries and Scandals, we'll expose how Ingrid Stevens was dying to find true love.
01:27In someone's life who's had certain romantic entanglements that didn't work out,
01:32you can't help but feel that, for the frustration she may have felt.
01:36And we'll reveal how Ingrid's promising career could not shield her from personal desperation.
01:41There's always a bit of terror somewhere in the corner of her eye.
01:45And that it was like she was encased in fear of something she couldn't figure out.
01:52I'm A.J. Benza. Join me as we grapple with the secrets of a forgotten Hollywood beauty, Ingrid Stevens.
02:1635-year-old Ingrid Stevens was a successful film and television star when she died suddenly in 1970.
02:22The award-winning actress was apparently as fragile as she was beautiful.
02:26Oscar-winning actor Rod Steiger co-starred with Stevens in the 1958 film Cry Terror.
02:31If somebody said give me a one-word impression of Ingrid Stevens, I would have said fatality.
02:37Something was going to happen. And it did.
02:40But in the days leading up to her death,
02:42no one suspected that Ingrid's life was about to take a terrible turn.
02:46Biographer William Patterson is the author of The Farmer's Daughter Remembered.
02:50She was up for a lead in a part of a TV series called Most Deadly Game.
02:55And it was produced by Aaron Spelling.
02:59Ingrid's personal assistant, Chris Bone, remembers her boss being optimistic about the future.
03:04She'd gone out and bought new clothes and was thrilled about doing it.
03:09And when I spoke to her, she had just gone out to dinner with Aaron Spelling and his wife
03:14and was quite excited about doing the show.
03:18Stevens was also excited about recent developments in her personal life.
03:22The 35-year-old actress was dating one of the hottest young actors in Hollywood, 34-year-old Burt Reynolds.
03:28On the evening before her death, Ingrid and Burt ate dinner together at her home in the Hollywood Hills.
03:33After Burt left, which was, I'm guessing, around six or seven, something like that,
03:38later in the evening she called Chris.
03:40The last time I talked to her was the night before she died.
03:43She asked me if I could come over and I couldn't.
03:45She wasn't happy that night and she had had a couple of glasses of wine
03:49and said, well, don't worry about it, I'll take a sleeping pill and, you know, see you in the morning.
03:55But in the morning, Ingrid Stevens was dead.
03:59But in the morning, Ingrid Stevens was dead.
04:02A friend arrived at Ingrid's home to find Stevens unconscious on the kitchen floor.
04:06Paramedics were called immediately, but the beautiful young actress died en route to the hospital.
04:11I was devastated. I was just totally devastated.
04:13And then, you know, my first reaction was guilt because I didn't go that night.
04:18After the police came the next morning, her friends were in the house
04:21and they found the phone that was normally in the living room was not there.
04:26In the bedroom, the carpet had been pulled back
04:30and Bert's pictures were under the carpet like she didn't want someone to see them.
04:34And she had gotten the ingredients of her favorite sandwich out.
04:37And on the kitchen counter there was a vial which is an asthma pill.
04:43And the press said that's what killed her.
04:45Neither she nor her friends had asthma.
04:47For those who knew Stevens, her sudden death came as a shock.
04:50TV's Columbo, actor Peter Falk.
04:53I was stunned. Stunned.
04:58I couldn't believe it.
05:00I had no, no information. None.
05:05Harry Flynn worked as a publicist for The Farmer's Daughter,
05:08the 1960s television show that starred Ingrid Stevens.
05:11A girl has her own series. That's success.
05:14The idea of achieving it and reaching some kind of a plateau
05:19and then ending it all doesn't seem an answer that Ingrid would have come up with.
05:27Never thought she committed suicide and I'll tell you why.
05:31Her makeup would have been perfect.
05:33She would have been in the prettiest negligee she owned.
05:37And she was in a robe and scruffy slippers from what I understand.
05:41And there's no way.
05:42I just figured that it was the combination of the couple of glasses of wine she told me she'd had
05:49and the sleeping pills.
05:51Police said that it was probably accidental that she forgot she took a pill and took another one.
05:58But in the autopsy, there were at least 25 to 50 pills in her when they opened her up.
06:05So did Ingrid ingest a month's worth of sedatives in one night by mistake?
06:10Talking to a coroner, I was informed that a lot of people will take pills if they're forced to.
06:15I think someone forced them down her.
06:17By the way, there's some abrasions on her arm, too.
06:20And no one knows where they came from.
06:22But who'd want to kill Ingrid Stevens?
06:24When we come back, we'll investigate the theories surrounding Ingrid's suspicious death.
06:28Was Stevens murdered or was her death the result of one too many broken hearts?
06:33In 1970, film and television star Ingrid Stevens died from an overdose of barbiturates.
06:39Ingrid's death came as a shock to many people who knew her,
06:42especially since the 35-year-old seemed to have everything to live for.
06:45Stevens was talented, beautiful, successful, and had come a long way from the days of her troubled youth.
06:50Or had she?
06:51Ingrid was born in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1934.
06:55The date was October 18th.
06:57Her father was a schoolteacher.
06:59And her mother ran off when she was very young.
07:02Kirk Crivello is the author of Fallen Angels.
07:05Her father remarried and moved to the United States
07:09and left Ingrid and her younger brother with relatives.
07:13In 1944, 10-year-old Ingrid and her brother Ola traveled by ship across the Atlantic Ocean.
07:18Ingrid's father and his new wife were supposed to pick up the children at a shipyard in New Orleans.
07:23Her dad and stepmother were killed in the war.
07:27Her dad and stepmother were not there to meet them,
07:30so she was greeted by the Salvation Army,
07:33who put her on a train to New York City.
07:37They managed to get the kids up to New York City
07:40and then on to Massachusetts, where the father was having a vacation.
07:44He didn't even come down to pick up the kids.
07:46She was searching for love that she honestly never got from her father.
07:51Her father rejected her, and she admits this.
07:56Ingrid may have known how much emotional baggage she was carrying,
07:59but that didn't make her load any lighter.
08:01Dr. Chris Mohandy is a police psychologist.
08:04So she brings to the table a history of abandonment, rejection, and instability in her childhood
08:11with the moves and with parents leaving and coming and going, those kinds of issues.
08:17In 1948, Ingrid's father moved the family from the island of Manhattan to Manhattan, Kansas.
08:23Fourteen-year-old Ingrid attended junior high school, where she developed an interest in theater.
08:27Ingrid wanted to be a star.
08:29Nineteen-year-old Ingrid made her way back to New York City in the fall of 1953.
08:34The aspiring actress starred in several TV commercials.
08:37In February of 1956, Ingrid was in her first Broadway play called Debut,
08:42and she had married her agent, Tony Soglio,
08:46and they weren't getting along, and he was somewhat, I guess, abusive towards her.
08:51So they were separated, but he still acted as her agent.
08:54They were really married only six months.
08:56They lived together, but the divorce didn't occur for another three years after that.
09:02He arranged for her to have a testing contract at 20th Century Fox,
09:08so Fox brought her out to Hollywood.
09:10At age 22, Ingrid Stevens quickly became a hot commodity in Tinseltown.
09:14She was funny, and she was beautiful,
09:19and she was a hell of an actress.
09:22And that was my first impression, and that never changed.
09:28This is a lady from Scandinavia who came over here
09:32and started to have a career rather successfully in Hollywood.
09:38And obviously her personal problems and God knows what,
09:44she didn't have the strength for it.
09:47Strength is the one thing you gotta have in Hollywood.
09:49Well, strength and maybe an expense account.
09:52Ingrid Stevens would have paid any price to find peace of mind.
09:54Straight ahead, what roles did Bing Crosby, Dean Martin, and Anthony Quinn
09:58play in Stevens' real-life tragic love story?
10:00And did Ingrid's desperate search for Mr. Right have fatal consequences?
10:08In 1956, at age 22, Hollywood newcomer Ingrid Stevens
10:12claimed her place among the giants of the movie business.
10:14Ingrid's first film role cast her opposite the legendary Bing Crosby
10:17in the 1957 flick Man on Fire.
10:20And man, oh man, did sparks fly between Ingrid Stevens and a leading man.
10:24The young actress thought 53-year-old Bing was hot stuff.
10:27They were very much in love, or she thought they were,
10:30and she heard on the radio that he had married Catherine Grant that day.
10:35She later told people the reason that they didn't marry
10:38was because she wasn't Catholic.
10:40Crosby wasn't the only famous name in Ingrid's little black book.
10:43In the late 1950s, Stevens was linked romantically to several celebrity studs.
10:48On her third film, The Buccaneer, is when she met her next big love, Anthony Quinn.
10:54That lasted about a year.
10:56But rumors persist that the breakup with Quinn bothered 24-year-old Ingrid tremendously.
11:01Some say that her well-publicized suicide attempt on New Year's Eve 1959
11:09was over her breakup with Anthony Quinn.
11:12Others contend that Ingrid became deeply depressed on the set of the 1958 film
11:16The World, the Flesh, and the Devil.
11:18While making the picture, Stevens supposedly fell in love
11:21with yet another co-star, actor Harry Belafonte.
11:24It didn't work out, and she just got really depressed about it.
11:28She just decided that life wasn't worth living.
11:31She did take some pills, and she almost died.
11:34Later, after she recovered, she said it was the dumbest thing she'd ever done in her life.
11:38And she said, now I have a desire to live and really enjoy life.
11:43Feeling renewed, Ingrid took a break from movie making
11:45and spent the next two years starring on the small screen.
11:48Stevens made guest appearances on more than a dozen TV shows,
11:51including Bonanza and The Twilight Zone.
11:53And in the fall of 1961, 27-year-old Ingrid took on the role of blushing bride once again.
11:59She married Ike Jones.
12:02Ike was working for Nat King Cole at the time, and they got married in Tijuana.
12:07It wasn't accepted in those days for a black man and a white woman to be married.
12:14She introduced him to me and seemed to be very proud of the relationship.
12:17I'm sure some people said, hey, don't do that, it might hurt your career.
12:20Though Ingrid's friends and colleagues knew about Ike,
12:22the couple kept their marriage a secret from the public.
12:25She continued working in television, and in 1962,
12:28Ingrid co-starred with actor Peter Falk on The Dick Powell Show,
12:31a dramatic anthology series.
12:33Both Stevens and Falk were nominated for Emmy Awards
12:36for their performance in the one-hour episode The Price of Tomatoes.
12:39I remember The Price of Tomatoes as being very, very happy.
12:43And I remember that my first impression of Ingrid,
12:48when I first met her, I instantly liked her.
12:52In the early 60s, she got the part of The Farmer's Daughter,
12:56which was a TV series, and that ran for three years.
13:00She did 101 shows.
13:01She was the maid or the governess or whatever she played
13:05for William Wyndham, who was the congressman.
13:07And they ultimately married in one of the shows,
13:09which had one of the highest ratings of any show.
13:11In the spring of 64, 29-year-old Stevens won a Golden Globe
13:14for her role in The Farmer's Daughter.
13:16But Ingrid's two-and-a-half-year marriage to Ike Jones
13:18wasn't winning any prizes.
13:20He was a nice-looking man and could be very charming,
13:23but he could also drink a lot, and they had many a fight.
13:26It just was a thing that wasn't going to work out.
13:28I always had the feeling this woman would get involved
13:31with somebody who would kind of be sadistic
13:35and kind of tell her she was nothing, nothing, nothing,
13:39until one day she thought she was nothing.
13:41She didn't like herself for some reason.
13:43I don't know what it was.
13:45Of course, she certainly was a nice person.
13:47I saw her in love, really in love, once,
13:49and that was Dean Martin.
13:51It went on for quite a while, and then he ended it.
13:54She was devastated.
13:55She cried and cried and did when they broke up.
14:00If Ingrid was an emotional wreck,
14:02she certainly pulled herself together in front of the cameras.
14:05By early 1970, 35-year-old Ingrid was a TV celebrity
14:08with 15 films to her credit.
14:10Ingrid also had a new boyfriend, actor Burt Reynolds.
14:14You know, once we started, there wouldn't be any turning back.
14:17I know that.
14:18She met Burt on her last movie.
14:20It was a TV movie called Run, Simon, Run.
14:22And the night she died, he was there at her house,
14:27and she cooked him dinner.
14:29After Burt left, Ingrid asked her assistant,
14:31Chris Bone, to come over.
14:33Chris couldn't get to Ingrid's until the next morning.
14:35By then, Chris had heard on the radio
14:37that Ingrid Stevens was dead.
14:39I drove up to the house, got the baby in the car,
14:41and I saw the police.
14:43All these people were there, and I just stopped
14:45and turned around and went home.
14:47Ingrid Stevens wasn't the first, and unfortunately,
14:49she won't be the last celebrity to die of a drug overdose.
14:52But was Ingrid's death self-inflicted
14:53or merely staged to look that way?
15:01On April 30, 1970, film and TV star Ingrid Stevens
15:05was dead of a barbiturate overdose at the age of 35.
15:08The autopsy stated Ingrid's death was a suicide.
15:11Now, since Stevens attempted to off herself 10 years earlier,
15:14she must have tried again, this time succeeding.
15:16At least that was the coroner's theory.
15:18She did not leave a suicide note,
15:21and she also didn't leave a will.
15:27So that's why so many people were shocked
15:29at the time of her death.
15:31I mean, she was doing so well.
15:33Her career was going well.
15:35Basically, there are three possibilities in this situation.
15:37Number one, accident.
15:39Hypothesis two is that it was a homicide,
15:42and the person staged the crime to throw the trail
15:45off of the likely suspect.
15:47And hypothesis three, which is what the coroner ruled,
15:50is that it was, in fact, a suicide.
15:52The person was despondent and wanted to take their own life.
15:55Rod Steiger witnessed Ingrid's suicidal tendencies
15:58when they co-starred in the 1958 movie Cry Terror.
16:01While filming a scene in a New York City subway,
16:04Steiger and Stevens were overwhelmed
16:06by carbon monoxide fumes.
16:08She goes past the camera, I go past the camera,
16:10and when we do, she collapses.
16:14And I caught her.
16:16I'm standing there with the leading lady in my arms,
16:18and there's about four ambulances, two paramedics,
16:20the police and everything.
16:22The generator was pumping carbon monoxide.
16:27And we get up, and we get into the hospital,
16:30and they give me the mask to purify my oxygen.
16:34And they come in and say,
16:36Mr. Steiger, we don't know what to do.
16:38I said, what's the matter? She says, she won't breathe.
16:40She won't take it. She wants to die.
16:42And she came out of it, but you'd have to be an idiot
16:47not to know that this lady was not too happy
16:52with the false poetry of living.
16:54There was a delicacy about her.
16:57And there was, yes, there was something fragile about her,
17:02but she wasn't somebody that when you met them said,
17:05gee, you've got to tread very carefully here or she'll break.
17:09Perhaps Inger's overdose was accidental.
17:11At the time of her death,
17:13Inger's blood alcohol level was a .17,
17:15more than twice the legal limit.
17:17Stevens may not have realized how many downers she was downing.
17:20Forensic pathologist Dr. David Posey.
17:23The anxiety and the frustration of whatever was bothering her
17:26kind of wells up and says, oh, well, I didn't go to sleep.
17:29Obviously that didn't work, so I'll pop a few more pills,
17:32and I can see, throw four more down,
17:34another drink of alcohol, and a few more minutes goes by,
17:37and again, repeats this thing.
17:39So I think that's a real key there.
17:41Up until her tragic death, Inger Stevens seemed genuinely happy.
17:44She was excited about her new romance with Burt Reynolds,
17:47and she was up for the lead for a new TV series.
17:50Doesn't sound like a recipe for depression.
17:52Stevens' biographer William Patterson
17:54doesn't believe Inger was suicidal.
17:56He also doesn't buy that Stevens would overdose accidentally.
17:59In the autopsy, there were at least 25 to 50 pills in her
18:04when they opened her up.
18:06And a person just doesn't forget and take that many.
18:10Also on the bedroom floor, there were a bunch of Reds,
18:13which was a pill that you'd take to go to sleep.
18:17And she did not take Reds.
18:20If she wanted something to sleep with,
18:22she'd take a pill that's known as a rainbow.
18:25And there were no rainbows found in the house.
18:28You've got medication that she supposedly, according to friends,
18:32is not normally taking, but is that the truth?
18:34We don't really know.
18:35Maybe she does take a few pills here and there
18:37just to help her sleep if she's anxiety ridden
18:40or if she's upset with somebody.
18:42Patterson believes somebody coerced Inger
18:44to swallow a lethal dose of sedatives.
18:46I think there was someone that did come to the house
18:48later that night, and they were there during the period
18:50that the pills would have been ingested.
18:52I think that whoever forced her to take them
18:54forced her to drink some wine or something to wash them down.
18:57Patterson has his suspicions about who the killer might be,
18:59but for legal reasons, he ain't talking.
19:02But Patterson will say who didn't do it.
19:04Bert had nothing to do with her death.
19:06And the FBI didn't do it.
19:08They just killed Marilyn, but they didn't kill her.
19:11Whoops, wrong episode.
19:13I think homicide is really, would be low on my list of things to think of.
19:18The reason it would be low on my list is because
19:20there seems to be no motive.
19:22There's no evidence at the scene that there was any foul play.
19:25There's no forced entry. There's no force of any kind.
19:28A more likely scenario is that Inger took the lethal combination
19:31of booze and pills voluntarily,
19:33but whether the 35-year-old actress intended to end her life,
19:36we'll never really know.
19:38This is a quote by Inger.
19:40When I lie down at the end of the road,
19:42I'll want to have left something behind,
19:45even if it is just having helped one other person.
19:50She helped more than one other person.
19:52She helped quite a few people.
19:54She helped me a lot.
19:56Nearly 30 years after her death, Inger Stevens is remembered fondly.
20:00She was a very beautiful crippled bird
20:05that was still trying to take off.
20:09And you can't do it with one wing.
20:11It's like somebody who was told life was a poem and it ain't.
20:15She was looking for the poem all the time.
20:17There was this delicate quality.
20:21Even her beauty was, it wasn't a boom, boom, boom.
20:25Here I am.
20:27She was beautiful, but it was laid back.
20:31I was impressed with her as a human being.
20:35And she was everything you would want in a friend.
20:40She was loyal.
20:42She was so concerned about your happiness and your well-being.
20:46And I still miss her.
20:4930 years later, I miss her.
20:51There is no star for Inger Stevens on this boulevard of broken dreams.
20:54Yet in so many ways, Inger's story of stardom and tragedy
20:57is Hollywood's most consistent theme.
20:59I'm A.J. Benza.
21:01Join me the next time we take a stroll down the flip side of the Walk of Fame.
21:24¶¶