No One To Turn To—Inger Stevens

All through the weekend after the New Year’s holiday, Inger Stevens didn’t answer her telephone.

Bitter-cold winter winds ripped through New York City like an icy scythe in seventy-miles-an-hour gales. Inger’s close friend, David Tebet, a tall, dark-haired executive with NBC Television, called Inger over and over again throughout Saturday and Sunday.

But there was no reply. Tebet couldn’t understand why. When he left Inger on Friday night after a relaxing evening of dinner and theater, she seemed a little down in the dumps, possibly from the biting ten-degree cold that plagued the city for over a week and, peculiarly, had its depressing effects. “But not down enough for anyone to worry about,” Tebet recalls. Matter of fact, Inger had told him to be sure to call her “sometime tomorrow.”

Around seven o’clock on Sunday evening when the black blanket of January sky covered the freezing metropolis, Tebet, tense with worry over Inger, finally called the handyman of the new apartment building Inger recently moved into. It was in the fashionable Gramercy Park area with its elegant stucco town houses and occasional columned hotel residences.

Tebet asked handyman Joseph DiSantis if he’d seen Inger over the weekend.

DiSantis told him he hadn’t.

“I’m . . . I’m afraid something’s wrong,” Tebet told DiSantis nervously. “Would you mind going over and ringing her bell?”

DiSantis said he was in the midst of sitting down to dinner with his wife and two daughters.

“Please,” Tebet begged. “I’m terribly worried. And if she doesn’t answer I want you to use your passkey to see if anything’s happened. I can’t figure out why she’s not answering the phone.”

DiSantis, a husky fellow, grey-eyed, with curly brown hair and a mole on his cheek, changed from his comfortable house-slippers into his shoes and walked next door to Inger’s apartment building with its white paneled doorway. He rang the downstairs buzzer. No answer. He let himself into the mirrored lobby with the large-lettered Happy New Year’s greeting sprayed all over the looking glass.

Upstairs DiSantis saw a cardboard tag from Western Union hanging on the brass doorknob of Inger’s apartment. Under her door the Western Union messenger had slipped a telegram, and a corner of the yellow envelope stuck out from the carpeted floor.

DiSantis rang Inger’s bell. No answer. He knocked. No answer. He banged against the hard wood of the door. No answer.

Should he or shouldn’t he intrude on Inger’s privacy?

Shouting “Miss Stevens . . . Miss Stevens . . . Miss Stevens” at the top of his lungs, he banged against the door. Still no answer.

He took his aluminum ring of master keys from his back pocket and entered her apartment.

She was home. All the lights were on.

He called her name again. There was no reply. In the foyer there was a clutter of cardboard cartons and wooden crates, all of which had arrived yesterday from Hollywood with Inger’s furniture and knick-knacks. Many of them were unopened. The new apartment, decorated in soft tones of beige with white accents, was littered with Inger’s unpacking.

Off the hallway, the bedroom door was slightly ajar.

DiSantis heard a slow, heavy breathing, as if someone were suffocating.

Calling her name loudly once more, he waited a minute before throwing open her bedroom door.

There she was, flung across her double bed with the gleaming brass headboard, her blonde hair mussed and wrinkled, a thin pink nightgown twisted around her. At the side of the bed her slender legs dangled limply.

Stunned, DiSantis ran toward her. Her cheeks were black and blue. His first reaction was: She’s been beaten. Looking closely at her gasping face he saw the dark marks were tear-traced streaks of mascara and eyeshadow.

Suddenly, in that next instant, DiSantis heard a quick rattling noise. He rushed toward the bedroom doorway to see if someone were hiding in the living room.

Slowly, cautiously, he walked into the front room and stood with his back to the fireplace, waiting for the person to emerge. But, in a moment, when he heard the rattle again it was the clatter of the Venetian blinds knocking together from the cold night winds.

He tiptoed, on guard, through Inger’s apartment for a check but found no one. Inger’s breathing was growing shorter, and he went to pick up the telephone. But he decided against it, thinking there may be fingerprints on it . . .

DiSantis locked Inger’s apartment, ran next door to his own and dialed police headquarters for help.

“There’s been an accident,” he said. “A young girl who’s just moved in here. Her breathing, it’s all choked up, and her life . . . her life, it’s in danger . . .”

He hung up, dialed her friend, David Tebet, who taxied downtown immediately from his East 55th Street residence.

The mystery of Inger Stevens had only begun.

Patrolmen John Weigel and Raymond Beyrer of the 13th Precinct were the first to respond to the emergency call over the radios in the police prowl cars. The patrolmen administered oxygen to the lifeless Inger lying on her new double bed, and summoned emergency service cops.

Inger, gagging for air, was carried out on a stretcher to the ambulance that rushed her, siren-sounding, to Columbus Hospital where doctors reported she had only a 50-50 chance to live. Apparently she had swallowed a “caustic”—possibly cleaning fluid. Her stomach was pumped immediately. It would be a matter of days to see if she would pull through.

With each new morning of Inger’s battle with death, the rumors were rampant between the East and West Coasts.

One Hollywood writer reported in her syndicated newspaper column, “. . . The rumored suicide attempt of Inger Stevens was a shock. . . . All of us who know and like her are very sorry she was so unhappy and despondent. The reason given for her state of mind is a romance with a well-known actor. If Inger recovers, she is so young, so pretty, and with so much to live for, she should forget about all this unhappiness. Her friends are ready to help her . . .”

Over at the Paramount lot in Hollywood, James Stevens, a studio executive, soberly reflected on Inger’s mystery. “What plagued her? I don’t know. What torments Inger? I doubt if ‘torment’ is the right word. Maybe ‘moody’ is a word that suits her more.

“She was fond of Bing Crosby. He gave her a big boost on her way to stardom when she played opposite him in ‘Man on Fire.’ Inger tends to prefer older men. She finds them intellectually charming, and I’m sure this is due to the influence of her father who’s a professor. She’s grown up in the atmosphere of education and learning.

“Were she and Bing in love? I don’t know. I do know that many of their friends—or perhaps I should say many of his friends—seemed to think it would have been a very good thing if it had worked out, if they had gotten married. Many people thought Bing and Inger were ideally suited. They seemed very much in love.

“You know her name was also linked with Tony Quinn in a romantic way while he directed her in ‘The Buccaneer.’ But I honestly believe this was nothing more than a teaching relationship. Inger wanted to learn all that she could from him.

“Inger’s often said she didn’t have time for romance, that she liked to work more than anything else. When she left the studio, she went home to her own very private world. She took a house up in the Hollywood hills and had the doorbell removed. There was no telephone. Inger just couldn’t stand telephones.”

Inger’s ex-husband, Anthony Soglio, an actors’ agent in New York, to whom Inger was married for six months, said, “Inger called me recently for a luncheon date, and she had to be pretty lonely to call me. We often used to discuss her unhappiness during our marriage. It isn’t a recent thing with her. We often tried to work out those things that would make her a complete, happy person. Professionally, of course, she had nothing to be unhappy about because her career was going very well.”

David Tebet, whose anxiety and concern over Inger’s telephone silence saved her life during that near-fatal weekend, commented, “Inger was sorry she couldn’t spend the holidays with her family. I’ve known Inger five or six months, and she was delightful. She wasn’t sad. She enchanted everyone she met with her honesty.

“I’ve heard it wasn’t a caustic she took. The hospital tests showed she swallowed barbiturates.

“True, she was exhausted from her cross-country tour in behalf of ‘The Buccaneer.’ She made personal appearances in sixteen cities all in eighteen days. She came back just in time for Christmas, and she wished she’d had a little more time to do her shopping.”

George Firth, an actor friend of Inger’s with whom she met on the Friday afternoon before her accident to discuss a scene they planned to work on at the Actors Studio Workshop, confided, “Everyone’s so busy making hasty judgments about Inger, and all I can say is that there’s an old Indian proverb which goes ‘You can’t really judge a man unless you spend a day walking in his shoes.’

“Inger was not happy with Hollywood. She didn’t want to be a film beauty. She wanted to prove herself as a New York actress on the Broadway stage.

“Inger’s a lonely girl. I saw her one night at an off-Broadway theater, the Cherry Lane in Greenwich Village, and she was with a group of much older people. Then I heard she spent New Year’s Eve with older folks, and all I kept thinking was ‘Dear Inger, she’s a Cinderella without a Prince Charming . . .’ ”

Over at 24 Gramercy Park, Joseph DiSantis, the handyman, reported, “Some of the newspapers are hinting Miss Stevens took ammonia. The police found an ammonia bottle in her apartment that was half-empty. Now all that ammonia talk is a lot of hooey. Everyone keeps a bottle of ammonia under their sink. If she’d taken the ammonia the apartment would have reeked from it, and I never smelled any odor. Anyhow the ammonia bottle was tightly capped. And it was in the bathroom, not in her bedroom.

“There weren’t any bottles in her bedroom, and the police couldn’t find any suicide notes. Sure, I’ve been criticized by some of the tenants for breaking into Miss Stevens’ apartment. But I had orders from Mr. Tebet. I knew he was her friend. I’d done favors for him and Miss Stevens before. When she was in Hollywood he told me where to have her telephones installed.

“All I know is if I hadn’t gone in, she’d have been dead by morning . . .”

The Columbus Hospital at 227 East 19^th Street where Inger was hospitalized was founded by Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini in 1891, and is now staffed by the Sisters of the Sacred Heart. In the dim light of a cloudy January afternoon the silver letters on the marquee of the tall greystone structure looked cold and steely like knifeblades.

Inside, the warm hospital was scrubbed and immaculate. White dime-store Christmas trees, leftovers from the holidays, decorated the four corners of the lobby.

Mother Mary, in a flowing black habit and tight round bonnet tied with a pleated bow under her chin, told me visitors were not allowed to see Miss Stevens. Only her doctor, the psychiatrist, could grant permission. So far. the only visitors permitted to see her were Inger’s younger brother, Carl Stensland, a student at Columbia University, and David Tebet, her friend.

Had Inger seen a priest?

“We never ask a person’s faith,” Mocher Mary told me, fingering the silver crucifix on the front of her habit. But one of the secretaries in the hospital’s administration office told me Inger was not a Catholic.

Before I left the hospital I passed the Chapel at the end of the corridor. Two nursing Sisters in their neat white habits knelt between the oak pews in prayer, and a scent of burning candlewax hung heavy in the air. The painted plaster figure of Jesus blessed the congregation from the wall behind the lace-covered marble altar; and to the left of the altar a shrine to Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini flickered with moving shadows from the candleflames of the red vigil lights.

Here was peace and prayer. Upstairs, on the sixth floor, Inger was lying in her buff-walled hospital room, recalling what thoughts, what anguish . . . ?

Leaving the hospital, next stop was the 13th Precinct on East 22nd Street where the patrolmen, in their brass-buttoned navy blue uniforms, were marching out of the rundown precinct building, two by two, holding their wooden billy sticks at their sides.

The shift was changing; it was four o’clock.

The handsome blond sergeant at the first-floor desk directed inquiries to the Detective Squad on the second floor where a deep-voiced detective, his blue eyes baggy and tired from overwork, said: “Yes, I saw Miss Stevens on Tuesday, but she was unconscious, and now her doctor refuses to permit me to see her. He says we might excite her and cause a relapse of some sort.

“So far, our investigation shows a crime was not committed. No, suicide isn’t a crime. Since Miss Stevens hasn’t told us her story, we can’t say it’s a suicide.

“One of our jobs is to notify the next-of-kin, and we have. The doctors are certain she’s all right now, and she’s past the crisis. Check with me later in the week, and I’ll let you know if I’ve seen her.”

A check was regularly made with the hard-working Detective all week long. Meanwhile, bits and pieces from Inger’s past were recalled by her friends. . . .

When Inger and her younger brother, Ola, came to America, she was ten years old. Their father, a scholar working on his thesis at Cape Cod, couldn’t meet them and when their boat docked in New Orleans, her father wasn’t there; Inger never forgot her fear of being stranded, unwanted. She wore a tag around her neck with her name on it. She hated the tag because people pointed at it. It told everyone she was a foreigner, so she pushed it down inside her dress. She and her brother were put on the train for New York by a Salvation Army officer, and Inger was terrified of the passengers discovering she didn’t know any English. In her child’s handbag were twenty-five cards bearing the English and Swedish words to cover Ola’s and her basic needs—“Hungry,” “Water,” “Bathroom.” But Inger refused to use them for fear people would think she was “odd.” She bought a ten-cent American magazine, pretending to read it while she was traveling so everyone would think she was English, and she clutched on to the magazine for days, even after she got off the train. Even today, she frequently mentions this experience.

In New York, Inger grew dizzy from its hugeness. “It was like a city of revolving doors,” she told friends. “I just couldn’t get used to switchblade knives and big purple skirts and thick smears of lipstick. It was so difficult adjusting to people. Anyhow, my English was broken, and I was ashamed of it. That’s why I guess I never had a close girlfriend. Besides I had so many chores to do. My stepmother was a teacher, too, so she had to leave the house early every morning with my father. The two of them would go off to school, and we had to fend for ourselves.”

One day, in her early teens, Inger met a policeman at a school crossing who looked down at her and said, “You!” and he laughed. “You’re a foreigner!”

“How . . . how can you tell?” asked, on the verge of tears.

“Look,” he pointed. “Look at your shoes. You have square toes.”

Inger ran all the way home, crying hysterically. Her stepmother (her mother and father had divorced) told her there was nothing wrong with her shoes. But, from then on, Inger despised them and she walked extra blocks every day to try to wear them out.

When Inger’s dad, Mr. Stensland, changed teaching positions, the family moved to Manhattan, Kansas, where Inger had to try to make new friends all over again. A step-sister, Lucy, was born, and Inger’s chores at home increased to such an extent she had to turn down a chance to play a leading role in the high school operetta.

With her high-schooling behind her, Inger came back to New York with $39.50 in her purse. She was going to be an actress, but she took odd jobs as a movie usherette, garment center model, Latin Quarter chorus girl to support herself. Soon she met, married, separated from and divorced Tony Soglio. But all the time, Inger studied and hoped she would someday reach her goal of being an important actress.

Hollywood discovered her, Inger was constantly on the go between California and New York. Finally, in December, Inger had, in her own words, “come back home to live again in New York.” Returning from her Hollywood success, she rented a $250 a month unfurnished apartment where she was going to “grow and have a comfortable life, maybe even learn to make blueberry soup which I loved when I was a girl in Sweden,” Inger told friends. Then she added, “I’ve never ever had a real home of my own. Now, I can afford to have it.”

Her home was the four-room Gramercy Park apartment, four rooms all to herself in crowded but lonely New York, four rooms with no one to turn to in a moment of despair . . .

The following week, the Detective assigned to Inger’s case at the 13th Precinct said he hadn’t been able to see Inger. The doctor refused him entry into her hospital room.

“We can’t keep beating our heads against the wall,” the Detective said. “We hear she’s improving which is good news. I’ve tried to reach her doctor by phone, but I’m not able to get through to him.”

Inger’s psychiatrist, Dr. Saul Heller, was reached by telephone at his East 61st Street office, but his sharp-voiced receptionist refused to put the call through to him.

“Her fans are interested in knowing how she is,” she was told.

The receptionist spoke so quickly her words were unintelligible. Then she clicked the telephone.

Inger’s mysterious brush with death can only be unraveled by Inger.

Perhaps the next few months will tell.

Or perhaps . . . we will never know.

Perhaps all Inger’s fans can do is to quiet their questions and to try to understand that a young girl’s heart can break . . . so very easily. Perhaps all her friends can do is to fill Inger’s four rooms with new memories happier that those that propelled her so close to tragedy. Perhaps all anyone can do is to give Inger someone to turn to. Perhaps that’s all . . . and everything.

THE END

—BY EVAN MICHAELS

INGER’S IN PARAMOUNT’S “THE BUCCANEER.”

 

It is a quote. PHOTOPLAY MAGAZINE APRIL 1959