Inger Stevens obituary in “The New York Times” in 1970.
Inger Stevens the blonde actress who played the beguiling housekeeper on “The Farmer’s Daughter” television series for three years, was found dead in her home today.
The cause of the 35‐year‐old actress’s death was listed as “acute barbiturate intoxica tion.”
The coroner’s office said fur ther tests were under way to determine how the pills came to be taken and whether the death would be ruled a suicide.
Miss Stevens died on the way to a hospital after she was found semi‐conscious in her home.
‘A Hard Luck Girl’
Miss Stevens was one of the few actresses who was able to win fame in television and then move on to stardom in the movies. Despite her successes, she was, in her own words, “very much a hard luck girl.”
On New Year’s Day, 1959, she swallowed 25 sleeping pills and a quantity of ammonia in an attempt to take her own life. On another occasion she nar rowly missed being killed in a fiery plane crash.
In an interview some years ago, Miss Stevens said that in addition to these near‐catastro phies, she often felt depressed over “many other sorrows, in cluding the fact I came from a broken home, my marriage was a disaster, and I am con stantly feeling lonely.”
The actress was born Oct. 48, 1934 in Stockholm. When she was 13, her father, Per Stensland, brought her to this country to live with him, fol lowing the breakup of his mar riage. At the time Mr. Stensland was studying on a Fulbright scholarship at Harvard, but he later remarried and moved to Manhattan, Kan.
Unhappy there, she ran away to Kansas City at 16, and worked as a waitress and then as a $60‐a‐week dancer in a burlesque show. Her father found her, however, and made her return home. After gradua tion from high school, she came to New York, where she met Anthony Soglio, an agent who put her under contract and changed her last name to Stevens.
They were married in 1955, but separated after four months, and in 1958 they were divorced. Miss Stevens did not remarry.