Profiles of dead starlets feed into this voyeurism, treating the subject as an abstract concept, a body on which to enact the darkest fantasies of a damsel in distress. Their tragedy and stillness celebrated, as the suffering of women continues to be fetishized in society and in entertainment. Too often, women are deified in this way. There’s very little information about her personal life outside of her sexual relationships and she is repeatedly described from the male gaze.Įven a description of her death mentions she was “clad in a flimsy, golden brown negligee almost matching her California tan.” She is seldom remembered and when she is, the memory is defined by the men surrounding her at the time. Stevens said in an interview a few years prior to her death that in addition to these near‐catastrophes, she often felt depressed over “many other sorrows, including the fact I came from a broken home, my marriage was a disaster, and I am constantly feeling lonely.”ĭespite her notoriety and a gold-dusted IMDB page, Stevens has sadly become a footnote in Hollywood’s biography. Stevens portrayal of her character’s gradual awareness is a compelling and shattering performance, one that fully demonstrates just how talented Stevens was. In The Hitchhiker, one of the most famous in the series’ history, she played Nan Adams, a young woman trying to cheat death, as personified by the hitchhiker stalking her throughout the episode. That death followed her made Inger Stevens’ Twilight Zone episode especially fitting. This wasn’t her first near-death experience: She collapsed from carbon monoxide poisoning while filming “Cry Terror” in the Hudson Tubes, and in 1961 she was the last passenger to leave a jet that crashed on landing at Libson and exploded a half‐minute after her exit. In the years leading up to her death, Stevens had been busy making films, and the year of her death she was scheduled to begin filming a new TV series in the fall.Īlthough there is no suggestion that was struggling at the time of her death, she had called herself “very much a hard-luck girl” in the past and even attempted suicide after a New Year’s Eve party in 1958. McNally told officials that she had spoken to Stevens the night before and had no reason to suspect trouble. Her death was eventually ruled as suicide. Thomas Noguchi attributed Stevens’ death to “acute barbiturate poisoning” – a central nervous system depressant used in anxiolytics and hypnotics, and used in high doses for physician-assisted suicide and in combination with a muscle relaxant for euthanasia and capital punishment by lethal injection. 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 be a few hours old. Stevens died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. According to McNally, when she called Stevens’ name, she opened her eyes, lifted her head, and tried to speak, but was unable to make any sound. On April 30th, 1970, Stevens was found on her kitchen floor by her roommate and longtime friend Lola McNally. The divorce was finalized in 1958 and Stevens was believed never to have remarried, though speculation around her relationships remained rife and a secret marriage was discovered after her death. I still have a fear of marriage,” Stevens explained. The experience made a lasting impression on me. For me the whole marriage proved pretty much of a nightmare. I had been dating him for about eight months, and he was the only person I knew in New York. I married him for a lot of the wrong reasons. They were married in 1955, but separated after just four months. He was an agent who put her under contract and changed her last name to Stevens. It was here that she met her first husband, Anthony Soglio. Her father tracked her down and brought her home, where she graduated high school, before leaving again for New York City shortly after. She ended up in Kansas City, where she worked first as a waitress then as a dancer in a burlesque show. Stevens was unhappy and ran away from home at 16. Stensland was studying on a Fulbright scholarship at Harvard, but he later remarried and moved to Manhattan, Kansas. Her mother left when she was young and her father brought her to the US following the break up of his marriage. 18, 1934 in Stockholm, Stevens’ childhood was a difficult one.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |