Shark Bytes

It's a shame we can watch Loretta Young trying to act Swedish in the movie version and can't see Inger Stevens in the tv version. Very sexy show, until the marriage, of course.

Inger Stevens always had close brushes with death. On a set, she almost died when poisonous fumes filled the area. She was the last passenger off of a burning airplane less than thirty seconds earlier when it exploded. She had a near fatal injury on another set. And she had tried to kill herself one time before her death. From TV Babylon, which I'm paraphrasing. Her role as Nan in the Twilight Zone's episode, The Hitch-Hiker, in which Death was thumbing for a ride from her because her soul drove away from her fatal crash, was considered a grotesque in-joke from her family and friends. (Weirdly enough, it was a Suspense radio show starring Orson Welles as the main character--Rod Serling changed the person to a woman named Nan, and Nan is his daughter's name!!!) Inger never found what she considered the love of her life, and having a career that many female wannabes would kill for wasn't good enough for her. TV Babylon did say that Inger was living with a roommate who found her shortly after she took the pills. The door was open, and Inger looked like she was trying to call an ambulance but couldn't make it to the phone. Looks like she changed her mind about dying since she knew her roommate was coming home soon and left the door open for her to get inside all the faster. Possibly wasn't a real suicide but a very desperate cry for help that went terribly wrong. I don't consider her a suicide but an extremely tragic victim of mental illness.

I was too little to remember any of the programs in this series when it first aired; however, some years ago, I did happen to view an old black & white late-night episode of this program. The plot was not notable, but what was memorable was at last seeing the young and beautiful Inger Stevens whose short biography and suicide I had previously read about. While watching the episode, I could only think of the account of her foreign birth in Stockholm, Sweden, her lonely life growing up in the American midwest, her running away to become a dancer in "metropolitan" Kansas City as a teenager - probably her attempt at finding personal significance - and her frequent vulnerability to depression. Why should such a pretty, young, successful girl decide that life was no longer worth the trouble? I don't have any artistic critique to make about the show. My only comment is that observing her luminous screen presence in light of her history was far more haunting and tragic, than say, the demise of any of the cursed Family Affair brood. May God rest her soul.

This may have been the first example in TV history of a series being wrecked by the marriage of its two main characters. This was a great and very popular show, and when the farmer's daughter and the senator married, there was a lot of publicity and people hosted wedding parties at their homes the night it was broadcast. Then the nation collectively lost interest in the newly-boring married couple, and series died. And (for those of us old enough to remember) how shocked were we a few years later, when the beautiful and captivating Inger Stevens tragically took her own life?

The absolutely beautiful Inger Stevens played the role of the governess for a widowed US Senator from Minnesota (I believe) played by William Windom. (Since that show he has really only played "heavies" but he was a good guy in that one.) In any case Inger took care of the Senator's children and there was always a rather sweet, and very respectable, romantic edge to the show. (Shows like that could not survive in today's network mix.) And young male fans like me (God, I was in love with Inger - what an incredibly gorgeous woman) were okay with the tantalizing relationship; that is, until he finally and inevitably "popped the question". After they were engaged/married, the show seemed to lose its viability.