TV Guide featured correspondence between writer and friend Robert de Roos and Inger Stevens that was exchanged during her trip to Sweden, where she filmed Inger Stevens in Sweden in 1964. Whether she's writing about a pesky mouse, sexy Max von Sydow, total exhaustion, camera mishaps or making quips about heaven and hell, Inger's letters are full of wit, honesty and amusement about her life and the world around her. I've transcribed them below and included photos from the article in this post.
September 13-16
Dear Bob (I mean Dear Pen Pal):
It will seem ridiculous to you, but this is the first free moment I have had once I arrived a week ago. I am writing this sitting under a hair drier so's not to waste precious time. We are leaving for the country in an hour and will be gone three days. This morning, after Leslie Blanchard washed my hair, we turned around only to find that the hair drier had disappeared from its customary place. Quite a feat when you consider the size and weight of a professional hair drier. It was 10 Sunday morning. Everything was closed, of course. Phone calls back and forth and finally the manager broke into the hotel beauty shop to get us a drier. We are taking it along with us to the country. Doesn't every girl travel with a professional hair drier when she goes scampering in the Nordic woods?
After traveling in an airplane for 16 hours, one does get a little balmy, particularly when you lose an eight-hour day some place—then step off the plane to face a press conference in Swedish. I felt a little funny about it, too. After being in America for so long and then coming over to do a special on Sweden—they could have resented that, I think, but they didn't.
I cried a little when I saw my mother. Then all the photographers wanted me to cry for them. How do you cry when you have already finished crying? Then I was led out a door and into a big black limousine. It was dark and I could have been any place in the world—Chicago or New York or London. I felt in limbo—not anywhere. Only the next day, when Stockholm showed itself, did I realize where I was.
My family thinks we are filming the family tree, and keeps coming up with "wonderful" ideas for the special. After I had three hours' sleep the first night, the family, the press and radio and television people all started converging on me—an army of people with various goals—re: me. Not to mention the director, the producer, the writer and the publicity man. So my day of rest for readjustment after the flight never happened. It won't happen until I get back to the U.S., I guess.
So far my conversations have been with Prime Minister Tag Erlander, Mr. Erik Boheman, former Ambassador to the U.S. and, for intellectual variety, Ingemar Johansson, the boxer. The men on the crew all speak different languages, none of them English, which hampers Don Taylor, our director, somewhat because he speaks only English. I'm not helping because I speak only Swedish now.
Life after work is rather normal—shove food down, fall exhausted into bed, get up and sit in the living room since you can't get to sleep and boom!—there's a mouse behind the wastebasket. Ring the desk. Little boy comes and by that time the mouse has disappeared. Boy gives me a strange look. Ten minutes later spider appears. Ring desk again. Boy with can of spray. Spider loved the spray. He was back again last night and the night before. So was the mouse.
Sincerely,
Inger Stevens
When Bob writes back that the only thing he knows of Sweden is the story of the man who was fined for hitting his wife with an eel, Inger responds:
Tuesday '64 (I think)
Dear Bob:
That was a completely transistorized electric eel, A.C./D.C. I think the man was lucky to get off with a $5 fine.
The mouse is back. Or rather still here. Don Taylor and some of the other men were here last night discussing the dailies. Everything normal, except that we carried on our discussion while crawling around the room on our hands and knees looking for that blasted mouse.
Most things that can go wrong have gone wrong, including the worst offense in "filmdom"—no film in the camera. What made it worse was that the union said the crew had to break for dinner just then and Max von Sydow...
Well, Max von Sydow. As you know, he is the finest actor alive today. He's appeared in most of Bergman's pictures and he is playing Jesus in "The Greatest Story Ever Told." I was delegated to ask him to appear in this special. We met at Riche restaurant and I was nervous as could be. That was before he came in. When he came in he made me very nervous—is it correct to say "nervouser"? I was wearing my "intellectual" dress but even that didn't help. I blushed and almost fainted.
Von Sydow is that kind of man, a Prince Charming, but nothing put on. He is entirely simple, gentle and direct and interested in you. There is a wonderful purity to him. He's terribly sexy, too. He looks so deeply into your inner self that what is deep inside you comes surging up—and that's almost too much to handle.
He agreed to visit the Drottningholm Theater with me for the show. And, after working a long, long day, the crew told us they had missed the last three shots because there was no film in the camera! Then the crew went to dinner and I had to persuade von Sydow to come back after his dinner and shoot for three more hours. He was wonderful about it.
The Drottningholm Theater was built in 1766 and they still have performances there. All the stage machinery, made of wood, is still in working order. They have a trap door for the descent into hell and another contraption that lifts you up into heaven. So Max and I went to hell together. It was my first time and his also. The professor who is in charge of the theater kept insisting that I should go to heaven, but we didn't have time. After going to hell with Max von Sydow, it might have been an anticlimax anyway.
Best Regards,
Inger
An envious Bob writes back that he's sending some mouse poison to Sweden—not for the mouse, but for the Prince Charming Max von Sydow.
September 28
Dear Bob:
How do you spell hectic? I didn't tell you this: While I was walking with Max von Sydow at the old theater the other day, I looked up and saw a young man with two children. He was pushing a baby carriage. "Hey!" I hollered and jumped over a hedge and grabbed him. It was my brother. I've been so busy I haven't had time to see him. He was just on his way to the market and didn't know I was anywhere around. Whenever my family wants to see me, they wander around until they see the lights and they know that's where I am.
The other day we were shooting at one of the big squares and a woman came up and said, "Hello, Inger." I didn't know her, of course. She turned out to be a lady who used to be my baby sitter—that is, she sat with me when I was a baby. Another time we were shooting on the street and I heard, out of the blue, "Hey, it's the farmer's daughter—hot diggety dog." A couple of American kids.
The script called for me to ride a bicycle. Luckily I know how to ride—nobody asked me when the script was being written! I started out in high heels and it is not easy to ride a bike in high heels. Then I changed to wooden shoes—the kind I wore as a girl. It is not easy to ride a bicycle in wooden shoes. The guy driving the camera truck didn't know what he was doing and I had to pedal like the very devil and keep up with him and then slow down and smile and contemplate nature and then pump like crazy to catch up again. This went on for four days.
The weather was terrible but it finally cleared and we all went up to the top of the mountain, where the view is superb. We started shooting at the exact spot where Bergman filmed the rape scene in "Virgin Spring." Bad spirits must still be there because the minute we started, it began to hail.
We've worked seven days a week ever since I got to Sweden and I've averaged about four hours' sleep. I had planned to go to Paris and to Moscow—but there's just no time left.
One day, an elderly couple came out to greet me in the forest. They didn't know me. They just thought I should be welcomed. Wasn't that nice? Later they gave me presents—a hand-woven mat and a pillow cover. And another man gave me a wooden flute he had made the night before. I'll play it for you when I get back.
You and your mouse poison. Baaaah.
Your friend and Max von You-know-who's,
Inger
All of that stress and exhaustion caught up to Inger. She came down with pneumonia once she landed in Hollywood. And, as she always did, Inger got right back to work on The Farmer's Daughter.
Source:
"Inger Stevens in Sweden." TV Guide. January 30, 1965.
