A Dream of Kings (1969)

The final feature film that included Inger in its cast is the 1969 drama A Dream of Kings (starring Anthony Quinn and Irene Papas) and Inger's exceptional performance is intense and compelling. (If you've not seen it, you can watch A Dream of Kings on Youtube.) Fortunately, Inger was interviewed quite a lot about the film and the steps she took to prepare for the performance.

About the role, Inger said:

I've never done anything before with that amount of emotional violence and intensity.  There were times during the filming when I found myself clawing and biting and kissing and pulling the clothes off the man without realizing what I was doing. Tony plays Matsoukas, an improvident, happy-go-unlucky Greek-American, living in Chicago. In the movie I'm a Polish girl who was married to a Greek. My husband is dead and I run the bakery shop he left me. I live all by myself and have nothing to do with the outside world except to get my supplies and do my job. I have retreated from life and just exist for the memory of my dead husband. The thought of being with another man doesn't enter my mind—until I meet Matsoukas.

When I get home I feel I have really done a good day's work. I'm emotionally exhausted, but in a different way. I must say that Danny Mann is the best director I've worked with and he has given me the courage to do things I've never done before on film.

The bakery scenes were shot at California Bakery on Main Street in Culver City. Dick Kleiner reported that the scenes between Inger and Anthony Quinn took a lot of discussing, mulling over how best to approach them, changing lines as needed. Director Daniel Mann provided input on the scenes as producers nibbled on the bakery's cookies during rehearsals.

When Inger made a mistake that spoiled a take, Mann encouraged her to "make big mistakes. Let the blood run. A whole lifetime of misunderstanding in one minute." On the next take, Inger was perfect.

Inger provided her own costume. When she was understudying bakers, Inger asked them where they purchased their clothes and bought her white shirt, white slacks, and off-white apron at the same place. The dresses she purchased all came from a thrift shop and cost a total of $2.97. This approach to Inger's look (thrifty, real clothes and minimal makeup) and the film itself (its focus, pacing and locations that reflect a real, lived experience) serve as a preview of the new film-making and acting approaches that we would see grow prominent in the 1970s to today—and Inger's performance makes it abundantly clear that she could have tackled and would have dazzled audiences of 1970s cinema had she the chance.

Inger received a lot of press for doing a topless scene in the film. Columnist Robert Sylvester remarked that "Inger Stevens in A Dream of Kings can dream with this king anytime" in his "Dream Street" column and Hollywood Citizen News reported that the Farmer's Daughter was a new sex symbol. When asked about the recent talk of Swedish films being extremely sexual in nature, Inger responded:

I think the emphasis and the ballyhoo are a little out of balance, but there is a much better attitude toward sex than Americans. In Sweden, from the time you're very young you are not ashamed of being a girl or a boy.  There was no sex education as such in the Swedish schools when I was there, but we just acquired it through general living. I don't mind quite frank sex scenes in my own movies as long as they are done with good taste and are essential to the story.

Although reporters were excited to report the scintillating news that she would be briefly topless, most publicity focused on Inger's determination to perfect the role of Anna through a great deal of preparation.

Inger went to Columbus Bakery and Food Market in the Greek neighborhood of Chicago to learn to bake. Inger said:

Food is an aesthetic experience and can be artistically done. Anything that one can do creatively without someone else messing it up, is very satisfying. How many times are we in movies or television shows that don't turn out exactly as we'd liked simply because too many people are involved? It is rarely that you have the complete freedom of expression.  I think painting and cooking are very much in the same area. Cooking, therefore, is my opportunity for total expression.

I went with Katherine Theodore, a Greek actress, to the Greek part of Chicago. We were looking for a bakery where I could get a job without anyone knowing who I was.  We found a little place and I walked into the bake shop where three men were working.  I asked the owner if I could have a job and explained to them what it was for.  

I knew the word gluten, but it wasn't a word I had used before. My grandmother in Sweden made bread and beautiful birthday cakes. My first job, as a matter of fact, was doing odd jobs in her bakery in Sweden. I was a complete failure from the start because I didn't wear mittens! My hands froze to the milk bottles and I dropped four bottles the first morning. I was fired after a few days. I bake bread much better than I carry milk bottles. 

I enjoy cooking very much and since I have a place at the beach I have many visitors. I make a lot of "Kottbullar" (Swedish meatballs). I make mine with lean ground beef, butter, chopped parsley, freshly mashed potatoes, and heavy cream. They're really delicious and I make an awful lot of them, precook and freeze them to have for visitors who drop in on weekends. Lately I've started making black-eyed peas, ham hocks and cornbread. I'm not completely chauvinistic in all areas. Besides, I like to provide various taste thrills for my guests depending upon what they like. I love big salads made with eggs, avocados and Bermuda onions and chopped celery. Frequently I marinate salads overnight to bring out the flavor.  Or I make a delicious bean salad and add lots of chopped fresh dill. The Swedes use a lot of dill in their cooking.  It's such a subtle flavor and adds so much to a salad. And, of course, the fresh dill is far superior to the dried kind.

Inger shared that she preferred to shop for her meals frequently, in local butcher shops and fish shops and discussed her favorite holiday meals to prepare:

I guess that's a carryover from my European upbringing where we shopped everyday. I love the texture of lutfisk. [At Christmas and New Year's] I always make a special glogg that takes several days to make.  That night, I have a spread with the usual ham and turkey. The Swedish infusion of hot spiced red wine, generously laced with aquavit or with brandy, is very potent. The trick is to pace yourself with a little food between sips of glogg.

Inger (right) during filming

Baking was not the only talent Inger mastered during production. Dorothy Manners referred to Inger as being "in line to become the leading linguist of Hollywood" for so quickly learning Greek during A Dream of Kings after having taken up Italian during House of Cards.

Over lunch at a Greek restaurant in between takes, Inger remarked to writer Clyde Gilmour:

It's one of the best parts I've ever had. And I'm excited to be working with Tony Quinn. But I can sing as well as speak lines; I'm especially fond of folk songs, and before too long I hope somebody will give me a chance in a musical. I might even tackle a Broadway musical, except that I don't like the thought of being tied up for a long time in the same part. If the show is a hit, that's what happens, and on Broadway it's the hits that count.

One columnist praised Inger and Tony, who had been lovers during the filming of 1958's The Buccaneer, for working together so professionally and noted that "it's always nice when you can still be friends when the original glow has dimmed." Sadly, neither star could attend the local Los Angeles premiere which benefited UCLA's International Student Center due to other filming assignments.

In the film, lonely widow Anna (Inger Stevens) first meets Matsoukas (Anthony Quinn) when he stops to help her carry something into her bakery. When he asks her if she works at the bakery, Anna answers "we bought it" and when inquired about her husband Anna responds "he sleeps" before announcing that she is a widow and hurries into the shop when Matsoukas tries to wipe flour off her face.

Matsoukas lives with his wife, mother-in-law, two daughters and gravely ill seven-year-old son. Although proud of his family and extremely affectionate and loving toward them, Matsoukas has never met a bottle of liquor or a poker game he didn't like. His wife (Irene Papas) is desperate for her husband to bring home money to feed and clothe the family; but he only comes home with grand, romantic stories about the poker games he loses ("a night of great encounters") and blind optimism about his family's future. Anthony Quinn's Matsoukas is a lovable dreamer, yet he can also be infuriating because he continuously makes the same mistakes—an endless cycle of man-made wins and loses in every single day. 

Matsoukas and the film itself examine life and death and often allude to what constitutes being alive. Although the doctor gives his son just a few months to live, Matsoukas is determined to cure him by bringing him to Greece. Matsoukas explains:

My sons's roots are in the village of Stavros in the foothills of Mount Olympus. His seed is strong as a mountain goat, as strong as the grape vines that grow from the rock. His blood has flowed through valleys where heroes and giants fought. His heart contains the wind and the stars and the mountain sun. What do you and your machines know about that? So don't...don't you tell me that my son is gonna die.

When life gets too hard, Matsoukas turns to playfulness. It is this playfulness that he applies both to his lovemaking with his wife and later, his mistress. Both of those encounters begin with each woman in tears, emotionally exhausted from facing the hard realities of life. Matsoukas' trail of kisses and playful nature lead to both women, in different encounters, turn to laughter and giddy lovemaking themselves.

It is after the news of his son's death that he ventures inside Anna's bakery. He envies her ability to "make something real." He wants to escape the cold truth and stand in the warmth of the ovens. He's upfront about his situation. He tells her he has a wife and children but that he loves her. "I'm not ashamed!" He admits that he is quick to fall in love and prone to "violent emotion." When Anna insists that he doesn't even know her, Matsoukas answers:

Anna, I know you. You live in darkness. I mean you...you're surrounded by it...you have love. It's what's all through you. It's in the way you hold your neck. The...it's in the way you hold your head and in that mouth and it turns down at the corners like one of Michelangelo's women. It's a mouth that was made for kissing, for biting, for love.

He is angry at the doctors for saying his boy will die, wants to bring the light out of Inger and teach her that she is not dead just because her husband is. When the priest talks to him, he asks "Why are you on the side of death?" At a baptism celebration for a new baby, celebrating life, Matsoukas is dancing, laughing, charming all...simply thriving! There's this great transformation that takes place in Anna's face as she's watching the festivities. A friend tells him of his influence, that though his cuffs are shabby and his heels worn, Matsoukas wears them like armor and his friend says that Matsoukas is "alive, and therefore, I am alive."

This search for light and life among the dying is especially poignant since this would turn out to be Inger's last feature film-—television films Run, Simon, Run and The Mask of Sheba followed—and some of the final footage of her. I find this to be one of Inger's finest performances. Her scenes are brief and all too infrequent, but, as Anna, Inger is this suppressed soul existing  in a sort of purgatory she's created for herself. With minimal makeup and simple clothing, Inger is completely raw as Anna—her performance is at turns purposefully quiet and electric. She perfectly and carefully strikes each note of Anna's mourning and awakening. A Dream of Kings is one of my favorite of Inger's roles yet it can be so difficult for me to watch. As Matsoukas' sole focus is to breathe life back into the dead, I find mine to be the same. I want this actress to remain with the living and survive April 1970. I want this role in which she is effective and convincing to lead to another decade of standout performances. I need Inger to live and it is a hard film to view knowing that she would be gone from this earth so soon after filming. Just as Matsoukas wonders if breathing "pure, fresh air" will cure his son, I often wonder if Inger would have survived had she been able to devote more time to her passion of aiding children with disabilities and if she'd had a romantic partner who had shown her more care and support. Inger remarked that playing the role of Anna was "emotionally exhausting" and watching Inger's final feature film is an emotional experience for me each time.

Reviews

A lot of critics found Quinn's Matsoukas to be far too close to his characterization of Zorba in the 1964 film Zorba the Greek. 

Critic Howard Thompson wrote:

The main trouble with this drawn-out soap opera, which National General Pictures opened yesterday at the Orleans and Cinema II, is the hero, who is also his own worst enemy. He is a commonplace fellow, good-hearted, helpless and basically dull…Yet there is a feel and precision about the rest of the film, aside from its main concern, that call for a more arresting hero. The surprise of the picture is Inger Stevens, who does a beautiful job as the lonely, pent-up widow.

San Francisco Examiner felt the movie was "a bummer...saccharine, mushy script...a bathetic bubble bath." Critic Molly Haskell felt that Mann's direction was "overheated" and that the film contained too many "long pauses offsetting the overliterary dialogue. Still, it is not an unpleasant film to sit through, shed a few easy tears over, and admire."

Thomas Blakley disagreed with Haskell, finding the direction "beautiful," the story full of "warmth and flavor," and the performances all top notch.

Critic Charles Faber wrote that the film "works very hard trying to make the ersatz Zorba real, and the final impression is a popular actor, regarded with a great degree of public affection, determined to be twice as lovable as ever before. But it just isn't in the cards for this gambler." He only bestowed the word "credible" to Inger's performance, called director Daniel Mann's direction "lingering and portentous." Irene Papas' performance as Matsoukas' long suffering wife was highly regarded across all critics.

Bernard Drew felt the film had "beautiful moments and several excruciatingly powerful ones...one great performance and a number of very fine ones-—which is not bad for one picture. But it is strangely earthbound. It is down here when it should be up there. It is more than drama...the tragedy of naked truth."

Photo Sources:

The three high quality shots of Inger (two smiling in baker's costume and one on the set in front of the bakery) are scans from my originals.

The newspaper photos of Inger baking are from the December 18, 1969 Philadelphia News article listed below.

All other photos are screenshots from A Dream of Kings.

Information Sources: 

Bacharach, Bert. "Now See Here! Match-making by the Stars. The Morning Call. December 6, 1969.

Blinn, Johna. "Celebrity Cookbook: Baking was Greek to Inger." Philadelphia Daily News. December 18, 1969.

Drew, Bernard. "A Dream of Kings." The Journal News. December 16, 1969.

Faber, Charles. "Anthony Quinn, Dream of Kings." Valley Times. December 25, 1969.

"Farmer's Daughter New Sex Symbol." Hollywood Citizen News. December 26, 1969.

Gilmour, Clyde. "Inger's a Delectable Swedish Dish who Never Lingers." Star-Phoenix. January 31, 1969.

Graham, Sheilah. "Inside Hollywood." The News. October 1, 1969.

"Kings to Premiere at the Fine Arts." Hollywood Citizen News. December 17, 1969.

Kleiner, Dick. "Quinn, Inger Stevens Shot Stalls Dream of Kings Film." Victoria Advocate. January 30, 1969.

Manners, Dorothy. "Hollywood." The Tribune. January 30, 1969.

"Play for Pay." The Los Angeles Times. February 28,1969.

"Star in the Dough." Daily News. December 7, 1969.

Sylvester. Robert. "Dream Street: The Added Lines." Daily News. December 6, 1969.

Thompson, Howard. "Screen: A Dream of Kings." The NY Times. December 16, 1969.

"Zorba is now living in Chicago." The San Francisco Examiner. December 26, 1969.