The Journeys That Shaped Inger

Inger Stevens poses at LaGuardia Airport
bound for Washington, D.C., October 1965.

Official records and lists may appear to be dull reading material; however, when the records involve Inger Stevens and can be paired with stories of her experiences, a warm profile of a lively woman emerges.

I've set out to match records I've discovered with anecdotes found in various articles about Inger as well as in William Patterson's book The Farmer's Daughter Remembered.

A Star is Born

On Thursday, October 18, 1934 in a Stockholm hospital, Inger Stensland was born to parents 21-year-old Per and 20-year-old Lisbet. Inger was the first child of Per and Lisbet, who were married six months prior to her birth.  According to Patterson, Inger was named for the Norse princess Ingebjørg. I've highlighted Inger's entry in the Swedish Birth Index. Listed as adöpt (döpt meaning christened or baptised), Per Stensland and Lisbet Potthoff are indexed to the right.

Inger's entry in the Swedish Birth Index in 1934

Per to America

Following a separation from Lisbet, Per traveled to America as an academic fellow in 1940. (Inger and her brother Ola would be left behind in the care of their family maid before moving in with their aunt and uncle.) That same year the American-Scandinavian Foundation of New York City released the following inquiry regarding the status of fellows stranded in the United States due to World War II. Per would not return to Sweden. In 1944, Per, with a new bride and a baby on the way, would request that his two eldest children join him in America.

Inger's father began a fellowship in America in 1940.

A Lonely Journey to America

9-year-old Inger and younger brother Ola arrived in America from Sweden in July 1944. The children were chaperoned by a family friend and traveled on the SS Margaret Johnson for six weeks before docking in New Orleans on July 15, 1944. Leaving family and country would be difficult for a person of any age, but little Inger and Ola's journey included additional challenges that would remain painful memories for Inger for the duration of her life. For example, all freighter passengers were inspected by German troops during a stop in Denmark and the freighter was even followed by a German U-boat during a portion of the journey. 

To make the experience even more frightening, Inger's father Per was not in New Orleans to meet his children. Biographer Patterson writes that Per was too busy working on a thesis paper to meet Inger and Ola, neither of whom could speak English. Instead of being reunited with the father they had not seen in four years, the Stensland siblings were met by the Travelers Aid Society and escorted by a Salvation Army representative on a train to New York City. When they reached New York City, Per was still not there to greet his children. Inger was told he was busy with his academic work in Cape Cod and the children were placed in separate rooms of a New York City hotel. The next morning Inger and Ola boarded a train for Cape Cod where they were finally reunited with their father.

Inger would later tell reporters that Per "couldn't afford to meet us." She would recall the terror she faced aboard the ship and on arrival in America. 

New York seemed to us then like a city of revolving doors. Every time we went through one, I was sure I'd lose Ola...After dinner, the Travelers Aid Society member took me to the thirteenth floor of the hotel and put Ola somewhere else; mine was a tiny green room that looked like a cell. Have you ever been on the thirteenth floor during a thunderstorm? I was sure I'd be killed before morning. 

Inger would share that she and Ola expected to see cowboys and indians on arrival. Instead:

When our freighter docked at New Orleans after being trailed by a German U-boat for almost a week, the Travelers Aid Society brought us to New York. Two days after our arrival, a hurricane struck Cape Cod and partially demolished our little house. I was terrified. I begged to go back to Sweden. I'd been prepared to face Indians, but I didn't dream life in America could be so violent.

In 1965, Inger said:

I still feel like the same girl who got off the boat from Sweden. Maybe a little taller and a little more money, that's all. But I'm not changed inside. 

Inger and Ola Stensland (highlighted) arrive in New Orleans on July 15, 1944.

Although Per is listed as the relative they will be joining in America,
it took days of lonely travel for Inger and Ola to reach their father.

Crunch and Des in Bermuda

A passenger manifest dated October 27, 1955 shows Inger embarking from Bermuda on return to New York. Inger traveled to Bermuda to play the part of 'The Actress' in a Crunch and Des episode entitled Salt Water Daffy. Although filmed in 1955, Salt Water Daffy was not released on television until 1956. In his book on Inger, Patterson shares a letter that Inger wrote to a friend about her Bermuda experience:

I saw how people actually lived which is something I could never have seen if I didn't do it on my own...I wanted to be in and around the water every minute because it is so beautiful. The water wasn't blue; it was a rich green, but crystal clear and as we flew in over Bermuda the sight of the water alone was breathtaking. Under the water you could see the coral reefs, which looked like black sleeping animals, from the sky. Since I worked all the time, I didn't get to swim or enjoy it the way I would have wanted to, but Tony and I hope to go there together sometime.

(Note: Tony is Anthony Soglio, Inger's agent whom she married in summer 1955 and divorced in 1958.) 

Inger is listed on a 1955 passenger manifest. She was filming
an episode of Crunch and Des in Bermuda.

A Beauty Judges Beauty

On November 20, 1959, Inger landed in Los Angeles on a Pan Am flight. For promotional purposes, she served as a judge at the Miss Colombia Beauty Contest at the Hotel Tequendama in Bogata, Colombia, and made her way home via Panama.

Inger returns to L.A. from Colombia by way of Panama.

Traumatic Landing in Lisbon

On April 4, 1961, Inger embarked on a vacation that started in Paris and included stops in London, Madrid, and Rome with her hairstylist and friend Leslie Blanchard. After Leslie returned to America, Inger visited family in Sweden in May. In the final days of her trip, Inger boarded a Boeing 707 that stopped in Lisbon on June 15th. As it landed, the plane's nose gear collapsed creating a fire. Immediately after Inger and her fellow passengers exited the plane, it exploded. All passengers and crew were physically unhurt, but all were certainly shaken by the close call.

Source: The Star Press. June 17, 1961.

Source: Morristown Gazette. June 27, 1961.

Inger reportedly discussed the incident with columnist Cynthia Lowry in February 1963, saying:

I still hate to talk about it. The plane started burning and I thought I would be burned alive. And I put on my coat, of all things, and curled up on the floor. Somehow I escaped and now I feel as if I were on borrowed time, that the worst is over and it's clear sailing. But it is reassuring to know you continued to function under pressure and didn't give in to hysteria.

William Patterson writes that Inger was so rattled by the event that she chose to forego air travel, returning to America by boat. However, a passenger list for Pan American flight No. 153 shows Inger boarded a flight in Lisbon and arrived in New York by plane on June 20th.

Inger returns from Lisbon after a near-death experience.

Secret Honeymooners 

Six months after her widely reported Lisbon flight, Inger and her new husband Ike Jones managed to fly under the press's radar—although not for as long as we have been led to believe, but that deserves its own post on another day. On December 29, 1961, Inger arrived back home in Los Angeles after a trip to Mexico City. Browsing the flight's passenger list, I found the record for Inger's husband Ike Jones, who was also on the CMA flight on the 29th. (CMA was an affiliate of Pan American that provided non-stop flights from Los Angeles to Mexico City.)

Ike Jones in November 1959, two years before
his wedding to Inger Stevens.

Ike was a producer for Nat King Cole's Kell-Cole Productions as well as a film producer and actor. Inger and Ike met at a Hollywood party in September 1960. A little over a year later, in November 1961, Inger and Ike privately married in Tijuana. After a quiet celebration for two at a small restaurant and motel, the couple returned to Los Angeles. A month later, Inger and Ike traveled to Mexico City for a secret honeymoon. 

Although their relationship was far from the best-kept secret in Hollywood, the general public would not be fully aware of Inger's marriage to Ike until after Inger's death.

Inger returns to Los Angeles after a secret honeymoon in Mexico City.

Ike Jones, Inger's husband, listed on the same flight from Mexico City.

While this post includes a small sampling of her travel records, the documents represent major experiences—her Swedish birth, arduous immigration to the U.S., early television filming and film promotion work, dangerous Lisbon landing, and private marriage—that would shape Inger's life and worldview in significant ways.

Inger in a late-1950's travel photo.

Sources:

Documents were retrieved via Ancestry and Familysearch.

"Ex-UCLA Star Named to Belafonte's Harbel Film Co." Jet. November 5, 1959.

http://files.lib.byu.edu/family-history-library/research-outlines/Scandinavia/Sweden.pdf

Hopper, Hedda. "Inger Too Busy for Romance." The Los Angeles Times. May 18, 1958.

Lowry, Cynthia. "Not the Girl Next Door?" The Akron Beacon Journal. February 12, 1963.

Patterson, William T. The Farmer's Daughter Remembered. Xlibris. 2000.