The Farmer’s Daughter, an American tv comedy television series, featured Inger Stevens as Katy Holstrum, a Swedish-American actress best recognized for her work on stage, screen, and television.
From her troubled beginnings when her mom quit the family to being and losing in relationship with movie co-stars that so often left her depressed, this beautiful young beauty struggled with relationships her whole life.
At age 16, she left her family and began performing burlesque acts before being brought back by her father. Before obtaining her breakthrough part in the Bing Crosby-starring movie “Man on Fire,” she later worked as a chorus girl, attended lessons at the Actors Studio, and started performing in commercials, plays, and TV programs.
She continued on with a number of more film and television roles, but it was the TV series “The Farmer’s Daughter” that made her a household name.
The three-season television series’s popularity opened the door for a number of important movies. In movies like “A Guide for the Married Man,” “Madigan,” “5 Card Stud,” and “A Dream of Kings,” among others, she gave some of the best performances ever. This mysterious woman’s untimely death was linked to “acute barbiturate poisoning.”
Inger Stevens’s Date of Birth and Parents
As the oldest child, Inger was born to Per Gustaf and Lisbet Stensland on October 18, 1934, in Stockholm, Sweden.
Inger had a tough childhood and often continued to be unwell as a youngster. When she was nine years old, her father moved to the US and her mother left the household, leaving the two children in the care of the housemaid.
Inger Stevens’s Education
After that, the two children were placed in the care of an aunt in Lidingö until Inger’s father, who had by then begun working as a professor at Columbia University and remarried, decided to move the kids to New York City in 1944.
Inger moved to Manhattan, Kansas, with her father when she was 13 and enrolled at Manhattan High School. She escaped her house when she was 16 years old.
Her father tracked her down and returned her to her family when she moved to Kansas City, Missouri, where she started performing in burlesque performances.
She began acting as a chorus girl when she was 18 years old. She also worked in the Manhattan borough’s Garment District and enrolled in acting school at the Actors Studio.
Inger Stevens’s Career
She started out in show business by appearing in plays, commercials, and TV shows. Among other early TV shows, she made her first appearances in “Kraft Television Theatre” (1954, 1 episode), “Robert Montgomery Presents” (1955, 1 episode), “Studio One” (1954-1955, 3 episodes), and “Matinee Theatre” (1956, 1 episode).
Her breakthrough came with her 1957 film début, “Man on Fire,” in which she played the lead character of Nina Wylie alongside legendary American actor and singer Bing Crosby. Despite the movie’s poor box office performance, it caught her attention as an actor.
She plays Joan Molner, the primary character, in the thriller movie “Cry Terror!” with James Mason and Rod Steiger.
The movie opened in theaters on May 2, 1958, and it quickly gained popularity among audiences. She also starred in the pirate movie “The Buccaneer” the same year, which did not do well at the box office.
This gorgeous and stylish beauty received a nomination for “Top New Female Personality” at the 1958 Laurel Awards.
In addition to her efforts on the big screen, she appeared on television in a number of shows, including “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” (1957, 1 episode), “Playhouse 90” (1956-1959, 2 episodes), “Bonanza,” “The Twilight Zone,” “Route 66,” and “The Alfred Hitchcock Hour” (1963, 1 episode).
She was nominated for “Outstanding Single Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role” at the 1962 Emmy Awards for her performance in one episode of the NBC anthology series “The Dick Powell Show” Later, in 1963, she appeared in another episode of the show.
She appeared in the plays “Debut” (1956), “Roman Candle” (1960), and “Mary, Mary” on Broadway during this period (1962).
In the American situation comedy television series “The Farmer’s Daughter,” Katrin “Katy” Holstrum, a young Swedish domestic, gave the most remembered performance of Inger.
From September 20, 1963, through April 22, 1966, a total of 101 episodes from three seasons of the show were shown on ABC. As a result of its enormous success, Inger received the fame and recognition she so well deserved and became well-known.
Her outstanding work in “The Farmer’s Daughter,” in which she starred opposite William Windom, earned her nominations for an “Emmy Award” in the category of “Outstanding Continued Performance by an Actress in a Series (Lead)” and awards for “Best TV Star – Female” at the 1964 Golden Globe Awards, “Favorite Female Performer” at the TV Guide Awards, and “Best TV Star – Female” at the 1964 Golden Globe Awards.
The American variety show “The Danny Kaye Show” (1966, 1 episode), the American comedy and variety show television series “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” (1967, 1 episode), and the made-for-television adventure film “The Mask of Sheba” were a few other TV productions that Inger appeared in after the success of “The Farmer’s Daughter” (1970).
In January 1966, she was appointed to the Advisory Board of the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute by the then-Gov. of California, Edmund G. “Pat” Brown. Additionally, she was appointed the California Council for Retarded Children’s Chairman.
The American bedroom farce comedy “A Guide for the Married Man,” directed by Gene Kelly, was out on May 25, 1967, and was her next notable big-screen film.
She co-starred in the movie alongside Walter Matthau and Robert Morse, which went on to become a box office hit and a craze favorite.
Her other important movies include the 1968 western “Firecreek,” the 1968 American dramatic thriller “Madigan,” the 1968 Western, “5 Card Stud,” and the 1968 American DeLuxe Color revisionist Western “Hang ‘Em High.”