Her big break came in 1956, when she auditioned for the role of Bing Crosby's new love interest in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's Man on Fire. The movie is a realistic study of a child custody battle between Crosby and his ex-wife, played by Mary Fickett.
"I never thought in a million years that I would get the role in Man on Fire. But I went in there and just sort of did it. It scared the daylights out of me. I had never done a movie before -- and to work on a film with Bing Crosby!" (quoted in Fallen Angels by Kirk Crivello, p53)
When Inger was carried off the set with an appendicitis attack, Crosby visited the hospital with flowers every day. They soon became fodder for gossip columnists -- the young bedimpled Swedish beauty and the millionaire widower. Bing's wife of 22 years, Dixie Lee, had died in 1952. Crosby was previously linked with Joan Caulfield, Mona Freeman, Kathryn Grant, Grace Kelly and Vegas dancer Pat Sheehan.
Inger was smitten with Bing. She told Parade magazine, "It was one of the most rewarding experiences of my young life playing opposite Bing. I hope I'm lucky enough to do it again.... I've dated him several times, and for an actor he's unusual. He doesn't like to talk about himself. He's extremely well-read and interested in more subjects than show business. He knows so much about politics, sports, painters and writers you wouldn't believe it. He's one of the most well-rounded gentlemen I've ever met. After you go out with Bing, you're spoiled for young men of, say, 25 or 26."
Inger left her husband of 2 years, Tony Soglio, and divorced him in July of 1957, clearing the way for marriage to Bing. Soglio was distraught, telling Parade magazine: "I've taken care of this girl ever since she came back to New York in 1954. I got her jobs in TV. I put her in summer stock. I got her picture on the covers of different magazines. I married her and worked my head off. I used every contact, every person of importance I knew. I got her offers from every studio in Hollywood. Then she goes out there and writes that she wants a separation. Now, she wants a divorce. I tell you I'm crushed. I can't understand what's happened to her."
Inger reported that she expected to marry Bing, who invited her to help decorate his new Palm Desert home.
"One day he called me up and told me to go buy new drapes and curtains for the Palm Springs house. He wanted me to decorate it to my taste. He even told me that it was going to be my house so I had better fix it up the way I liked it. It may not have been a proposal but I sure took it as one. Believe it or not, I was down in the house, supervising some workmen in putting up the new drapes when I heard the news announcement over the radio that Bing had married another girl. I went into a state of shock. It took me months to recover. I actually became physically sick from all the distress." (Fallen Angels, p53)
Instead of Inger, Bing proposed to long-time girlfriend Kathryn Grant and she accepted on October 23, 1957. This was not Bing's first proposal to Kathryn, but it was the last. They were married in a private ceremony in Las Vegas the next day.
"I thought Bing loved me," Inger told a friend. Her hope to marry Bing apparently continued until the very day Crosby wed Kathryn Grant. Inger was devastated. She had thought Bing's relationship with Grant had ended.
Inger took Bing's rejection hard and may have threatened both suicide and litigation. Inger later said the reason Bing didn't marry her was because she was not Catholic. (The new Mrs. Crosby, Kathryn, converted to Catholicism before her marriage to Bing.)
The Palm Springs' home Inger was helping to decorate was a new one Bing had built in the Silver Spur Ranch region of Palm Desert in 1957. If she was indeed at work decorating the home when she heard that Bing and Kathryn had married she must've left in a hurry because the newlyweds first stop on their honeymoon on their wedding day was this home.
In Kathryn's book, "My Life with Bing," she mentions a movie starlet who threatened suicide because of Bing's rejection. Kathryn doesn't name the starlet, but the implication was that it was Grace Kelly. Far more likely the jilted suicidal woman was Inger Stevens.
Inger moved on to star in several more movies as well as the 1960s TV show The Farmer's Daughter. Throughout her career she suffered from frequent bouts of depression and attempted suicides. She eventually succumbed to a barbiturate drug overdose on the morning of April 30, 1970, at age 36.