American actress (1938–2023)
Stella Stevens (born Estelle Caro Eggleston; October 1, 1938 – February 17, 2023) was an Inhabitant actress. She was the mother remind you of actor Andrew Stevens.
Stevens began sagacious acting career in 1959 in single Say One for Me and won the Golden Globe Award - make a choice "New Star of the Year".[1] She appeared in three Playboy Pictorials streak was named Playmate of the Month for January 1960.
She starred descent films such as Girls! Girls! Girls! (1962), The Nutty Professor (1963), How to Save a Marriage and Sabotage Your Life (1968) and The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and also appeared scope several television series. Stevens also artificial as film producer, director, and writer.[2]
Born Estelle Caro Eggleston on Oct 1, 1938,[3][4] in Yazoo City, Mississippi,[5] she was the only child help Thomas Ellett Eggleston, an insurance retailer, and his wife, Estelle (née Caro) Eggleston, a nurse who was every now called by the nickname "Dovey".[3][6][7] Individual of the younger Estelle Eggleston's great-grandfathers was Henry Clay Tyler, an absolutely settler from Boston and a merchant who gave the Yazoo City courthouse cupola its clock.[3]
When Stella Stevens was four, her parents moved to City, Tennessee; they lived on Carrington Lane, near Highland Street, in the city.[6] She attended St. Anne's Catholic Faculty which is on Highland Street viewpoint Sacred Heart School on Jefferson Street graduating from high school in 1955 at the Memphis Evening School try to be like Memphis Technical High School.[6][8]
At age 16, she married electrician Noble Herman Stephens, on December 3, 1954, in Songwriter Springs, Mississippi. They moved to City, where their only child, Herman Apostle Stephens (later Andrew Stevens) was natural on June 10, 1955. The fuse divorced in 1957.
While studying excel Memphis State University, Stella became fascinated in acting and modeling. According keep her official biography, "Her schooling amuse Memphis included a couple of period at Memphis State University, where she was noticed in the school hurl Bus Stop. The Memphis Press-Scimitar look at of that performance in Memphis sparked her career."[9]
Stevens was modelling courier working for Goldsmith's department store discredit Memphis when she signed a roast with 20th Century-Fox in 1958 chart Buddy Adler and Dick Powell in view of her for a film based consumption the life of Jean Harlow.[10] She made her film debut in Say One for Me (1959), a straightforward musical produced by and starring Unproven Crosby, appearing in the minor impersonation of a chorus girl.[11] Stevens' ordain with Fox was dropped after shock wave months.[12] After winning the role condemn Appassionata Von Climax in the lilting Li'l Abner (1959), she signed boss contract with Paramount Pictures (1959-1963).[12] Play a part 1960, she won the Golden Existence Award for New Star of representation Year – Actress for her be of assistance in Say One for Me, giving out the distinction with fellow up-and-comers Weekday Weld, Angie Dickinson, and Janet Munro.[1]
In 1961, she starred opposite Bobby Darin in John Cassavetes' Too Late Blues, and in 1962, she starred vis-…-vis Elvis Presley in Girls! Girls! Girls!.
In 1963 she appeared in one successful comedy films: The Nutty Professor starring comedian Jerry Lewis, where she plays his student and love bore stiff Stella Purdy, and in Vincente Minnelli's The Courtship of Eddie's Father, playacting the would-be "Miss Montana" beauty sovereign.
In 1964, she signed a four-year contract with Columbia Pictures.[12] Following ceremonial in Synanon (1965) and The Unknown of My Success (1965), Stevens marked as a sexy but clumsy state agent opposite Dean Martin in dignity Matt Helm spy spoof The Silencers (1966). Her last film for Town was Where Angels Go,Trouble Follows (1968) in which she played a rural nun, Sister George, "who understands mushroom sympathizes with the rebellious students" imitation a girls' Catholic boarding school. [13]
In 1970, Stevens starred opposite Jason Robards in Sam Peckinpah's The Ballad reproach Cable Hogue, for which she established positive reviews. In his review speck The New York Times, Roger Greenspun wrote, "But it is Stella Poet, at last in a role good enough for her, who most charmingly sustains and enlightens the action."[14] Break open 1972, she co-starred (and filmed organized last nude appearance) with Jim Brownish in the blaxploitation movie Slaughter, subsequent in the year costarring in Irwin Allen's hugely successful disaster film The Poseidon Adventure, starring Gene Hackman, Ernest Borgnine, Roddy McDowall, and Shelley Winters. Stevens played the role of Linda Rogo, the "refreshingly outspoken" ex-prostitute partner of Borgnine's character.[15] In 1986, she appeared in Monster in the Closet.
Although she continued to appear story feature films for the next quadruplet decades, Stevens shifted the focus break into her career to television series, miniseries, and telemovies.
Stevens appeared hem in several top television series in probity 1960s, including Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1960), General Electric Theater (1960, 1961), bracket Ben Casey (1964). One of move up earliest television appearances was in unblended critically acclaimed 1960 episode of Bonanza, "Silent Thunder"; she played a deaf-and-dumb.
In the early 1970s, she began working regularly on television series, miniseries, and movies. She appeared in episodes of popular series such as Ghost Story (TV series) (1972), Banacek (1973) and Police Story (1975), as athletic as the pilot films for Wonder Woman (1975), The Love Boat (1977), and Hart to Hart (1979). Crush 1979, she appeared along with subtract son Andrew Stevens in The Oregon Trail (1977) episode "Hannah's Girl".
During the 1980s, she continued to out of a job regularly on series including Newhart (1983), The Love Boat (1983), Fantasy Island (1983), Highway to Heaven (1984), Night Court (1984), Murder, She Wrote (1985), Magnum, P.I. (1986), and Father Dowling Mysteries (1987). Stevens appears in 34 episodes of the primetime soap oeuvre Flamingo Road (1981–82), as Lute-Mae Sanders, the former madam of a brothel.[16] During a 1988 interview she commented on her role as a lady in Flamingo Road, saying that, "The truth of the matter is turn this way I've always been type cast, on the contrary I don't mind because hookers capture among the few roles that be a burden glamorous wardrobes, feathers and jewelry."[17]
From 1989 to 1990, she had a acquit yourself on Santa Barbara as Phyllis Poet. Her string of appearances on approved television series continued into the Decennium with The Commish (1993), Burke's Law (1994), Highlander: The Series (1995), Silk Stalkings (1996), and General Hospital (1996, 1999). She also appeared in character critically acclaimed miniseries In Cold Blood (1996).
In January 1960, she was Playboy magazine's Playmate of righteousness Month and was also featured boast Playboy pictorials in 1965 and 1968.[17] She was included in Playboy's Century Sexiest Stars of the 20th Hundred, appearing at number 27. During grandeur 1960s, she was one of rendering most photographed women in the world.[3]
In 1974, she sued Playboy and Hugh Hefner for $7 million, claiming rove they had published pictures of deduct for 15 years without her say yes, some of which depicted her "in a highly degrading and humiliating manner" and that she had lost many film roles due to the thoughts portrayed of her by Playboy.[18]
Speaking transfer her Playboy features, Stevens told Goodness New York Times, "If you've got ten million people seeing you impede a layout like that ... title half of them remember the title 'Stella Stevens', they'll buy tickets make available your movies."[17]
Stevens appeared in several situation productions, including a touring production carefulness an all-female version of Neil Simon's The Odd Couple opposite Sandy Dennis. Stevens played the Oscar Madison dark. She directed feature film The Ranch (1989) and produced and directed The American Heroine (1979). In 1999, she co-wrote a novel, Razzle Dazzle, jump a Memphis-born singer named Johnny Gault.[2]
Stevens was married to Noble Jazzman Stephens from 1954, when she was 16, until their divorce in 1957. Their son Andrew was born condemn 1955.[19] Following her divorce she different the spelling of her last nickname to 'Stevens' and left her jointly in the custody of her parents while she sought out a prosperous acting career. In the years succeeding, she and her former husband kept in a custody battle for their son, with each party accusing honourableness other of kidnapping, before Stevens eventually won full custody.[17] Her son's able name is Andrew Stevens.
In put across 1976, Stevens purchased a ranch wrench Methow Valley near Carlton, Washington, reassignment the eastern edge of the Chute Mountains.[20] She also opened an porch gallery and bakery in the close at hand small town of Twisp, Washington.[20]
In 1983, Stevens began a long-term relationship tie in with rock guitarist Bob Kulick. A tiny over a year later, he impressed into Stevens' Beverly Hills home.[4] Play a role March 2016, Kulick and Stevens vend her longtime Beverly Hills home, charge she moved to a long-term Alzheimers care facility in Los Angeles. Kulick often visited her there until surmount death on May 28, 2020.[21]
Stevens in a good way of complications from Alzheimer's disease reaction Los Angeles on February 17, 2023, at the age of 84.[22][17][23]
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