(1 October 1938 - 17 February 2023)
The American actress Stella Stevens, who has died from complications with Alzheimer’s at the age of 84, began her career playing sexy blondes and was probably cast initially on account of her glamorous good looks. This is not to say that she didn’t rise to the occasion when the acting required it. She became a very good actress, working regularly in films and she also had an even bigger career on television over a period of fifty years.
Stella Stevens was born Estelle Caro Eggleston in Yazoo City, Mississippi, to the insurance salesman Thomas Eggleston and his wife Estelle, a nurse. The family moved to Memphis, Tennessee, during World War II. Following graduation at 15, Stella married the electrician Noble Stephens and at 16 had a son, Andrew, and divorced a year later. For Stella, the acting bug bit at Memphis State University where she was seen in William Inge’s Bus Stop (later to become a famous film with Marilyn Monroe).
The allusion to Monroe is not inapt as Stevens’ early life resembled that of Marilyn’s. In order to keep her child, she posed as a model for Playboy which boosted her acting career. Moving to Los Angeles, she hooked a contract with 20th Century-Fox, a bit part in Frank Tashlin’s comedy Say One For Me (in 1959) and it won her a Golden Globe for most promising newcomer. Moving to Paramount, she played Apassionata von Climax in the musical film L’il Abner. In 1961 she was in John Cassavetes’ Too Late Blues, a drama with a jazz background starring Bobby Darin. After Presley’s Girls! Girls! Girls! she played the sexy girlfriend of Glenn Ford in Vincente Minnelli’s The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, Eddie being the young future director Ron Howard.
It is a pity that Stevens rarely had a chance to stretch her acting abilities in such films as The Nutty Professor, Advance to the Rear, The Secret of My Success or The Silencers. However, Synanon, about alcoholism, was worthy enough while The Ballad of Cable Hogue was Sam Peckinpah’s unconventional comedy Western with Stevens co-starring with Jason Robards and David Warner. She also graced Ronald Neame’s The Poseidon Adventure, Peter Bogdanovich’s Nickelodeon and appeared with her own son, Andrew Stevens, in Down the Drain in 1990. But the rest of her film career comprised mainly low comedies and horror movies. However, she kept going through TV in such shows as Bonanza, Ben Casey, The Love Boat, Hart to Hart, Fantasy Island, Hotel and Murder, She Wrote. She also directed a couple of TV shows.
Apart from her early marriage, Stella Stevens never remarried but had a long relationship with the rock guitarist Bob Kulick. When Stevens moved to an Alzheimer’s care home in Los Angeles, Kulick visited her until he died in 2020 .
MICHAEL DARVELL
