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Stella Stevens 1938 - 2023

Stella Stevens was born on October 1, 1938 in Mississippi United States, and died at age 84 years old on February 10, 2023. Family, friend, or fan, this family history biography is for you to remember Stella Stevens.

Stella Stevens

October 1, 1938

Mississippi, United States

February 10, 2023

Female

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Stella Stevens Stella Stevens (1938 - 2023)

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Stella Stevens' History: 1938 - 2023

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Introduction

Stella Stevens was a movie star.
10/1

1938

Birthday

October 1, 1938

Birthdate

Mississippi United States

Birthplace

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Professional Career

Stella Stevens, a Golden Globe-winning actress and '60s Hollywood bombshell, has died at the age of 84. Stella Stevens, 'Nutty Professor' Actress and '60s Hollywood Bombshell, Dead at 84: The actress died Friday after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease, her son Andrew Stevens confirmed to Variety and Deadline By Jen Juneau Published on February 17, 2023 Actress Stella Stevens attends the American Cinematheque's 40th Anniversary Screening of "The Poseidon Adventure" held at American Cinematheque's Egyptian Theatre on December 29, 2012 in Hollywood, California. Stella Stevens, a Golden Globe-winning actress and '60s Hollywood bombshell, has died at the age of 84. Multiple outlets, including Variety and Deadline, first reported Stevens' death on Friday, with the former attributing the news to her son Andrew Stevens and the latter to both Andrew and a longtime friend of the actress, John O'Brien. Both publications reported that Stevens died in Los Angeles on Friday, following a long battle with Alzheimer's disease. Green Life Media founder Maria Calabrese, Stevens' manager and friend, confirms the actress's death to PEOPLE and says in a statement, "It was an honor and a privilege to have worked with Stella, who was one of the most wonderful and gifted people I have ever worked with." "She was an amazing animal lover, horse wrangler, rock-and-roller, so ahead of her time and so much more than a sex symbol — which her adoring fans admired, respected, and understood," adds Calabrese. "What a tremendous body of work and loss." Stevens was born Estelle Eggleston in 1938, and had her big-screen debut with small parts in multiple 1959 movies before bigger breaks in films like Too Late Blues (1961), Girls! Girls! Girls! (1962), The Nutty Professor (1963) and The Silencers (1966), co-starring with Bobby Darin, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lewis, and Dean Martin, respectively. She would go on to appear in dozens of films, including 1972's The Poseidon Adventure and 1975's Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold, as well as television series like Bonanza, The Love Boat, Hart to Hart, Fantasy Island, and Night Court. Stevens modeled for Playboy multiple times and was featured as the magazine's Playmate of the Month in January 1960 before appearing in two more issues later that decade. She also came in at No. 27 on the magazine's list of the 100 Sexiest Stars of the 20th Century, per Variety. The actress has been quoted as once saying, "It's been my heart's desire to direct since I started doing movies. I directed two films in the '70s and '80s (1979's The American Heroine and 1989's The Ranch). One was a feature-length documentary. But I've still not made my debut with a big film." "So why has it taken me so long? Because it was hard as a 'sexpot,' as I was labeled in the '60s and '70s, to have people take me seriously as a producer or director," added Stevens, who won a Golden Globe for new star of the year in 1960. "They would rather see me without my clothes on." American actress Stella Stevens by a swimming pool, circa 1965. Stella Stevens circa 1965. Silver Screen Collection/Getty Raquel Welch, One Million Years B.C. Actress and Hollywood Sex Symbol, Dead at 82 In her statement to PEOPLE, Calabrese adds, "While I truly wish I could have done more for her toward the latter years of her career, I shared in her frustration, as she so wanted to make the leap from a triple-threat American icon to producer. Her wish, never realized, was to have three original Western scripts produced." But despite not hitting every career goal she had, Stevens once said, "I did the best I could with the tools I had and the opportunities given me," according to Deadline. "I was a divorced mom with a toddler by the time I was 17," the actress reportedly added. "And Playboy did as much harm as it helped. But in spite of that rough start, I did okay." Stevens is survived by son Andrew, as well as three grandchildren, Variety and Deadline reported. She was preceded in death by her partner of 37 years: KISS guitarist Bob Kulick, who died in 2020 at age 70.
02/10

2023

Death

February 10, 2023

Death date

Unknown
Cause of death

Unknown
Death location

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Obituary

Stella Stevens, Starlet of the Sixties and ‘Nutty Professor’ Actress, Dies at 84 She also sparkled in 'The Ballad of Cable Hogue,' 'Too Late Blues,' 'The Poseidon Adventure,' 'The Silencers' and 'Girls! Girls! Girls!' February 17, 2023 Stella Stevens, the screen siren of the 1960s who brought sweet sexiness to such films as The Nutty Professor, Too Late Blues, and The Ballad of Cable Hogue, has died. She was 84. Stevens died Friday in Los Angeles, her son, actor-producer-director Andrew Stevens, told The Hollywood Reporter, “She had been in hospice for quite some time with Stage 7 Alzheimer’s.” Shining brightest in light comedies, the blond, blue-eyed actress appeared as a shy beauty contestant from Montana in Vincente Minnelli’s The Courtship of Eddie’s Father (1963). Stella portrayed a headstrong nun in Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows! (1968) opposite Rosalind Russell and frolicked with the fun-loving Dean Martin in two films: the Matt Helm spy spoof The Silencers (1966) and How to Save a Marriage and Ruin Your Life (1968). Stevens also starred opposite Elvis Presley in Girls! Girls! Girls! (1962), a movie she said she detested. Her signature role, however, came in The Nutty Professor (1963), produced, directed, co-written and starring Jerry Lewis as the nice but nerdy Julius F. Kelp, a college chemistry professor who invents a potent cocktail that transforms him into swinging ladies’ man Buddy Love. Her character, the coed Stella Purdy, finds herself attracted to Love but also sees something in Kelp. “I am basically a comedienne, I always have been,” she told Skip E. Lowe in a 1992 interview. “The sex [in her films] has always been ‘comedy sex.’ A lot of the serious dramatic roles I’ve played, I’ve thought to myself, ‘Oh God, they were dreary.’ I like the pacing of comedy, the excitement of it.” Stevens, though, did stand out in dramas. She convinced jazzman Bobby Darin to abandon his idealistic dreams in John Cassavetes‘ Too Late Blues (1961) and played w***** with hearts of gold in Rage (1966) and Sam Peckinpah’s The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970). In the classic disaster film The Poseidon Adventure (1972), Stevens endured a damp, grueling shoot as Ernest Borgnine’s determined ex-streetwalker wife, performing many of her own stunts. Stevens, who appeared three times in Playboy magazine, had an explicit love scene with Jim Brown in Slaughter (1972) — some moviegoers in the South did not approve of their coupling — and fought a fierce battle with Tamara Dobson in Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold (1975). A self-described tomboy, Stevens said she liked to get physical — witness the great knock-down, drag-out fight she had with Wonder Woman (Lynda Carter) on the first episode of the ABC series in 1975. Estelle Caro Eggleston was born an only child on Oct. 1, 1938, in Yazoo City, Mississippi. She and her family moved to Memphis, Tennessee, when she was 4, and she spent a great deal of time in the movie theater behind their home. She married a classmate, Herman Stephens, at age 15, had her son when she was 16, and got divorced at 17. A department store model, Stevens (she adopted a version of her married name for her stage name) appeared in a production of Bus Stop while attending Memphis State and got a great review in the local newspaper. Dick Powell directed her in a screen test, and she signed with 20th Century Fox, making $250 a week. She was supposed to portray Jean Harlow in a biopic, but the movie did not get made until years later. Stevens did make her film debut as a chorus girl in Say One for Me (1959) — sharing the Golden Globe for the most promising female newcomer with Tuesday Weld, Angie Dickinson, and Janet Munro — and then attracted attention as Playboy‘s Playmate of the Month for January 1960. The magazine shoot was something she said she always regretted (though she would appear again in Playboy in 1965 and ’68). “I had been dropped from my contract at 20th Century Fox, didn’t know a soul in Los Angeles, and had a child to support.” The nude photos also were used against her as she fought for custody of her son in a yearslong battle with her ex-husband. Playboy, though, certainly didn’t hurt her movie career. Paramount signed her and cast her as the mistress Appassionata Von Climax (played by Tina Louise in the original Broadway production) in Li’l Abner (1959). She played a deaf-mute on a 1960 episode of Bonanza directed by Robert Altman and starred as the nymphomaniac wife of Jeffrey Hunter who seduces his ex-Marine pal (David Janssen) in the heist film Man-Trap (1961). She told Tony Macklin in a 2004 interview that making Girls! Girls! Girls! with Elvis was not a good experience. “I was sent the script by Paramount to read. And I thought, ‘Hmm, he’s from Memphis, and so am I. That’s a good idea to put us together.’ So I read the script. I wound up throwing it across the room!” she recalled. “I thought, ‘What a piece of s***.’ “I went back to Paramount and said, ‘I’m sorry, but I’m not going to be in this.’ And they said, ‘Young lady, you are going to do this picture or be put on suspension, and you will not be able to work here or anywhere else — you will not be able to make any money.’ “ She agreed after Paramount told her she would get to star opposite Montgomery Clift in Too Late Blues — Cassavetes’ first studio film — but he was replaced on the film by Darin. Her film résumé also included Advance to the Rear (1964) — one of the three films she made with Ford — The Secret of My Success (1965), Synanon (1965), Sol Madrid (1968) with David McCallum, The Mad Room (1969) with Shelley Winters, the women’s lib-themed Stand Up and Be Counted (1972), Peter Bogdanovich’s Nickelodeon (1976), Chained Heat (1983), The Longshot (1986), and Blessed (2004). On television, Stevens starred as Lute-Mae Sanders, the owner of a bordello, on the 1980-82 NBC primetime soap Flamingo Road, and played a hooker named Beverly Hills in the horror film Mom (1991). She also had stints on the soap operas Santa Barbara (as Robin Mattson’s meddlesome mother) and General Hospital. Stevens desperately wanted to direct later in her career but found that overcoming her reputation as a “sexpot” to be too daunting. “This has been a detriment to people taking me too seriously,” she told Lowe. She did manage to direct her son in The Ranch (1989), and he directed her in The Terror Within II (1992). Stevens lived for more than a decade on a ranch in Washington state and had a romantic relationship with Bob Kulick, a guitarist and music producer who worked with Meat Loaf, Lou Reed, Motorhead, Diana Ross and Kiss, from 1983 until his death in 2020. (Kulick’s brother Bruce was in Kiss.) Survivors also include her grandchildren, Amelia, Aubrey and Samuel.

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