Stella Stevens

The early film career of Stella Stevens could be said to mirror that of Marilyn Monroe. She began by playing a succession of sensuous, blond glamour girls, from naïve virgins and funny coquettes to precocious or briny-tongued floozies. Her early maturity on screen may have reflected her own turbulent private life: she was married at 15, had a child at 16 and was divorced a year later. At 21, Stella, having a child to support and no money, posed for a celebrated Playboy centerfold (she was Playmate of the Month for January 1960) which did her subsequent movie career no harm whatever. Voted by Playboy as among the 100 sexiest women of the 20th Century, she then also became one of the most photographed stars of the 60s. The voluptuous, blue-eyed Stella was born Estelle Caro Eggleston to one of the oldest families in Yazoo, Mississippi. A myth, which had her hailing from the quaintly named town of Hot Coffee was purely an invention by Hollywood publicists. Her father, Thomas Ellett, was an insurance salesman, her mother, Estelle, a nurse. The family moved to Memphis when she was four. In her early childhood, Stella was nicknamed 'Bootsie'. Impatient to grow up, she took to watching movies at every opportunity. It became her main passion. Graduating from high school in 1955, Stella spent two years attending Memphis State University where she was 'discovered' during a production of Bus Stop in the role of aspiring nightclub singer Chérie (famously played by Marilyn in the film version). Borrowing some money, Stella made her way to the bright lights of Los Angeles and was signed by 20th Century Fox in 1959. She made only three films for the studio during a six months spell before her contract was dropped, her debut being a bit part in Frank Tashlin's saccharine comedy-drama Say One for Me (1959). Her role won her a Golden Globe Award as Most Promising Newcomer. That same year, she was picked up by Paramount and made her first breakthrough on the screen as the vampish Apassionata von Climax in the film version of the hit Broadway musical Li'l Abner (1959), based on Al Capp's comic strip. Stella then alternated motion pictures with television appearances, displaying a perhaps unexpectedly wide range as an actress in both dramatic and comedic roles. She stood out in films like Too Late Blues (1961) and The Courtship of Eddie's Father (1963), both under greatly contrasting directorial styles. In the classic disaster epic The Poseidon Adventure (1972), she was more or less typecast as the proverbial hooker with the heart of gold. Above all, Stella saw herself not as a sex icon but as a comedienne. She once said "I want to be remembered for whatever made people laugh the most." Unafraid to do physical comedy in the manner of Lucille Ball she was also often lauded for her comic timing in films like The Silencers (1966) (a James Bond-style spoof, co-starring a sleepy-eyed Dean Martin) and Where Angels Go Trouble Follows! (1968). In the 70s, her best role was as a warmhearted prostitute in Sam Peckinpah's seminal western The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970). The respected writer and critic Roger Ebert wrote of her performance "There are few enough actresses who can be funny and feminine at the same time, but she is certainly one of them." Like many film careers, hers too experienced a fair share of hiccups along the way, often due to typecasting: duds like Slaughter (1972), Stand Up and Be Counted (1972), Las Vegas Lady (1975), The Manitou (1978), and others. Stella proved, resourceful enough to diversify and go behind the camera, both as producer and director of a feature-length documentary, The American Heroine (1979). She co-authored a novel, Razzle, Dazzle (published in 1999), about the rise and fall of a glamorous rock star. Also at this time, she unveiled her own range of women's and men's fragrances, called 'Sexy'. During the 80s and 90s, Stella concentrated primarily on television,enjoying lengthy tenures on the glossy soaps Flamingo Road (1980) and Santa Barbara (1984) in addition to many guest appearances in shows as diverse as Police Story (1973), Hotel (1983), Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1985) and In the Heat of the Night (1988). In 1976, she briefly forsook the glamour of Beverly Hills and set up home on a 27-acre ranch on the edge of the Cascade Mountains in Washington State and then proceeded to operate an art gallery and bakery in a nearby town. By 1983, she had returned to her Beverly Hills home where she lived with her partner, rock guitarist Bob Kulick, until the home was sold in 2016. Afflicted by Alzheimer's disease, Stella Stevens spent her remaining years in an assisted living home in California, and passed away in Los Angeles on February 17 2023 at the age of 84.