Stella Stevens

Stevens' passing was confirmed to Deadline by her son, actor-producer Andrew Stevens, and her longtime friend John O'Brien. Related Story. Hollywood & Media ...

“While I truly wish I could have done more for her toward the latter years of her career and 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. “I was a divorced mom with a toddler by the time I was 17. [Stella Stevens](https://deadline.com/tag/stella-stevens/), the actress best known for her roles in [The Nutty Professor](https://deadline.com/tag/the-nutty-professor/) and [The Poseidon Adventure](https://deadline.com/tag/the-poseidon-adventure/) and starring opposite [Elvis Presley](https://deadline.com/tag/elvis-presley/) in Girls! and The Secret of My Success. Girls!, Dean Martin in How to Save a Marriage and Ruin Your Life, Bobby Darin in Too Late Blues, Chuck Conners in Synanon and Glenn Ford in The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, ADvance to the Rear and Rage. A former Playboy centerfold from January 1960, Stevens was modeling in her hometown of Memphis when she was discovered and given a screen test by 20th Century Fox.

Stella Stevens, a Memphis kid who became a successful comedic and dramatic actress, died Friday after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease.

"I said, 'Jerry, I don't want to be a 'pain,' and the next thing I knew I got a revised script, and my name was Stella Purdy," with "Purdy" a sort of homonym for "pretty." Stevens said that though she loved Memphis and the South, the racism and resistance to non-comformity she encountered when she was young made living here hard. "I believed it would save me from the label of 'sexpot,' which would have totally stomped me into the ground." with Elvis; Minnelli's "The Courtship of Eddie's Father," which inspired a hit television series; and "The Silencers," one of a series of spy spoofs starring Dean Martin as secret agent Matt Helm. In fact, Stevens also would appear in Playboy pictorials in 1965 and 1968, by which time the scowls had been replaced by jokes: "Stella Strips Again" was the nonchalant Press-Scimitar headline. This provided "the best movie education a girl could ask for," she said. From the 1970s through the '90s, she was a ubiquitous television guest star, visiting Peyton Place and Fantasy Island, and matching wits with everyone from Matt Houston to Nash Bridges. A positive review of her performance in the Memphis Press-Scimitar, the daily evening newspaper, "really started my career" as an actress, Stevens later told The Commercial Appeal. If Stevens' looks got her in the Hollywood door, she resisted staying in one place once she got in. We hope Miss Stevens has the force of character to make this mistake the last of the sort." The couple married when Stevens was only 16, and were divorced by 1957, leading to an acrimonious child-custody battle that was highly publicized in the Memphis press before the court ruled in Stevens' favor in 1961. As an actress, Stevens traveled all over the world, but the journey began in what was essentially her own backyard.

One of the last of the Hollywood studio starlets, she appeared in “The Nutty Professor” and “The Poseidon Adventure.”

Stevens never remarried, but she had a 40-year relationship with Bob Kulick, a rock guitarist and producer who died in 2020. She modeled at a department store by day and completed high school at night before enrolling at what is now the University of Memphis. In that film, she had the part of a beauty queen who ends up sitting in on drums at a jazz club and falling for Ford’s best friend, played by [Jerry Van Dyke](https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/jerry-van-dyke-comic-actor-in-tvs-coach-and-my-mother-the-car-dies-at-86/2018/01/06/2cfe8776-f33b-11e7-97bf-bba379b809ab_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_15). “And I always say that to love yourself is the beginning of a lifelong romance,” Ms. “I didn’t like being a child.” At 16, she married Herman Stephens, another teenager who worked as an electrician. “And after watching you, I know that you and you will be very happy together.” After a forgettable role in “Girls! In 1960, she spiced up her résumé with a revealing pictorial in Playboy magazine — the first of three over the next eight years. Stella Stevens, a Hollywood star of the 1960s and ’70s known for her voluptuous figure and graceful comic touch in such films as “The Nutty Professor” with Jerry Lewis and the cruise-ship disaster story “The Poseidon Adventure,” died Feb. She made her debut in a 1959 musical, “ I don’t know what to do, but I muddle around and we play the scene, and then we play it again and again, and then suddenly he finds the truth he was searching for, and we go on.” As she was groomed as a contract player by various studios, she was often compared to Marilyn Monroe and 1930s star Jean Harlow for her smoldering blond looks.

Stella Stevens, who starred with Elvis Presley in Girls! Girls! Girls! and in The Nutty Professor and The Poseidon Adventure, died Friday.

In 1980 Stevens tried series-regular television for the first time with the prime-time soap “Flamingo Road,” set in a small town in Florida and also starring Morgan Fairchild and Mark Harmon, among others, but the esteemed (for what it was) NBC series was finished after 38 episodes in 1980-82. Stevens made her film debut in 1959’s “Say One for Me,” starring Bing Crosby and Debbie Reynolds; she was named most promising newcomer – female (along with three others) at the Golden Globes as a result of this appearance, but Fox dropped her contract. She did, however, get to have fun as the villain in “Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold” (1975). Stevens also had a supporting role in Peter Bogdanovich’s somewhat misbegotten “Nickelodeon” (1976). Girls!” and with Jerry Lewis in “ [The Nutty Professor](https://variety.com/t/the-nutty-professor/)” as well as in disaster film “The Poseidon Adventure,” died Friday in Los Angeles. In Sam Peckinpah’s 1970 Western “The Ballad of Cable Hogue,” starring Jason Robards as the title character, Stevens put her own stamp on the material: “Cable pays no attention to his appearance until he meets the bountiful Hildy, the town prostitute,” Roger Ebert wrote.

Stella Stevens, 'The Nutty Professor' and 'The Poseidon Adventure' actress, died Friday after a battle with Alzheimer's disease. She was 84.

Girls! and to drive men crazy!" Stevens also directed two films: The American Heroine and The Ranch, the latter of which starred her son, Andrew. That is not what I had in mind for my career.'" Stevens garnered even more attention that year starring as Playboy's January Playmate of the Month and was later The actress and bombshell, who had been living in hospice care, died after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease, her son Andrew Stevens confirmed.

The “Poseidon Adventure” actor died Friday in Los Angeles after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease. Advertisement. Stevens' son, actor-producer-director ...

In January 1960, she was Playmate of the Month and went on to win a Golden Globe Award for new star of the year the same year. Over the course of her career she starred in films opposite Lewis, Presley and Dean Martin. A local journalist took notice and gave her a rave review in the newspaper. The former Playboy centerfold always thought of herself as more of a comedian than a sex symbol, though. Stella Stevens, the 1960s Hollywood starlet known for starring in “The Nutty Professor” with Jerry Lewis and opposite Elvis Presley in “Girls! “Hopefully my mother’s work will be remembered for her collaborations with some of the entertainment industry’s biggest icons.”

Stella Stevens, a prominent leading lady in 1960s and 70s comedies, has died.

She retired in 2010. At Columbia Pictures, she’d appear in The Secret of My Success, The Silencers, with Dean Martin, and Where Angels Go Trouble Follows, as a nun opposite Rosalind Russell. “We all tried to make the characters he had created in the script special, wonderful, unique — and if you ask me, I do believe that’s why the film still holds up after all those years.” Girls! Born Estelle Caro Eggleston in Yazoo City, Mississippi in 1938, she married at 16 and gave birth to her first and only child, actor/producer Andrew Stevens in 1955 when she was 17, and divorced two years later. Article content

Stevens died following a battle with Alzheimer's disease, her son told CBS News in a statement.

At Columbia Pictures, she'd appear in "The Secret of My Success," "The Silencers," with Dean Martin, and "Where Angels Go Trouble Follows," as a nun opposite Rosalind Russell. I want to die on a movie set." I wanted to be like a burst of youth and then when I got a little crow's feet or age, I'd be off the screen," she said." "We all tried to make the characters he had created in the script special, wonderful, unique — and if you ask me, I do believe that's why the film still holds up after all those years." It was a very exciting time." Born Estelle Caro Eggleston in Yazoo City, Mississippi, in 1938, she married at 16 and gave birth to her first and only child, actor/producer Andrew Stevens, in 1955 when she was 17, and divorced two years later.

She starred alongside the likes of Elvis Presley and Jerry Lewis. But she wanted to direct and write, and she felt held back by industry sexism.

Most of them were guest appearances on shows like “Murder, She Wrote,” “The Love Boat” and “Magnum P.I.,” though she was also a member of the regular cast of several shows, including the soap opera “Santa Barbara.” Hefner to cancel the magazine feature, but he refused, and she appeared as Playmate of the Month in the January 1960 issue, a few months before winning her Golden Globe. She also wrote a novel, “Razzle Dazzle” (1989), which featured a thinly fictionalized version of herself. She turned to television and had roles in some 80 episodes over the next four decades. She won a Golden Globe in the “most promising newcomer” category for her role in “Say One for Me” (1959), a musical comedy starring Bing Crosby and Debbie Reynolds, but felt coerced into joining the cast of “Girls! (She later changed her surname to Stevens because, she said, it was easier for people to pronounce.) With a young son to feed, she took an offer from Playboy to pose nude for $5,000. She worked with many of the top directors and actors of the 1960s. She enrolled at Memphis State College, now the University of Memphis, with plans to become an obstetrician. Stevens hoped to have the time and reputation to become a director. 1, 1938, in Yazoo City, Miss., though she often told interviewers she was from a town called Hot Coffee, a nearby community. She starred alongside the likes of Elvis Presley and Jerry Lewis.

Stella Stevens, who starred with Elvis Presley in “Girls! Girls! Girls!” and with Jerry Lewis in “The Nutty Professor” as well as in disaster film “The ...

Stella Stevens, star in 'The Nutty Professor' and 'The Poseidon Adventure', has died at age 84. She suffered from Alzheimer's disease.

Reflecting on her career at the time, she said, “I feel like I’ve just keyed the car, just scratched the surface, and that the whole auto is still sitting there in front of me.” Ankerich in 1994 that the industry viewed her as a “sexpot” because she had posed for Playboy, which made it difficult for her ambitions behind the camera to be taken seriously. In 1960, she won a New Star of the Year award at the Golden Globes, signed a contract with Paramount Pictures, and became a Playboy Playmate of the Month. That same year, she also landed a role in the musical Li’l Abner. Her profile rose again after she reluctantly became Elvis Presley’s co-star in the 1962 movie Girls! She made her film debut in the 1959 musical Say One For Me, which also starred Bing Crosby and Debbie Reynolds.

Stella Stevens, who starred with Elvis Presley in “Girls! Girls! Girls!” and with Jerry Lewis in “The Nutty Professor” as well as in disaster film “The ...

Known as one of the biggest screen sirens of the 1970s, Stella Stevens has died aged 84 following a long battle with dementia.