Stella Stevens

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, 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 In fact, Stevens also would appear in Playboy pictorials in 1965 and 1968, by which time the scowls had been replaced by jokes: "Stella Strips Again" was the nonchalant Press-Scimitar headline.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.

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, a prominent leading lady in 1960s and 70s comedies perhaps best known for playing the object of Jerry Lewis's affection in “The Nutty ...

In 2017, she’d say that her favorite director that she worked with was Vincente Minnelli on “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father,” from 1963. 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.” “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 miserable six days of filming, she said, due to the temper of director Norman Taurog, though she said Presley was nice. 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.

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 died Friday at 84 after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease, her son Andrew Stevens confirmed to outlets including Variety and Deadline.

[has been quoted as once saying](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001771/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm), "It's been my heart's desire to direct since I started doing movies. She was preceded in death by her partner of 37 years: KISS guitarist [Stevens died in Los Angeles on Friday](https://deadline.com/2023/02/stella-stevens-dead-poseidon-adventure-elvis-presley-nutty-professor-1235263438/), following a long battle with Alzheimer's disease. "And Playboy did as much harm as it helped. 27 on the magazine's list of the 100 Sexiest Stars of the 20th Century, per Variety. "What a tremendous body of work and loss.

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.

Born Estelle Caro Eggleston in Yazoo City in 1938, she married at 16 and gave birth to her first and only child, actor/producer Andrew Stevens in 1955 when she ...

In 2017, she’d say that her favorite director that she worked with was Vincente Minnelli on “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father,” from 1963. 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.” It was a miserable six days of filming, she said, due to the temper of director Norman Taurog, though she said Presley was nice. Soon after, she won the New Star Golden Globe, was named Playboy’s Playmate of the Month and got a contract with Paramount Pictures, leading to film work and “Girls! Born Estelle Caro Eggleston in Yazoo City 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.

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