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Stella Stevens, whose flip as an A-list actress in Nineteen Sixties Hollywood positioned her alongside intercourse symbols like Brigitte Bardot, Ann-Margret and Raquel Welch, however who got here to resent the male-dominated business that she felt thwarted her ambitions to be greater than a reasonably face, died on Friday at a hospice facility in Los Angeles. She was 84.
Her son, the actor and director Andrew Stevens, mentioned the trigger was Alzheimer’s illness.
Ms. Stevens was among the many final stars to emerge from Hollywood’s studio system, an association that assured her work however, she usually mentioned, additionally restricted her artistic aspirations. She gained a Golden Globe within the “most promising newcomer” class for her position in “Say One for Me” (1959), a musical comedy starring Bing Crosby and Debbie Reynolds, however felt coerced into becoming a member of the solid of “Ladies! Ladies! Ladies!” (1962), an empty Elvis Presley automobile.
Like Ms. Welch, who died on Wednesday, Ms. Stevens was ambivalent, if not outright indignant, about being solid as a Hollywood intercourse image. She described herself as introverted and bookish, and she or he sought to work with auteurs like John Cassavetes, who solid her as the feminine lead in “Too Late Blues,” his 1961 drama a couple of jazz musician (performed by Bobby Darin).
”I needed to be a writer-director,” she advised the movie scholar Michael G. Ankerich in 1994. “Abruptly I obtained sidetracked into being a sexpot. As soon as I used to be a ‘pot,’ there was nothing I may do. There was nothing authentic I may do.”
She labored with lots of the high administrators and actors of the Nineteen Sixties. She starred because the love curiosity of the title character, a timid faculty professor who undergoes a character transformation, in “The Nutty Professor” (1963), which Jerry Lewis wrote, directed and starred in; “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father” (1963), a romantic comedy directed by Vincent Minnelli; and “The Silencers” (1966), a spy spoof starring Dean Martin.
In between, although, she needed to take a sequence of mediocre roles in mediocre motion pictures, and critics got here to view her as a star who was perpetually avoided realizing her full potential.
Two exceptions got here within the early Nineteen Seventies: She acted reverse Jason Robards in “The Ballad of Cable Hogue” (1970), a comic book western directed by Sam Peckinpah, and as a part of an all-star solid assembled for “The Poseidon Journey” (1972), becoming a member of Ernest Borgnine, Shelley Winters and Gene Hackman in an overturned ocean liner.
By then her sex-symbol days have been fading, and Ms. Stevens hoped to have the time and status to grow to be a director. However feminine administrators have been virtually unheard-of on the time, and her makes an attempt to get assist for what she referred to as “a fabulous black comedy” that she needed to make met repeated useless ends.
“Each man I’ve gone to for 4 years has smiled at me after which double‐crossed me,” she advised The New York Instances in 1973. “Each man I’ve talked to in each workplace on this business has tried his greatest to discourage me from directing. They don’t need me to search out out it’s really easy as a result of it’s purported to be terribly onerous.”
Stella Stevens was born Estelle Caro Eggleston on Oct. 1, 1938, in Yazoo Metropolis, Miss., although she usually advised interviewers she was from a city referred to as Scorching Espresso, a close-by neighborhood. Her agent mentioned something sounded higher than “Yazoo.”
Her father, Thomas, labored for a bottling firm in Yazoo, and her mom, Estelle (Caro) Eggleston, was a nurse. When Stella was nonetheless younger, they moved to Memphis, the place her father labored in gross sales for Worldwide Harvester.
Stella dropped out of highschool at 15 to marry Herman Stephens. That they had one little one, Andrew, and divorced in 1956. (She later modified her surname to Stevens as a result of, she mentioned, it was simpler for individuals to pronounce.)
She returned to highschool after the divorce and earned a highschool diploma. She enrolled at Memphis State School, now the College of Memphis, with plans to grow to be an obstetrician.
She additionally took up theater. A task in a university manufacturing of William Inge’s “Bus Cease” introduced an invite to audition in New York, and by 1959 she was in Los Angeles, on a three-year contract with twentieth Century Fox.
She completed three motion pictures in six months, together with “Say One for Me,” however the studio dropped her quickly after. With a younger son to feed, she took a suggestion from Playboy to pose nude for $5,000. After the shoot, she mentioned, Hugh Hefner, the journal’s writer, would pay her solely half and advised her that she needed to work as a hostess on the Playboy Mansion to earn the remaining.
Earlier than the images ran she signed a brand new contract, with Paramount. She requested Mr. Hefner to cancel the journal function, however he refused, and she or he appeared as Playmate of the Month within the January 1960 situation, a number of months earlier than successful her Golden Globe.
“Individuals don’t notice how horrible males might be towards an exquisite girl with no garments on,” she advised Delta journal in 2010.
Her relationship with Playboy remained difficult. Regardless of her anger at Mr. Hefner, she posed nude for the journal two extra instances. She then sued Mr. Hefner and Playboy in 1974, citing a number of cases of invasion of her privateness, however the case was thrown out as a result of the statute of limitations had expired.
In 1998, Playboy named Ms. Stevens twenty seventh on its listing of the twentieth century’s sexiest feminine stars, simply behind Sharon Stone.
Along with her son, Ms. Stevens is survived by three grandchildren. Her longtime companion, Bob Kulick, died in 2020.
Regardless of her profession’s post-Nineteen Sixties fade, Ms. Stevens remained wanting to work. She turned to tv and had roles in some 80 episodes over the subsequent 4 a long time. Most of them have been visitor appearances on exhibits like “Homicide, She Wrote,” “The Love Boat” and “Magnum P.I.,” although she was additionally a member of the common solid of a number of exhibits, together with the cleaning soap opera “Santa Barbara.”
When she did return to movie, it was usually for soft-core erotic thrillers and campy horror motion pictures, like “Chained Warmth” (1983), wherein she performed a jail warden, and “The Granny” (1994), wherein she performed a wronged grandmother who comes again to life to get revenge on her scheming household.
She finally did get into the director’s chair, for “American Heroine,” a 1979 documentary, and “The Ranch,” a 1989 comedy starring her son. She additionally wrote a novel, “Razzle Dazzle” (1989), which featured a thinly fictionalized model of herself.
“I don’t really feel I’ve been profitable but,” she advised The Vancouver Solar in 1998. “I’m nonetheless ready to be found. I see myself as a piece in progress. I hold attempting to work and enhance and do issues I’m pleased with.”
Danielle Cruz contributed reporting.
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