Stella Stevens, an actress known for her work in The Nutty Professor, Too Late Blues, and the Wonder Woman television pilot, has passed away at the age of 84. The news was broken in a statement by Stevens’ son, actor-producer-director Andrew Stevens, who told The Hollywood Reporter that “she had been in hospice for quite some time with Stage 7 Alzheimer’s.”
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Stevens was born on October 1, 1938 in Yazoo City, Mississippi. After getting married at the age of 16, giving birth to Andrew, and getting divorced, Stevens developed an interest in acting and modeling while studying at at Memphis State University. She signed a contract with 20th Century-Fox that only lasted or six months, but led to her film debut was as a chorus girl in 1959’s Say One for Me. She, alongside actresses Janet Munro, Angie Dickinson, and Tuesday Weld, won a Golden Globe in 1960 for New Star of the Year — Actress. That same year, she also appeared in Playboy magazine, and would later be regarded to be one of the most-photographed women of the 1960s.
“I’m a comedienne,” Stevens said in a 2004 interview with Bright Lights Film Journal. “I always did sexy things for fun, and I had jokes. Like the rain sequence with Dean Martin in the Matt Helm picture The Silencers (1966)… A comedienne, an actress. I had to consider myself an actress much more, because no one ever considered me as a serious actress.”
At that time, her film career included Too Late Blues, The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, Synanon, The Secret of My Success, The Silences, Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows, and the Elvis Presley-led blockbuster Girls! Girls! Girls!. One of her most-famous film roles might have been as Stella Purdy, the student and love interest of Jerry Lewis’ Julius Kelp in 1963’s The Nutty Professor. During this era, she was also a member of The Skip-Jacks, a music group that sung the theme songs for The Patty Duke Show and The Flintstones.
On the television side, Stevens appeared in a critically-acclaimed episode of Bonanza, as well as episodes of The Love Boat, Hart to Hart, Fantasy Island, and Murder, She Wrote. She appeared as Marcia in the 1975 pilot film for Lynda Carter’s Wonder Woman series.
Twice in her career, Stevens also stepped behind the camera, producing and directing the 1979 documentary The American Heroine, and the 1989 comedy film The Ranch. She also co-wrote a novel titled Razzle Dazzle, which publlished in 1999.
Later on in her career, Stevens’ filmography included Twenty Good Years, Strip Mall, By Dawn’s Early Light, Hell to Pay, Popstar, and Megaconda.
Our thoughts are with Stevens’ family, friends, and fans at this time.
