Stella Stevens, a prominent leading lady in 1960s and 70s comedies perhaps best known for playing the object of Jerry Lewis\u2019s affection in \u201cThe Nutty Professor,\u201d has died. She was 84.<\/p>\n
Stevens\u2019 estate said she died Friday in Los Angeles after a long illness.<\/p>\n
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 started acting and modeling during her time at Memphis State University and made her film debut in a minor role in the Bing Crosby musical \u201cSay One for Me\u201d in 1959, but she considered \u201cLi\u2019l Abner\u201d her big break.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe head of publicity at Paramount basically made me a worldwide sex symbol,\u201d Stevens told FilmTalk in 2017. \u201cHe had me doing a lot of layouts with photographers \u2014 indoors, outdoors, here and there \u2014 being seen in different places, going to the best restaurants, meeting with wonderful actors and directors \u2026 those were the golden years of Hollywood. It was a very exciting time.”<\/p>\n
Soon after, she won the New Star Golden Globe, was named Playboy\u2019s Playmate of the Month and got a contract with Paramount Pictures, leading to film work and \u201cGirls! Girls! Girls!\u201d with Elvis Presley, which she only agreed to do because she was promised to a Montgomery Clift movie if she did it. It was a miserable six days of filming, she said, due to the temper of director Norman Taurog, though she said Presley was nice. The Clift picture didn\u2019t pan out either, at least with her promised co-star. It turned into John Cassavetes\u2019 \u201cToo Late Blues,\u201d with Bobby Darrin.<\/p>\n
\u201cBobby was a very fine actor, but as you can imagine, he was no Montgomery Clift,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Next came \u201cThe Nutty Professor\u201d as Lewis\u2019 student, Stella Purdy, who he is infatuated with.<\/p>\n
\u201cJerry Lewis had told the bosses at Paramount he wanted to cast the most beautiful ing\u00e9nue working at the studio \u2014 or something like that \u2014 and so I got the gig,\u201d she said. \u201cWe all tried to make the characters he had created in the script special, wonderful, unique \u2014 and if you ask me, I do believe that\u2019s why the film still holds up after all those years.\u201d<\/p>\n
At Columbia Pictures, she\u2019d appear in \u201cThe Secret of My Success,\u201d \u201cThe Silencers,\u201d with Dean Martin, and \u201cWhere Angels Go Trouble Follows,\u201d as a nun opposite Rosalind Russell. Other notable roles include \u201cSlaughter,\u201d with Jim Brown, the Sam Peckinpah television film \u201cThe Ballad of Cable Hogue\u201d and \u201cThe Poseidon Adventure\u201d in which she played Linda Rogo, Ernest Borgnine\u2019s character\u2019s wife.<\/p>\n
Stevens worked steadily in television in the 1970s and 80s, appearing in the pilots for \u201cWonder Woman,\u201d \u201cHart to Hart\u201d and \u201cThe Love Boat\u201d and in series like \u201cNight Court,\u201d \u201cMurder She Wrote\u201d and \u201cMagnum, P.I.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2017, she\u2019d say that her favorite director that she worked with was Vincente Minnelli on \u201cThe Courtship of Eddie\u2019s Father,\u201d from 1963. She also directed several films, the documentary \u201cAn American Heroine,\u201d which never got distribution, and \u201cThe Ranch.\u201d She retired in 2010.<\/p>\n
In an interview in 1994, Stevens said that she worried that she didn\u2019t succeed in bringing out the best in her directors and that her ambitions changed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to be like my favorite actresses: Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich. I wanted to be like a burst of youth and then when I got a little crow\u2019s feet or age, I\u2019d be off the screen,\u201d she said.\u201d But I also had the plan of being a director … I saw (Bob Hope) at 83 cracking jokes and having fun. I said then that I never wanted to quit. I want to be like this man. I want to go on forever. I want to die on a movie set.\u201d<\/p>\n