Stella Stevens Was the Crush of Every Teenage Boy in the 60’s

The voluptuous Stella Stevens was the crush of every teenage boy in the 60s. She believed that she had ruined her life when she got pregnant at the age of 15. But she got back up on her feet and managed to become a successful actress and also a director.
Early years marrying an electrician at the age of 16. Stevens was born Estelle Eggleston on October 1, 1938, in Mississippi. When she was four, her family moved to Tennessee where her father worked as an insurance salesman and her mother as a nurse. She went to St. Ann’s Catholic School and attended her final year of high school at the Memphis evening school. She lived behind a theater in Memphis, which explains how she developed an interest in films. She said in an interview that she had purposely annoyed her mother so she would give her money to go to the theater.
When she was 15 she got pregnant with an electrician Noble Herman Stevens. They married and Stevens had her son Andrew Stevens, also an actor and producer when she was 16. When she graduated from high school, she divorced Noble and changed her name to Stella Stevens.It was around this time that she became interested in acting and modeling. She performed in stage plays during her college years and was featured in a local newspaper. Her feature film debut was in the 1959 film ‘Say One for Me’, which was a musical produced by Bing Crosby. She had a minor role as a chorus girl in the film, and her contract with 20th Century Fox was terminated after just six months. She soon got a new contract with Paramount Pictures after she impressed the studio with her audition for a role in one of their new films. In the 1960s, she received the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year Actress for her performance in her debut film, ‘Say One for Me.’ During this time, she was also working as a model. She was the first person who was photographed for a portrait by the light of a single candle and several reflectors for a photography magazine when a new brand of film was introduced by Kodak. She was also the Playmate of the month for Playboy in January 1960, and was featured in their pictorials in 1965 and 1968. By the 1960s, she had become one of the most photographed women in the world, co starring with the king of rock’n’roll and making headlines in newspapers. Stevens never got the chance to star in her own film, but she did co-star with some of the biggest celebrities of her time. In 1962, she starred alongside Elvis Presley in the film ‘Girls, Girls Girls’, she hated the film that didn’t want to perform in it at first because of which she was almost suspended by Paramount. She has mentioned in several interviews that she never saw the film after it was released. She hated her role, saying she got the role of the girl who gets dumped for the other girl who’s much prettier than her. In another interview, she said, never be in an Elvis movie. His fans come for the sole purpose of seeing Elvis. They don’t look at anyone else on the screen. When she asked Elvis how he was able to handle all of this pressure. All he said to her was don’t knock success Stella. Around this time, she started making headlines in newspapers for all the wrong reasons. Her divorce from her first husband had led to a custody battle for her son Andrew, she had become a big star by them, which is why the legal battle was reported so frequently in the papers. Stella won the battle, and her son got to live with her and he soon embarked on his own acting career. In fact, they appeared in four movies together, TV career, Stevens’s film career had slowed down by the late 60s, and she started appearing more frequently in TV shows. Two of her most notable TV appearances during this time were in Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Bonanza’. She was making regular appearances in some of the most popular TV shows at the time, and she continued doing TV throughout the 70s 80s and 90s. Her final TV appearance was in the show 20 good years in 2006, singing the theme song for the Flintstones and directing her own films. Other than being an actress Stevens was also a successful singer and a director. She was the vocalist for a group called the Skip Jacks. And you might not know the name, but if you watch TV as a kid, then you might have heard their songs. They perform the theme songs for the Flintstones and the Patty Duke show. In the late 70s and 80s. She produced and directed two films of her own, ‘The American Heroine’ and ‘The Ranch.’ She said in an interview that ever since she started acting in films she wanted to direct too. ‘The American Heroine’ was a documentary that she made with film students from the University of Texas. She had previously starred in a film made by the same students for free. She said the reason why she never got around to directing more films was because people didn’t take her seriously. They weren’t interested in skills and talents she said but only in her physical looks. She also created her own line of fragrances and wrote and published a novel in the late 90s. Other than that, she opened an art gallery and a bakery in a small town in Washington. Stevens was clearly a woman of many talents, but she was largely misunderstood, especially in the 60s and 70s. Forming a lifelong relationship with Bob Kulick. Stephens first met Bob Bulik in the early 80’s, Kulik was a rock guitarist who had worked with bands like Kiss and Meatloaf. They became great friends and shared Stevens’ home in Beverly Hills. She sold the home in 2015 and moved to an Alzheimer’s care facility in LA, where Kulik often visited her to take care of her. Kulik died on May 28, 2020.
In 2005, Stevens received the real cowboy’s silver spur Award for her work in the western genre. She still lives in the care facility in Los Angeles, the $10,000 a month long-term care facility specializes in looking after people who suffer from issues like dementia. One of her friends is reported to have said It’s horrible to see a woman once so vibrant, have to struggle to even string a simple sentence together. Stevens mentioned in one interview that she was an unhappy child. But despite that she managed to become one of the most successful stars in the world. She has starred in over 60 films and has made over 80 TV appearances. She wanted to be a star then it’s safe to say that she made her dream come true.