Stella Stevens is exceptional.
STELLA STEVENS |
Stella Stevens is exceptional.
Stella always had an exceptionally good figure, and she is the exception to the rule that glamour girls' careers come to an end when their looks fade. She was an exceptionally good comedy actress too at a time when Paula Prentiss was the only other actress with a proven talent for comedy.
Stella is also the exception to the rule that appearing naked in magazines or movies robs actresses of their mystery and box office appeal. Stella posed naked in "Playboy" in 1960 and again several years later. Alone among all the actresses who have made that mistake, Stella has survived without apparent damage to her career. The world is full of women who have large breasts, but size is not the same as beauty. Stella Stevens' "Playboy" appearances proved that her breasts were exceptionally beautiful. It it easy to understand why she was willing to display her body as a means of promoting herself and her career.
She was born Estelle Eggleston in Yazoo City, Mississippi, and while still in her teens experienced marriage, motherhood and divorce. Her husband's name was Stephens, and although she changed the spelling, that was the only thing Stella took from him.
According to Stella, she arrived in Hollywood because a film about Jean Harlow was planned. "I was living in Tennessee when a talent scout sent some of my pictures to Hollywood. They immediately wired me to fly there for a screen test. . . I resembled the star and was being considered".
The film was not made but Stella
remained in Hollywood, and appeared in several
television shows before making her movie debut in "Say One For
Me" at 20th Century Fox. ("I was so far away from the camera you'd have thought I
was a tourist!"). She followed this with another tiny role for Fox
in "The Blue Angel", a much-criticised remake of the famous Marlene
Dietrich movie.
A stills photographer advised Stella not to smile for the camera but to grin naturally as this would give her individuality. Although she describes her grin as "silly", Stella has always followed this advice.
20th Century Fox cancelled her contract and for a time Stella was without an income. She was then approached by "Playboy" who offered her 5000 dollars for a centerfold appearance. Stella accepted this offer but almost immediately Paramount cast her as Appassionata Von Climax in "L'il Abner" (which Tina Louise had played on Broadway). Paramount also gave Stella a contract, and she then had second thoughts about appearing in "Playboy". The magazine however insisted she fulfill the contract and Stella made her debut in "Playboy" in January 1960. Although Stella today still resents "Playboy", she has admitted that after her gatefold appearance she secured bigger roles, sometimes above the title.
Armed with her Paramount contract, Stella's career quickly took off. In "Too Late Blues", she played an aspiring singer with minimal talent who admits she relies on her looks, while in "Man Trap" Stella played a dissolute wife on whose death the plot turns. She was then cast opposite Elvis Presley in "Girls, Girls, Girls" playing a club singer - Stella's singing was dubbed - who very implausibly loses Elvis to a substantially less feminine rival. Stella was then the comedy foil to Jerry Lewis in "The Nutty Professor".
When
Stella's contract with Paramount came to an end, she won a new contract with
Columbia at a time when the studios were no longer freely offering contracts.
Regardless of whom she was contracted to, throughout the 1960s Stella's publicity photographs always included her chest, sometimes her legs, but were almost never of only her face, which either had a carefree grin or was calm and unaffected. Her publicity material made no extravagant claims on her behalf, nor did Stella say in interviews that she wanted to be taken seriously as an actress - a fairly standard assertion by actresses at that time - and in the 1960s Stella was regarded in Hollywood as a sex symbol, not as an actress.
Although both Stella's pin-up pictures and publicity strategy were conventional - apparently her main hobby was the study of Satanism, voodoo and witchcraft! - her choice of roles was varied, ranging from nuns to drug addicts, from drama to comedy to a Sam Peckinpah western, which indicates that Stella was serious about being an actress despite the modesty of her public pronouncements.
Stella consistently gave good performances but few of her films were prestigious, and, because Hollywood only notices high quality work in ambitious movies, Stella did not receive the credit she deserved.
For example, the skill of her comedy playing in "The Courtship Of Eddie's
Father", directed by the much admired Vincente Minnelli was widely acknowledged.
However in "The Silencers", a very lightweight movie, Stella gave another
brilliant comedy performance as a clumsy, accident-prone babe-in-the-wood, drawn into Dean Martin's adventures,
but her work did not receive recognition. Had the
film carried more prestige, Stella would have been Oscar
nominated.
This was to be the pattern of Stella's career to the present date. She has worked in both films and television in a wide variety of parts, consistently to a high standard, yet without ever being granted the excited adulation often given to other, sometimes less deserving, actresses. Stella has worked steadily, frequently in junk like "Slaughter" with Jim Brown, occasionally in huge successes like "The Poseidon Adventure", and has kept working long after her youth faded.
In recent years Stella has written her first novel and has begun to work as a director. Stella has demonstrated that it is possible for a good-looking actress to achieve a worthwhile career without relying wholly on publicity and physical allure.