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Stella Stevens, whose turn as an A-list actress

in 1960s Hollywood, placed her alongside six symbols

like Brigitte Bardot, Ann-Margret, and Raquel Welch.

She was groomed as a contract player by various studios

and was often compared to Marilyn Monroe

for her smoldering blonde looks, grace, and glamor.

However, she came to resent the male-dominated industry

that she felt frustrated her ambitions

to become more than a pretty face.

Stella Stevens died on Friday

at a hospice facility in Los Angeles.

She was 84 years old.

♪ Stella means celestial star ♪

♪ Chebella ♪

♪ The loveliest by far ♪

♪ The moon and the stars give Their heavenly light ♪

♪ But none in the firmament Shine ♪

♪ As bright as Stella ♪

♪ Stella her star with its Glow burning white ♪

♪ None in the heavens are Shining as bright tonight ♪

Entries in film encyclopedias chronicle Stella Stevens

as a film star and working actress for more than 50 years.

But what is not recorded is the pain she endured

stemming from her struggles as a single mother

from a small town in Mississippi

who made her way alone to Hollywood

and carved out a niche for herself

during the misogynistic, sexist, and racist 1960s.

I started to realize that even though life with my mother

was never warm and fuzzy,

my truth wasn't necessarily the whole truth

and that her truth was worthy of having a look at.

And as I started to research her life and her story,

I was able to look at things with a softer lens

and view her journey from multiple sides.

This house was originally built in the early 1800s

by my great, great grandfather, Edmund Trent Eggleston.

Some say it was renovated again around 1870

and obviously it's had updates since then.

My maternal grandfather, Tom Eggleston,

he grew up in this house with his siblings.

He had two brothers and two sisters.

Tom met and married Dovie Estelle Caro from Marks, Mississippi.

The two of them, they had one child, Estelle Caro Eggleston,

who later became Stella Stevens.

Stella Stevens was born Estelle Caro Eggleston

on October 1st, 1938 in Yazoo City, Mississippi.

The Eggleston family was one of the oldest in Yazoo City.

As a child, she had two nicknames.

They called her Bootsy and they also called her Little Estelle

because my grandmother was Big Estelle.

The Egglestons moved to Memphis, Tennessee

with four-year-old Little Estelle

and purchased a small brick house on Carrington Road

with the Park Theater just across the back fence.

I uncovered decades of interviews with my mother,

but in the early days of her stardom,

they were all in print

and I was trying to find a way

that we could bring her words to life.

We lived behind the Park Theater in Memphis

and growing up, I practically lived inside it.

I saw every film that played there over and over.

My mother thought I went to too many movies,

but I learned that if I bugged her enough,

she would pay me to get rid of me.

I remember my mother didn't want me seeing The Outlaw

A 1943 Western film with Jane Russell

because it had been condemned by the Catholic Legion

of Decency for its provocative content.

She tracked me down and pulled me out of the theater

by my ear.

The Catholic Church had it out for the picture.

They thought it was too risque.

With two working parents, I learned responsibility

and independence at a young age.

I learned to cook and take care of myself,

but movies became my passion

and I watched them at every opportunity.

My life has never been what I wanted.

My mother was a devout Catholic and I was raised Catholic

and I went to Sacred Heart High School.

After Sacred Heart, little Estelle enrolled

in Elizabeth Messick High School.

It is there that she met noble Herman Stevens.

When Herman met Stella, she was a high school sophomore

and he was a senior.

The attraction was instant.

Estelle dropped out of high school at 16

and married journeyman electrician and amateur boxer

Herman Stevens on December 3rd, 1954

in Holly Springs, Mississippi.

My parents told me that I was conceived

in the backseat of a Mercury at the Skyview Drive-in

in Memphis, Tennessee.

My mother, who said my name Andrew

and Andy for short, was named after the Aldo Rey character

in the movie Battle Cry,

which apparently was playing that night.

So I was conceived to the soundtrack of a war film.

When I was 15 years old, I got pregnant.

When I was 16, I had a baby.

I've been a mother since that time.

I actually quit high school to get married

and have the baby, then went back to school at night

to finish high school.

I went to college at Memphis State University.

I was an English major and joined the drama group.

I knew then that I would like to act.

Acting is what I wanted to do.

Estelle gained attention and recognition playing Cherie,

a great part in William Inge's stage play Bus Stop ,

portrayed on screen by Marilyn Monroe.

This was the first real recognition she got in print.

Because Andrew was a toddler then,

the thought of going to New York

and trying to be in the theater

seemed like a horrible grungy life.

I could just picture myself in a hovel in Greenwich Village.

It was one or the other,

or it was to stay in Memphis forever.

Everyone in Memphis laughed at me and thought I was uppity,

that I thought I was better than everyone else

because I wanted to talk in a different way.

But I saw it as my only way out.

She was discovered in classic magic of the movies fashion

when a visiting talent agent spotted her

working as a junior fashion model

in the tea room at the old Goldsmiths Department Store

in downtown Memphis.

I modeled junior sophisticates and Mr. Mort clothes

at Goldsmiths, Memphis's largest department store

as my first job.

And of course I had a baby at the time.

I made $38.86 a week.

And I used to have to take Andrew to the nursery

while I went to work.

My parents did not support me wanting to be an actress.

They had the attitude that I had to get it out of my system,

that I was a bit crazy to do it.

They were very concerned about me.

My mother said that she hoped I would fail

and come back to Memphis where I belong.

I was told that I should have better sense

and stay home in Memphis, but I couldn't do it.

When I discovered acting was my destiny,

it was either New York or Hollywood.

The odds against getting anywhere in the movies

are so great that if you had realized it beforehand,

you'd stay home.

But I wasn't a happy child.

I wanted to be an actress.

United Artists press agent Irving Schiffrin

arranged for a meeting with executives

at 20th Century Fox.

They took photos of Stella and offered to screen test her

there in New York.

But she had to get back to Memphis.

The New York executives sent the photos to California

and the executives there liked what they saw

and offered for Stella to come to Los Angeles

for her screen test.

The studio had told Stella that they were interested in her

for the role of Jean Harlow in a potential upcoming film.

I went to California in August of 1958

and made the screen test and waited for my results.

Stella didn't get the Jean Harlow role,

but the studio liked what it saw in the screen test

and 20th Century Fox signed her to a three year contract

in 1959 with a studio option every six months.

Estelle's early maturity on screen may have reflected

her own turbulent private life.

The marriage was volatile and shortly after one year,

Herman moved out and Estelle filed for divorce.

My next job was at 20th Century Fox

where I was making $250 a week

and I thought I was really rich.

I left Andy with my mother because I wasn't allowed

to take him out of state and I moved to Los Angeles.

Upon arrival in Hollywood and under the advice

of an agent, Estelle changed her name.

When I was introduced as Stella, I said,

"That last name doesn't look good with a ph.

"I'll just make it a V."

That was the big change.

I was then an actress with a stage name.

Studio biographies originally claimed Stevens was born

in Hot Coffee, Mississippi.

That was a fabrication of press agents who referred

to her as the cream of Hot Coffee.

Because anything sounded better than Yazoo City.

Stella's on-screen acting debut was in a speaking role

in Frank Tashlin's comedy drama, Say One for Me.

I was a chorus girl and I sidled up to Mr. Crosby

in a red spangled, very tiny costume

and I asked him to zip me up.

They used to always try and paste net over my cleavage.

They had this idea that I was too sexy for the screen.

Seeing what they show now and what they used to show before,

it was pretty silly.

Not long after filming, Stella was back on the studio lot

doing a photo shoot when she passed director

Edward Dmytryk.

She was soon called back to the studio for a small part

in Dmytryk's 1959 remake of The Blue Angel,

which starred Curt Jurgens and May Britt.

We were cast in the remake of a film called The Blue Angel.

I say remake because I'm old, but I'm not that old.

You know, the original was Marlene Dietrich.

Stella Stevens and Barbara Luna were essentially

chorus girls behind May Britt and Edward Dmytryk's remake

of Joseph von Sternberg's The Blue Angel.

They met again on Synanon , Frank Tashlin's movie

and became friends for the rest of their lives.

The system was very unkind.

They apparently, I would say used the word force

for the lack of a better term to work on films

that they did not want to be in.

Well, when I started in business,

almost everybody who worked was under contract

to one studio or another.

And, you know, nobody made a lot of money

except maybe the big stars.

And even then they didn't make a lot of money.

It was the studios who made money.

You have a contract with them

and they're gonna try to build you up

and put you in films.

And sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't.

Despite appearing in two films,

Stella's contract at the studio lasted only six months

and 20th Century Fox did not renew her.

I worked for four months on Say One For Me.

However, no one told me to pick up a work card.

So apparently the studio never knew that I worked.

So they dropped me.

So now Stella is entering a tough part of her career

where the studio finds a clever way to drop her contract.

She's fighting for custody of her son, Andrew,

and money's tight.

So along comes Playboy, offers her $5,000.

She doesn't think it's gonna be that big of a deal

and she does it.

I was very new in Hollywood.

Had only been out there six months.

And I had no money coming in

and I didn't know anyone out there.

And I was offered a great deal of money for doing it.

So I said, well, it's a job, you know.

It's just like any other kind of work.

When I did it, they paid me half of the money.

And if I wanted the other $2,500,

I would have to work as a hostess for Playboy parties.

I said, shove it, I will not.

She did a lot of good movies in the sixties

and she was actually one of the most charming

of the leading lady comedians out there.

Look what's happened to Li'l Abner.

Paramount was producing a film version of Li'l Abner.

Based on Al Capp's comic strip

and the hit Broadway musical of the same name.

Stella auditioned for the great role

of the vampish Appassionata von Climax

and won it over a multitude of other actresses.

Sensational Stella Stevens as Appassionata von Climax,

General Bull Moose's sexy secretary.

Does that mean you get bed and board?

Extremely.

This was an enormous coup for her.

And she was cast to take over the role

that Tina Louise had created on Broadway.

A parody of a sex symbol.

Fate intervened and two significant things happened

in Stella's career.

One, ironically, she won a Golden Globe

as new star of the year for Say One for Me

for 20th Century Fox.

The studio that had just dropped her contract.

And two, Paramount Pictures signed her

to a seven year contract.

For me it all started when I did Li'l Abner.

The head of publicity at Paramount

basically made me a worldwide sex symbol.

He had me doing a lot of layouts with photographers,

indoors, outdoors, here and there,

being seen in different places,

going to the best restaurants,

meeting wonderful actors and directors.

Those were the golden years of Hollywood.

It was a very exciting time.

Things were looking up for the starlet

and Stella panicked about the Playboy photos.

She tried to buy back the pictures

and dissuade Playboy from exploiting them

in connection with her new movie role.

I called Hugh Hefner and I said, I'm sorry,

I know I made a deal with you to do a layout,

but I don't want to.

And he said, "Oh no, you have a contract with us".

You have to do it.

I didn't have any options at the time.

I would say for Stella, you know,

in that era to do Playboy, to then lead to movies,

that's how it went, you know.

Unfortunately for women back in the day,

that's how you got the Hollywood boys to notice you.

The photos became a celebrated Playboy centerfold

and Stella was named Playmate of the Month

for January 1960.

It was my decision and mine alone.

Hollywood, November 18, 1961.

Paramount Pictures calls a meeting

of its female contract players,

Stella Stevens and only Stella Stevens shows up.

She's it, the only actress the powerful studio

has under contract.

And the betting around town is that Paramount

will build her into a star of Marilyn Monroe

Elizabeth Taylor importance.

♪ I've entertained Above the clouds ♪

♪ From Timbuktu to Rome ♪

♪ Guys who've seen me taking Off ♪

♪ Don't wanna go home ♪

♪ So stand by for the greatest Show you're ever gonna see ♪

♪ But even if it ain't I know You won't walk out on me ♪

Stella was thrust into the final years

of the golden age of Hollywood.

She became a bonafide starlet.

During the golden age of Hollywood,

if you're a contract actor,

you were either filming every day

or you were in the taking stills every day.

You were promoting your movies.

You were promoting everybody else's movies.

It was a complete and total factory

and they made sure that their contract players

and their stars worked every single day

for the good of the studio.

Those battling her for custody of her son in Tennessee

believed that Hollywood was no place to raise a child.

This belief was only strengthened

after Stella's nude layout appeared in Playboy.

When Stella and her husband Herman

were going through their divorce,

their son Andrew was caught between two worlds

of Hollywood and Memphis, Tennessee.

I was 16 when Andrew was born

and when I went out to Hollywood, I missed him so much.

I saw a film in which Frank Sinatra sang "High Hopes".

That inspired me to go back and get my baby from Memphis

and bring him to California.

After the divorce, a very bitter custody battle

erupted between Herman and Stella.

Herman, supported by his parents,

wanted Andrew to stay in Memphis, Tennessee,

whereas Stella wanted her son with her

in Los Angeles, California.

When I was very young, and I know it's strange

because I have a distinct memory of this,

I was at my mother's parents' house

who were taking care of me alternately

with my father's parents

and they said they had a surprise for me

and they opened the door to one of the bedrooms

and my mother walked out.

He was three and so to this day,

Andrew is scarred from that.

They took us to the airport,

put us on a late night flight back to Los Angeles.

I'd never flown in a plane before

and I later learned that my mother had defied a court order

and had taken me out of state without the court's permission.

But less than a year later,

Andrew's father and grandfather took a clandestine trip

to Beverly Hills to kidnap Andrew back

and take him home to Memphis.

I'd been in Los Angeles for a year or so

living with my mother and I guess I was getting close

to around five years old

and my mother was getting ready

for a photo shoot or something

and I was outside at a rented house on Benedict Canyon

riding my tricycle in the driveway

and as I rounded the corner from the garage,

I saw a blue station wagon in the driveway

and I rode my tricycle closer to it

and I saw my granddaddy in the window

and I said, "Granddaddy," and he got out of the car

and he hugged me and I looked back

and there was a man at the front door ringing the doorbell

and I said, "What was that?"

And he said, "That's your daddy."

And my father saw me and he ran to the car,

put me in the car and they peeled out down Benedict Canyon

as my mother ran out of the house screaming,

"Andy, Andy."

My ex-husband came and stole my son from me,

charged me with contempt of court

and took him back to Memphis, lied to him

and said, "Your mother doesn't want you anymore.

She's got too many boyfriends in California.

We'll give you a motorcycle, a pig, a dog, a bunny,

a cat, whatever.

We love you and your mother doesn't."

Finally, when I went to court,

the bailiff thought it would be a joke

to put the Playboy spread under the glass

on the judge's desk.

During my mother and father's custody battle,

my father's petition was more for me to live with his parents

because he clearly was not capable

of taking care of a child, but they desperately wanted me

and Meme and Granddaddy and also my mother's parents

were collectively like my real parents.

It was settled by the court

that Andrew would live in Hollywood with his mom,

but would spend summers and vacations with his dad.

However, presiding judge, Greenfield Polk,

admonished Herman and Stella saying,

"He is not your child and he is not your child.

He is my child and a ward of this court."

Just before I turned six years old,

I learned that my mother had won custody of me

and at my sixth birthday party,

with all my friends in the neighborhood,

I had to say goodbye to everyone

because that night she took me to the airport

and we were booked on a red-eye flight

to go back to Los Angeles.

And I remember standing on the tarmac, waiting for her,

and she was posing for pictures with photographers

and I was saying, "Come on, come on."

Stella's acting career was really taking off

and in addition to the movies,

she was doing prestigious and the top one-hour

television shows that were on the air.

And at this time, it was every network's dream

to have a movie star as a guest star on a television show.

Stella appeared in the anthology series

Alfred Hitchcock Presents in early 1960

in an episode called Craig's Will

co-starring Dick Van Dyke.

Tom, how much did he leave you?

One dollar.

One what?

I don't believe you.

But he wouldn't dare.

You're his only living relative.

This is almost, what did he do with all that money?

Who did he leave it to?

His dog.

There were so many well-crafted mini movies

in the early days of television.

When young, hopeful actors on the way up

were able to work with trusty veterans

from the golden days of Hollywood.

I didn't know who Robert Altman was at the time.

He had been working in television in black and white

and his first big thing in color was Bonanza.

I thought I'd bring it as long as I was coming.

It's not much.

I was up for the role, but everybody said, "No,

she'll never get that."

Here...

I went into the office for the meeting

and they said, "Hello".

I said nothing.

They asked me how I was.

I said nothing.

I sat there silently.

They talked and they talked and then they got it.

That I couldn't hear them at all.

And I got the part that way because I acted

as though I couldn't hear, that I was deaf.

Don't worry, I'm not gonna take it back.

Stella's performance in the episode of Bonanza,

Silent Thunder was just astonishingly good.

It was playing a deaf and dumb girl.

This was their version of The Miracle Worker

or Johnny Belinda.

And Robert Altman was simpatico with Stella

and he saw the real gem of a performance she was giving

and he let her run with it, which was so wise.

And it's some of the absolute best work she ever did.

A little known fact is that Stella was also a member

of the Skip Jacks, a late 50s, early 60s vocal quintet.

You've heard their work without knowing it.

Since she performed the theme song

for The Flintstones and The Patty Duke Show.

But movies were Stella's passion

and her theatrical film career was starting to blossom.

And she's like the legit above the title lead.

Under her new contract at Paramount,

Stella was cast in the movie originally titled Deadlock

but released as Man-Trap.

Nina, the character I played in Man-Trap

made quite the impression at the time.

She was the total opposite of me.

I was an introverted, bookish sort of person

who wanted to learn to become a good writer

and here's this woman who is a nymphomaniac

and the challenge really intrigued me.

Some of the most fun parts I've played

have been nymphomaniacs, but it was very risky,

very taboo at the time.

I'll be ready for you in just a minute.

I gotta go make myself look pretty for you, don't I?

She sought to work on better projects with top directors.

John Cassavetes cast her as the female lead

in Too Late Blues.

Cassavetes was the consummate maverick filmmaker

who delved into the psychology of human relationships.

He did and so did I since I started in theater.

Whoever told you that's what you had to do

in order to reach somebody.

Are you kidding?

Just where do I stand without my body, huh?

Tell me that.

The film showcased her dramatic gifts

and starred pop singing sensation Bobby Darin

in his first dramatic role.

The more glorious story is when I'm standing

against a wall in another scene and he walks over to me

and kisses me with this passionate kiss.

Well, we kissed and kissed.

When he stood back, he had an erection this big.

The guy on the catwalk noticed it,

so everybody on set knew about it after that.

Hollywood in the 1960s was a different town.

It was a different era.

The casting couch was very real.

There was an entire town full of early day Harvey Weinsteins.

Well, it's not only the producers and the directors,

it's the agents and the casting people

and the fellow actors and the businessmen

and anybody who sees you and knows that you're an actress,

I think.

Men ran the business and men behaved badly.

There were many attempted rapes

if I would have meetings with people

without having a chaperone with me or something.

Now that I've gotten older, you know, I'm over 30 now,

so people don't jump on me like they used to,

but that was a big problem.

With her talent and her career on the rise,

Stella was able to evade the casting couch,

but her beauty attracted men like moths to a flame.

Ms. Stevens is admired by Cary Grant,

who saw her in the Paramount Commissary one day

and insisted on having lunch with her for the entire week.

I dated Cary a couple of times and I loved him dearly.

We never had an affair, but we were great, great friends.

Actors are business, not pleasure for me.

And there's very good reason.

Actors are selfish and so am I.

You have to be if you want to be ambitious in this business.

Early on, she was lumped into a situation

of sort of like after Marilyn Monroe, after Jane Mansfield,

after Mamie Van Doren, but what Stella Stevens had

in the sixties, she became a really, really, really

good comedienne.

The studio sent Stella a script to co-star

with another music singing icon, Elvis Presley.

I started hearing Elvis music at the drive-in diner

in Memphis called the Jungle Garden.

I remember hearing That's All Right

and Blue Moon of Kentucky.

He was great, an instant hit.

♪ Let it go ♪

I was still a baby, still young, but I was old enough

to fight with the studio and say, you're not gonna put me

in this piece of junk and make me the girl

that Elvis Presley dumps for another girl.

That's not what I had in mind for my career.

If it isn't your boat, it's girls. Girls, girls, girls!

And they promised that the next film would be

with Montgomery Clift.

I finally said, "Yes, I'll do the Elvis picture.

It's only six days work and I'll forget about it".

Stella felt coerced into joining the cast

of Girls, Girls, Girls!, and the film she was promised

with Montgomery Clift never materialized.

I was actually miserable making that film

and that's the one film I've done that I have never seen

in my life, nor will I ever see it.

So I hesitate to talk about it in that it was such

an unpleasant experience for me.

Why?

At how I was treated on the film by the producer,

the director, the people who decided how I would look

and what I would do.

At this point, there's always been this idea

that Stella Stevens was the most photographed woman

in the world and it was true.

The studios got behind her with their publicity machine

and it was absolutely incredible.

Photographed at premiers, photographed on dates at Ciro's,

photographed at home,

photographed wherever she went and then in studio,

portraits for magazine covers, ads,

sometimes endorsing other people's movies,

it just never stopped.

They wanted Stella Stevens to be a part

of the American movie going consciousness

and there was no social media.

So the way it worked was to get her on the cover

of all of the hundreds of movie magazines

and there was Stella Stevens, in some cases more so

than somebody like Elizabeth Taylor.

It was Stella Stevens looking at you from the magazine rack

and everybody was buying those magazines.

When I was six years old and my mother was shooting

The Courtship of Eddie's Father,

I got to meet my childhood hero, Ronny Howard,

who played Opie on The Andy Griffith Show.

The Courtship of Eddie's Father brings together

two of the most delightful fun stars of recent years,

Stella Stevens and Jerry Van Dyke.

All right, now move straight forward from the hips.

See where my hips are?

Oh, I do, I do.

My favorite director is Vincent Minnelli.

I believe he is the most fabulous genius

I've ever worked with.

Vincent was the husband of Judy Garland

and that's what impressed me initially.

Then I learned of all the films that he had done

and I thought, oh my God, I'm so stupid.

I realized what a genius he was.

So, Stella Stevens was the girl

in a whole bunch of movies in the 60s

where she's supporting the other big stars

or upcoming stars of the time,

whether it be Jerry Lewis, whether it be Dean Martin,

whether it be Glenn Ford, whether it be David McCallum.

When I was a young kid, my parents took me

to the drive-in in Sarasota, Florida

to see a movie called, The Nutty Professor.

It starred Jerry Lewis and it was like a Dr. Jekyll

and Mr. Hyde and I was a monster movie fanatic.

Well, I came out of there being a Stella Stevens fanatic.

There's never a dull moment on the set

when Jerry Lewis is making a film.

Jerry not only acts in but also directs

his newest motion picture in color.

Stella Stevens, Jerry's leading lady,

gives him a knowing wink.

In The Nutty Professor, I was scared to death

during filming.

I didn't know what to do.

I thought I had to be funny and when I look back at it today,

I kind of cringe at a few of the things I did.

I don't know any place.

In addition to his other talents,

Jerry Lewis was an innovator,

the first actor director to use video playback

to scrutinize his comic performances

before printing a take.

Cut!

Because of my Catholic grandmother,

my mother enrolled me in Beverly Hills Catholic School

for the first and second grades.

And about that time, my mother's centerfold

in Playboy came out.

And I remember being shamed by the nuns

and being told that my mother was a whore

and a harlot was gonna burn in hell.

And I was sent home crying.

So when my mother was doing The Nutty Professor

with Jerry Lewis, she told him the story

and all of the anguish I was going through

at Catholic school.

And he said, "Get him out of there.

Send him where my kids go to school.

Black Fox Military Institute in Hollywood, it's great".

So the following year, I was enrolled

in an all boys private military institute in Hollywood.

And I didn't have nuns shaming me about my mother,

but I had grades 1 through 12 of horny boys masturbating

to pictures of my mom in Playboy.

And actually I was in Playboy magazine.

I was the January 1960 playmate of the month.

And the preacher in the First Baptist Church

in Memphis, Tennessee preached a sermon against me,

setting me up as a young lady who was typical

of all young women led astray by the evils of Hollywood.

Would you advise other girls to pose this way

to further their careers?

I don't like to give anybody advice about anything.

I tell you, in a way it's a help, I guess,

because it is some sort of recognition.

But if one is an actress and trying to convince people

that she can act as I was trying to do,

then it can be a detriment actually,

because nobody believes that you can do anything

other than take your clothes off.

So Stella and I had a lot in common

because we both posed for Playboy.

Now she did it in 1960s, so it was even more scandalous.

I think that the Playboy thing definitely prevented her

from getting roles in maybe a lot of prestige movies.

She became labeled as a sexpot,

a term she despised throughout her career.

And one she believed stunted her career-long,

deep-rooted ambition to direct films.

All of a sudden I got sidetracked into being a sexpot.

Once I was a pot, there was nothing I could do.

There was nothing legitimate I could do.

The thing is, it also affected our jobs.

I was a makeup artist for productions.

I worked for many big directors, but I lost my job.

I worked for 10 years, and when Google came out,

I lost my job because the parents had no idea

that I had taken my clothes off.

Well, I think that every girl that appeared on Playboy

took their chances of being deemed sort of a sex goddess

or not to be taken seriously as an actress.

People in this town just couldn't get out of their minds

that she was Stella, vah-vah-voom, and Playboy.

And she really was more than that.

And she never had a problem with nudity.

I don't think she saw what the big deal was.

But trying to marry that with being a respected actress

and artist I think proved more difficult

than she thought it would be.

Are you the only Playboy playmate

who has become successful, is that true?

I don't really, I don't really think so.

I can't think of any others.

Well, actually, of course there was Marilyn Monroe

and there was Jane Mansfield and both of them are dead.

Yes, but both of them had attained fame

when that happened, I believe, hadn't they?

No, not really.

No, that was actually the very beginning

of both of their careers.

Unfortunately, I'm the only one still alive, I guess.

When Sesame Street first came on the air in 1969,

I begged them to allow me to do the alphabet or anything,

but they would not allow me on the show.

I wasn't allowed to be featured in certain magazines.

I was blackballed from anything decent after Playboy.

Later that year, Stella was loaned out to MGM

and again, starred opposite Glenn Ford

in the Civil War comedy, Advance to the Rear.

Another of my favorite directors is George Marshall,

who directed Advance to the Rear.

I worked with a lot of good directors,

but he was a great comedy director.

He could make anything funny.

After roles previously promised to her

in Harlow, The Carpetbaggers, and Sylvia

were given to a fellow studio star, Carol Baker,

Stella requested an early release from Paramount

and signed with Columbia Pictures

for the remainder of the 1960s.

So then I went to Columbia for five years

and did some good films.

Columbia was the last studio I had a contract with.

Stella's first film at Columbia was a gritty

and sincere drug addiction drama called Synanon.

Joanie, doll face with a deadly expensive appetite.

What are you, my nurse?

Nope, just another dope fiend.

Stella and I worked together again

in a film called Synanon,

and it was very personal for all of us.

When my mother was working on Synanon,

she started hanging out with a guy I thought

was the coolest guy I'd ever met,

Alex Cord, who was her co-star.

She clearly was having a relationship with Alex Cord.

They didn't flaunt it on the set,

but you could tell by behavior,

by the way people talk to each other,

you know, body positions and so on,

that there was a spark there.

He was an ex-Rodeo cowboy.

He'd been gored by a bull,

had this really gnarly scar on his abdomen,

and he rode a Triumph 650 Bonneville motorcycle.

More and more, movies were shooting on location

rather than on sets built on a studio backlot

and filmed on significantly longer shooting schedules

than films today, sometimes for months.

This was the case for Stella's next assignment

for Columbia Pictures, a dark comedy shot in London

called The Secret of My Success.

As Stella continued to work,

her son was raised more by his housekeeper, Annabelle,

who lived at the Stevens house during the week.

When Stella filmed The Secret of My Success,

England was just too far to go

to visit during the school year.

When I was 11 years old, I went to school one day

and all the kids said,

"Did you see this new movie called The Silencers?"

And I didn't think anything of it

because I wasn't really a Dean Martin fan.

He was an old fogey as far as I was concerned.

But everybody said, "You gotta see it, you gotta see it."

So I went to see The Silencers.

Oh my God, Stella is in this movie

and she is so funny, but she is so sexy.

Now do I look like an enemy agent?

I don't know, I haven't seen all the latest models yet.

The Silencers was originally going to be

a straight, dramatic, very gritty espionage story,

just like Donald Hamilton's book.

But then they decided to make it a comedy

and they have Dean Martin

and they needed a comic foil for him.

He wasn't going to be the funny one,

it was going to be his partner.

And here comes Stella with this delightful,

wonderful physical performance.

She's tripping over herself

and getting at all kinds of problems

with machine guns and stuff

that Dean Martin has to save her from.

And she is fantastic and actually carries the movie.

She was ahead of her time

because she was able to combine beauty with comedy

and also do physical comedy as well too,

which back in the day,

they really didn't let women be that funny.

You couldn't steal the scene away from the man,

but she was clever enough to work it in her own way.

The sex has always been comedy sex

and I like the pacing of comedy

and I like the excitement of it.

And I love action, I love physical comedy.

The movie that the wild, more raunchy,

bodacious, stronger, slightly more vulgar,

Stella Stevens started to emerge

is in a really good action movie

she did with Glenn Ford called Rage.

She sparks incendiary reactions in an all male world.

And even if you look at the poster for Rage,

this wasn't just alluring and she looked nice in her dress.

There's a sexual animalism,

which fits with the storyline of that movie.

My role as Perla, the whore, was a very good one.

She was the first whore I played with a heart of gold

and that kind of stuck with me.

And she did that so well because she had that angelic face,

that beautiful face, but she could be ballsy, oh boy.

She could sock it to you if she wanted to.

♪ Each new producer that you Meet thinks he's a gem ♪

♪ They all want you to go and Do the town with them ♪

♪ Remind them that the morning Starts at 6 a.m. ♪

♪ When you're making movies ♪

Studios often teamed their young contract players

with veteran movie stars.

You have starring roles in three motion pictures now.

Tell us first about the part that you play

in How to Save a Marriage.

Well, I played Dean Martin's mistress.

What's he like to work with, was that fun?

Oh, he's just great.

In 1967, Stella was again cast opposite Dean Martin,

only this time she shared above the title billing

with him as well, along with Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson.

The film was a romantic comedy called

How to Save a Marriage and Ruin Your Life.

It's called, How to Save a Marriage and Ruin Your Life.

I always call it , How to Commit Marriage.

Well, I don't know why I bothered

to stay on as your mistress.

You are not my mistress, it's over.

I sent you that note.

I am not a public utility, you can turn off with a note.

How to Commit Marriage is a really funny movie.

That's a really, really good movie.

Oh, we should say something.

Why is it the wrong men always start conversations?

Not bad looking, but I wouldn't leave home for.

When he leaves this elevator, you'll never see him again.

You say something.

Pardon me.

Yes?

Do you have the time?

No.

It's 10 after five.

In that movie, she's just coming

from a very, very innocent place.

And in most of her comedies, she was coming

from a very innocent place.

In the 70s, she never played innocent again.

Roger Ebert correctly identified

How to Save a Marriage and Ruin Your Life as old-fashioned,

especially compared to smart, contemporary comedies

like The Graduate.

It was a very cute movie.

The problem was, cute was over

by the time the film was released.

So the romantic comedies with all the sexual suggestiveness

of Doris Day and Rock Hudson or Doris Day and James Garner

and those films, that era was done.

So here comes this movie that came along too late.

The world and Hollywood were changing at warp speed.

Fueled by the war in Vietnam, social and political mores

were rapidly changing in the late 1960s.

And audience tastes and expectations

in film were changing too.

1968 was like this watershed year for the movies

because absolutely everything changed.

The kind of sex you could show on the screen,

violence you could show on the screen.

So things like, The Graduate, Bonnie and Clyde, Easy Rider,

just about wiped away old Hollywood.

And suddenly there was new freedom

for this whole new wave of filmmakers.

Old Hollywood had died and with it,

the innocence of its movies.

In its place, stark and bold films evolved,

which challenged and replaced Old Hollywood.

Now Sol Madrid is a very good film.

It's a really cool film.

And it starred David McCallum at the height

of his almost rock star pop idol fame.

Can't you ever be nice?

No.

Why not?

Stella's role in this film is actually quite dramatic.

A small time crook steals money from the mafia

and splits it with his girlfriend.

They flee to Acapulco and Stella's character

is taken captive by the cartel

and shot up with heroin till she's turned into an addict.

I remember going to Mexico

and visiting the set of Sol Madrid.

I think we're in Acapulco.

And for the first time,

I saw people openly smoking marijuana.

Use of the drug became widespread

in the upper middle class in fashionable society

and particularly in the music culture and in Hollywood

with actors and directors who were revolutionizing

and abandoning the old studio system.

Next up for Stella under her Columbia Pictures contract

was Where Angels Go Trouble Follows.

And she got to work with one of her Hollywood idols.

Where Angels Go Trouble Follows.

That was actually the first,

that was the first movie I ever saw of her.

And I really liked that movie.

I thought that movie was really cool.

The comedy pits an old school mother superior

played by Rosalind Russell

against a modern thinking young nun, Sister George,

played by Stella Stevens.

The film was a showcase for me as Sister George

who literally looked at the world

through rose colored glasses.

I thought it worked quite well

and Rosalind was funny and wonderful,

a very giving actress.

You'll be flying high

on the wildest runaway joy ride of all.

Fabled Hollywood director Henry Hathaway said of her,

Stella Stevens was born to be in the movies

and to drive men crazy.

Henry Hathaway was prophetic

and Stella drew the attention of a different type of suitor.

Of course Sidney Korshak

was one of the most powerful men in Hollywood.

There's no question about it.

And he was from a very early date.

While moguls, crime bosses, law enforcement

and politicians have always been visible to the world

and the press, Sidney Korshak was a power broker

who was invisible.

Up until this time Korshak was, you know,

he was anonymous.

Nobody knew who he was.

If there was ever any problem with,

especially with organized labor.

Korchak stepped in and fixed things.

And he had the threat of violence

from the Chicago mob behind his words.

Revered and feared throughout the industry.

And although married with a family,

Korshak had a penchant for beautiful actresses

and Stella Stevens had caught his eye.

He pursued her relentlessly

and eventually they began an affair.

Seems like I was always with older men.

When I was 18.

Attracted to power.

Attracted to success, yes.

And power.

I'm sure that Stella was quite aware

that to get close to Sidney Korshak was a dangerous thing.

The word was that if Sidney Korshak

gave the word and said that a studio head

was supposed to do something or other,

that it was as good as coming from Nitti

or Paul "The Waiter" Ricca or any of the other mobsters in Chicago

and that they were to do whatever Sidney told them to do.

Everybody is familiar with Sidney Korshak.

My goodness, that man was notorious.

I mean, if you were in New York or Las Vegas

or Los Angeles, no matter, in Europe,

no matter where you went, this man's name came up.

In the case of Stella,

she got tired after a period of time

of being the other woman.

She didn't want to just be a mistress.

She wanted a more solid relationship

and she finally told him that she'd had enough.

Around this time, Stella became reacquainted

with a struggling actor named Skip Ward.

Skip had worked in a small role playing a football player

in the 1963 film, The Nutty Professor.

So Stella finally ended things with Sidney Korshak.

Which a lot of people thought

was a very dangerous thing to do.

You don't tell Sidney that your affections

are no longer called for.

On top of that, she moved Skip Ward, her new boyfriend,

into our house on Coldwater Canyon.

They were on for, I think, several years, actually,

and I think Stella was quite taken with Skip

because whenever we saw them together,

they seemed to be very happy.

The final movie under Stella's term contract

with Columbia Pictures was The Mad Room,

which were shot in 1968 in London and released in 1969.

Shelley was under a lot of stress

when we were filming The Mad Room.

Robert Kennedy had been shot during production

and she had a very bad reaction to it.

She had been soothing her nerves with white wine

and shouldn't have been.

I swore I'd never work with her again.

There was a male role in The Mad Room,

that of Stella's fiance,

and she defiantly fought with Columbia Pictures

to hire her boyfriend, Skip Ward, to play that role.

She dug her heels in and she fought harder and harder

and harder until finally the studio just gave up

and relented.

I do believe that Stella was told

in no uncertain terms by Sidney

that if she did, in fact, leave him for Skip Ward,

that Skip Ward's days in Hollywood were over

and that he would never work in this town again.

He's my true love.

I have a perfect life with the man I love.

I'm much happier than I've ever been.

Skip was very low key.

So when I would hear things about him being

part of the druggie world, same thing with Stella,

it, that didn't sound right to me.

That just sounded like bad gossip.

I think as much as I wanted to go back to Memphis,

Skip wanted to get me out of the house

so that he and Stella could party more and more blatantly.

They were trying to hide it from me as a kid

and not doing a very good job of it.

He got my mother to agree to enroll me

in a Catholic boarding school in Northern California.

I had a plan which was to get to Memphis

for my summer vacation and go see Judge Polk.

I was a ward of his court and petition him

to allow me to dictate where I wanted to live

and move back to Memphis.

I told Skip this.

He told my mother. She got very upset.

When Andrew was 12, he came back from Memphis

and said, "I hate you.

I hate California.

I hate the maid.

I hate your friends.

I hate my school.

I hate everything here."

I said, "Okay, tomorrow you get on a plane

and you go back to Memphis."

We didn't see each other or speak

for over four years after that.

So Stella's son is transferred

from an all-boys military academy

to a co-ed public high school in Memphis, Tennessee

in a poor section of town.

I walked around the house like a ghost.

I couldn't go into his room,

but finally I got over it, you know?

You get over anything.

I just kept doing what I was doing.

When Stella was offered The Ballad of Cable Hogue,

Sam Peckinpah's reputation was already growing and growing,

and The Wild Bunch had not even been released yet,

and she wanted to have that experience

with a really fine, rebellious director.

I'm quite excited about this film,

The Ballad of Cable Hogue,

because I feel it's the most important film

and just the most exciting film

that I've ever been in in my career.

This is the pioneer.

This is the man whose faith, stamina,

and risk capital conquered the frontier.

Why do you think it's so important

over the other things you've done, Stella?

Because it's a story about true love,

and I think true love is the most important thing

in the world, and it's a story about two people

who find each other and fall truly,

deeply in love with each other.

So she signs on for The Ballad of Cable Hogue,

which became known by everyone involved with it

as The Battle of Cable Hogue,

because they were shooting in Echo Bay, Nevada,

which she fell in love with,

but the weather would not cooperate,

and the shoot went on forever.

Cable Hogue says, "Do unto others as you would have them.

Do unto you."

When the film was released,

and it was released after The Wild Bunch,

and it did not do well,

but everyone lit up to Stella's performance,

and they were like, "Wow, this woman has been hindered

and kept down with all of these movies

that she's been making for these studios,"

and here she comes in with this sweet,

glorious comic performance,

and it was like a revelation to the reviewers,

and they were much more interested in her

than they were in the movie itself.

Stella Stevens has blossomed into

quite a marvelous actress in The Ballad of Cable Hogue.

There aren't many actresses who could be both funny

and feminine at the same time, but she is one of them.

When Peckinpah was brought on to The Getaway,

Steve McQueen was already attached,

and so the big question was, who's gonna play Carol?

When I finally said, "Okay, yes, if she comes back,

I will play Hildy in The Ballad of Cable Hogue,

but you must promise me and your hand on it

that we will do another picture together.

You have to give me another film."

And she kind of thinks it like a little clear that,

okay, I did Cable Hogue for not that much money for you,

so I expect another movie,

a bigger movie in return for this.

But, you know, if I do this for you, Sam,

then you're gonna have to do something for me.

Peckinpah's choice was Stella Stevens,

because he thought, one, she was perfect for the character.

She's from the South, and he also thought that she,

and he also loved working with her.

When the picture came up, I met with Sam,

and yet, when Steve McQueen and I sat in a booth

at lunch together, he said to me,

"I have to tell you one thing.

I consider you competition."

And I knew I wasn't gonna get the picture, and I didn't.

I actually think Steve is an honestly refreshing

selfish movie star.

He's like, "Wait a minute, this is my fucking movie?

Everybody's gonna go see it because I'm in it?

I make this whole, this movie's for my company,

and I'm gonna spend six months making this movie

so Stella Stevens can get an Oscar nomination?

Fuck that shit."

The next feature film for Stella was 1971's

A Town Called Bastard , also known as A Town Called Hell.

Stella was second billed above the title with Robert Shaw,

along with Telly Savalas and Martin Landau.

The blonde one, they call the witch,

and she is Stella Stevens.

I complained bitterly to my agent saying, "What is this?"

He said, "It's filler, it pays your rent,

just don't talk about it."

I guess I had to learn to look at it that way.

After that, she said, "Gosh, no more bad movies

if I could help it.

I don't wanna just go into something

and then have it flaunted if it's lousy like this."

And so she began doing more and more television,

and it was good television.

Growing up in the 70s,

I realized that there were two Stella Stevens,

especially as far as her being a leading lady.

There was the 60s Stella Stevens,

which was the blonde bombshell

that had overtones of Marilyn Monroe.

But the Stella Stevens I grew up with,

the Stella Stevens that I knew was the 70s.

Stella Stevens, when I thought of Stella Stevens,

that's who I thought of.

She was tough, she was strong,

she was sexy and sexual and not in a coquettish way.

I have to make a living,

but most people who make a living

don't see their work exposed on the screen to the public.

Sometimes it can be a lot of fun,

the playing and the acting, but it's work.

In those days, it was a bigger deal

when film stars appeared on television.

Excuse me, baby,

but can you direct me to the little red school house?

♪ Nothing's wrong in doing the Charleston, Charleston ♪

♪ I want to be a vamp ♪

♪ I want to draw the men to me Like bees to honey ♪

One of the shows that she appeared in

was the William Castle anthology series, Ghost Story,

was hosted by Sebastian Cabot.

And it was, in fact, the last time she really used

her influence to get someone hired.

And in this case, it was her boyfriend, Skip Ward.

Take two of these, man.

They'll solve your problems.

Guaranteed to give you fast relief from headache pain.

You don't want a headache, do you, man?

So come on, take a couple.

After that, she and Skip Ward broke up

and she kicked him out of their Coldwater Canyon house.

One day, his clothes were out on the lawn

of the house on Coldwater Canyon.

That made my eyes pop.

Wow, you're tough to be with.

You're saying the last, then he--

Well, I would say every relationship lasted

about a year and a half.

And after that, it sort of petered out.

Why is that, Stella?

Busy?

It would just be that people grow and they grow apart.

Stella's breakup with Skip Ward was devastating for her

because she had discovered that he had been cheating on her

while she was away on location.

And she felt betrayed, but also felt foolish

and wanted just to get away from Hollywood

and the machine and the gossip and all the bad things

that went with working in the movies at that time.

So she decided to retreat to Echo Bay, Nevada,

which she had fallen in love with

while making The Ballad of Cable Hogue

for the glorious desert solitude and the beauty there.

And so that she could practice other art,

including painting, photography.

And while she was there,

she also wanted to experiment with psychedelics.

I think when my mother realized

that the only man she ever really loved

and gave her heart to after my father

had cheated on her and lied to her and used her,

it just sent her into an emotional spiral.

I guess they had a row of some kind

and that was the end of them.

I was either a sophomore or a junior in high school.

And I got a call from a close friend of my mother's

who asked me if I might consider talking to my mother

and maybe meeting her somewhere to try and reconcile.

And I was very reluctant.

We had a whole new life.

I was playing in a rock and roll band.

I had a girlfriend.

I just, I didn't see the point

in opening that whole can of worms again.

But both of my grandmothers were very supportive

of me reconciling with my mom.

So I did it.

Aspiring to tackle roles that elevate the status of women,

Stella burned her bra in the first film about women's lib,

Stand Up and Be Counted.

She invited me to come to St. Louis, Missouri

to the press junket premiere

of the first women's liberation film called

Stand Up and Be Counted

that she starred in with Jacqueline Bisset.

I met her in St. Louis

and we actually had a very pleasant time.

We stayed away from touchy topics.

Yeah, now all of a sudden women are burning their brassieres

and they're standing up for their rights

and okay, we want to be independent.

That's terrific.

That's wonderful.

I know that my grandmother fought for what she believed in.

She really paved the way for women

and women in the film industry and she was a bad ass.

After a period of reflection and healing,

she was offered a film role to co-star opposite

ex Cleveland Browns football star, Jim Brown.

Jim Brown is Slaughter.

I think Slaughter was a really is a magnificent action movie

and she is fantastic in it.

Stella Stevens is the girl.

Are you disappointed?

No.

That's good.

To my health.

You want him, don't you?

Yes.

Yes, I want him!

Slaughter was a smash hit with the black audience

and that gave her a tremendous amount of fans

amongst black males.

I think in Slaughter,

that was probably one of the sexiest roles I played,

but it was not a very popular picture for me

and I don't think they have played it very much on television

- because there was a very explicit love scene in it - Right.

between me and Jim Brown.

Jim Brown is fantastic in Slaughter.

He's just as strong an embodiment

of king of cool masculinity as McQueen is

in The Getaway.

So if you ask me, she didn't suffer at all.

Stella had her share of controversies in her career.

She did one of the first interracial love scenes

with Jim Brown, which unfortunately,

she didn't have a problem with doing.

She thought it was great.

I mean, I don't think I would have had a problem

doing a love scene with Jim Brown.

She just dives in and grabs hold of that material

with her teeth and she is great playing opposite him.

She holds her own and she is fantastic.

Unfortunately, she was shunned for it

not only by her community, but by her family.

And that takes a brave woman to say,

"No, I'm going to do the love scene

and I'm going to be very proud of it."

At the screening of the film,

a man in the theater in Memphis stood up

and screamed at me, "You slut", and walked out of the theater.

But later in the year, Stella's fortunes changed.

When she was cast in Irwin Allen's hugely successful

disaster film blockbuster, The Poseidon Adventure.

I was very proud I was in that picture.

We spent 14 weeks working on it.

Everybody knew how good it was going to be.

The Poseidon Adventure is an imaginative melodrama

chronicling the struggle of 10 passengers

to save themselves after an ocean liner capsizes

when struck by a mammoth tidal wave.

And there is Stella arguing with her cop husband,

Ernie Borgnine.

She used to be a hooker and she's the one

who's in control of the marriage.

He's busting balls with everybody through the entire movie

and she busts his balls.

And she is terrific.

She's also the comedy relief of that movie,

which was no easy task, but she was up for it.

But I remember when I was a little kid,

the moment when she actually thinks he might've died

and then he's okay, and then she yells at him

for scaring her, and then I actually realized

that she actually cared about him,

that it actually made me feel pretty good.

But you know, when I read the script,

I said, "The fat lady's gonna get a nomination."

And sure enough, she did, she did, she saved everybody.

I want you to give this to our little grandson.

Why, I'm going somewhere you are not going?

When they told me Shelley Winters was doing the film,

I said I was not gonna do it.

Then they said I wouldn't have to be in any scenes

with her one-on-one.

So I broke my vow and agreed to do the film with her.

Poseidon Adventure was nominated for eight Academy Awards

and as Stella had predicted Shelley Winters was nominated

for Best Supporting Actress.

The film has become a cult classic because people loved it

and saw it so many times they knew it by heart.

And it was still good again and again.

Poseidon Adventure, we thought,

oh, that'll give her a boost.

But when you're in a film where the film

is really the star, you know, I mean,

you had Shelley Winters and you had all those

wonderfully talented actors, but the film was the star.

So I don't think anybody really got enormous recognition.

I was disillusioned early by thinking

that I was gonna find great stardom in one project.

Everybody kept saying, "one picture is all you need

and that'll put you over the top", but that's not true.

After Poseidon, there was not a big uptick

in movie roles in big productions,

but there was a lot of opportunity for Stella

with independent producers.

I think that I am still just starting out

and I hope I'll be discovered soon.

35-year-old actresses couldn't sustain

the career longevity that they can today.

In her film career, an A-list movies began to flounder.

So she turned more and more to television.

Along with all the TV movies, she guessed it on,

you know, all these TV shows.

No, yeah, you know, so Stella Stevens with Banaceck,

with George Peppard's Banaceck.

But if Stella Stevens was the star of a Police Story,

no, it was about Stella Stevens.

She was the female cop.

She wasn't the female dealing with the male cop.

no, the episode was about her.

With fewer studio offers, she was forced to take on

caricature-ish roles in more low-budget, independent films.

So these movies, Stella's name was important,

not only for box office, but it was important

that she be in these films because very often

she was the one person in the cast

who was really bringing the goods.

Stella Stevens had a magnificent career in the 70s

and did a ton of really good stuff.

And by the way, if you like Stella Stevens

and you get her resume and then just start going down

in the 70s, you watched this TV movie, you watched Arnold,

you watch any episode of any of the shows she guest starred,

she's kicking ass on those shows.

She's terrific.

When Stella's son, Andrew, was a senior in high school,

he had been studying acting and now he had been involved

with district, regional, and statewide acting competitions

and had won every single one.

He did study very hard.

I don't know how much I had an influence

in helping him in his career.

If I could have been of help, I would gladly have done so,

but I never physically went out of my way to do that.

Andrew did it on his own.

In a field that his mother had warned him,

would either drive you crazy or break your heart.

I graduated high school in 1973

and my mom asked me to come visit her in Los Angeles

before I went away to college, which I did.

And I went with some friends to a party one night

and I met a man I had no idea who he was.

The agent that Andrew met was none other

than super agent Dick Clayton,

who'd represented everyone from James Dean to Farrah Fawcett

and Jane Fonda to Harrison Ford.

Even the number one box office star at that time,

Burt Reynolds.

So based on Dick Clayton telling me if I stayed in LA

that he would put me to work as an actor,

I moved to Los Angeles instead of going away

to college in Florida.

Andrew always wanted his mail to be able to come to him

saying "Andrew Stevens Hollywood."

And so I expected all of this.

And when it finally came to be,

it was something that had been inevitable.

So my name is Steven Seligman

and I am the trustee and executor of Stella's estate.

She had a home in Beverly Hills that was empty

most of the year.

So we made an arrangement for me to be her tenant

and caretaker, which became a lifelong relationship.

My mother smoked a lot of pot.

So she decided to grow a lot of pot.

She was going to plant the entire hillside

with buckets of marijuana so we could move them around

and make sure that they got plenty of sunshine.

And that was the beginning of several years

of growing marijuana.

So then Stella finds a new chapter for herself,

which makes her very popular in the African-American community.

She does Cleopatra Jones Casino of Gold.

And she's got some great fight scenes in that.

And next thing you know, she's very popular

with the brothers and the sisters.

And at the very top of this pyramid of blood

and dope and sin and gold,

the most evil woman in the world,

the Empress of Pride.

It makes no difference to me how you die.

The picture shot in Hong Kong.

So it was nice to go there for a couple of weeks.

I played the dragon lady and I got to fight six foot Tamara

Dobson to the death.

But now she's met her match and more

in six feet two of dynamite.

Stella retreated from Hollywood once again

and bought a ranch in Washington state

near the Cascade Mountains

and then opened an art gallery and a bakery

in the small town of Twisp.

The film community believed she was abandoning Hollywood

and retiring from the screen.

Well, it had nothing to do with retiring.

Instead she was regrouping,

getting in touch with the real world.

In Washington, I had human contact

for the first time in nine or 10 years.

There's a joke that California people

don't know their neighbors.

I didn't know my neighbors.

I had no friends except those I worked with,

those who told me to keep my mouth shut,

to be careful and not say anything

or my jobs would be taken away from me.

Someone would go and rip it all out from under me.

Eventually Stella met a local man

in the small Washington community

and they started a very normal relationship.

In the days when I was looking for a man,

I was looking for a sense of humor,

someone that I could talk with and exchange ideas with.

She also moved her mother's brother,

whom she called uncle Mutt,

up to Washington to caretake

and help her with the ranch and the animals,

two llamas and quarter horses

that she would trail ride for hours at a time.

All right, Frank.

Crank.

Cranking.

We're going to make pictures.

Stella had hopes of re-elevating her film career

and she received an offer to join

the all-star cast of Nickelodeon

directed by Peter Bogdanovich.

Cut.

That's it.

Nickelodeon was his Valentine to

the glory days of Hollywood

with an all-star cast led by Ryan O'Neill,

Burt Reynolds, Tatum O'Neill, John Ritter

and Stella among others.

It was also not a great time for Peter Bogdanovich

who told me that he had horrendous battles with the studio

because he demanded a bigger salary

than Burt Reynolds and Ryan O'Neill

and because they wouldn't let him have

Cybill Shepherd in the film.

And he was just plagued

with nothing but financial disasters

So unfortunately what should have been

this wonderful boon for Stella did not happen

because the movie bombed.

As her sex symbol days were waning,

Stella's ambition was to become a director.

But female directors were few and far between at that time.

Her relentless attempts at getting support

from industry executives led nowhere.

I think one of the biggest disappointments for Stella

was that she wasn't able to fulfill her career dream.

She wanted to direct.

She wanted to produce.

But back in those days, the studios didn't give

leading ladies an opportunity to go into another chapter.

Stella had always expressed the desire to direct

and she had discussed it with agents, managers

and whatever and offered her services

and no one was picking up on it.

I've had years of time when I did not work a lot

and I have had one of the hardest struggles

of anyone I've known to try to go from acting to directing.

Because of starting out a sex pot, a sex symbol,

Right.

this has been a detriment in trying to have people

take me seriously as a director.

But I find that those clouds are going away now.

I directed, I financed and I starred in as the interviewer.

I was on the other side of the camera as I am from you

in a film called The American Heroine

which is about contemporary heroic American heroines.

Women who are considered the heroines of their communities

and of all who know them.

Stella worked prolifically in episodic television,

television movies and pilots for The Love Boat

and Hart to Hart demonstrating her range

from comedy to drama.

I had an agent who was very strong in television

but I didn't do a lot of feature films during this period.

As she matured, Stella played a brothel owner

in the prime time soap opera Flamingo Road

which ran for two seasons in the early 80s.

I'm playing Morgan Fairchild's illegitimate mother,

unbeknownst to her adopted mother Barbara Rush

on Flamingo Road.

When I played a madam, the moral majority got all upset.

They wrote letters to NBC and the next year I was an ex-madam

and there were no girls around and the show was cleaned up.

Her views of sex, sexuality and genders

were far ahead of their time.

I've always been a rebel about censorship.

I don't think children should be able to see

the horrible things that they do.

I don't think lovemaking on soap operas

is as bad for children as seeing killings

and murders and slashings.

Stella is one of those women who I think people look to,

you know, someone who did speak out but of course,

it had to be extremely difficult back then.

They still say that there are only two sexes

when there are definitely more than two sexes

and to say that some sexes are good and some sexes are bad,

it's just preposterous.

To bring that up, you know, for her, you know,

it could have ruined her career but she didn't care,

you know, she had a mission and she said what was on her mind

and then she stood by it.

Definitely ahead of her time in the 70s,

like to speak out for gays, I mean,

you could get blacklisted for speaking out

for both for racism and for gays

and she was brave to do both.

Stella was linked in gossip pages

with many men over the years,

yet remained unmarried throughout her adult life

and Hollywood career.

She did, however, in 1983,

start a relationship with guitarist Bob Kulick.

formerly with Meatloaf's band.

After a little over a year,

she repeated her familiar pattern

and moved Bob into her Beverly Hills home.

Bob was a Jewish, crazy musician

who loved to play music and loved Stella.

How were they together?

He's a musician, he's a rocker

and there was a kind of a,

is the word juxtaposition?

But they went they went together

for a very, very long time.

And somehow it worked.

We've been together, it'll be four years in Thanksgiving,

so it's a long time.

She basically, well, she basically supported him

because he didn't have,

he couldn't have supported himself in the lifestyle

that he was in.

When things were good with them,

they were really good and when things were bad,

oof, you know, the roof could blow off.

She was tough as hell.

She wasn't, she wasn't some little, you know,

fainting, fainting little girl, you know,

she was definitely tough and she spoke her mind

and sometimes to her detriment,

but she definitely spoke her mind.

In overview, I do feel here are two really

incredibly gifted, talented people

who really did love what they did

and were great at it,

who I don't think got some of the bigger picture

where you fit in in life

and how can you both love each other

in a healthy manner.

During the 1980s, she continued to work regularly,

guest starring on many hit TV series

and 1983 was a prolific year for her,

if not the quality film career she had had in the 1960s.

Now we're talking about a 20 year career

that extended into the 80s.

It extended longer than that,

but I'm talking about where it's like,

where she's still 100% Stella Stevens.

A general public misnomer is that actors

make a fortune from residuals.

That's far from true.

Residuals generate a pittance for most actors

who routinely receive checks for less than $50

per rerun of the film or TV show,

sometimes even less than $1.

In order to continue to survive financially,

she took roles as cameos on television shows.

So I may not be as successful financially as some people

and I may not have as much power as some people,

but I have a lot of happiness.

In 1989, Stella finally realized her career long dream

and was hired to direct her very first film,

ironically titled The Ranch.

I went up to Canada and did a film called The Ranch

and Andrew in it takes the lead role,

which is a comedy role.

The Ranch was a low budget independent comedy,

shot entirely in Calgary, Alberta, Canada,

during a writers and director's strike in the US.

Nobody in town was working

and I'd been offered a stage play in Calgary, Alberta, Canada

and I was up doing the Ellie Greenwich musical,

Leader of the Pack

and a woman came up to me after the show one night

and she introduced herself.

She said she was a producer and she had a comedy film

that she was intending to shoot in Calgary

and she wanted me to play the lead in the film

and she wanted my mother to direct it.

Did you tell him if he didn't play the scene

the way you wanted him to, that he was grounded?

No, I didn't resort to that,

but I actually did pick up a buggy whip one day

when everybody was trying to tell me how to direct.

I said, there are too many directors on this set

and I sent a wrangler for a buggy whip

and walked around for a couple hours.

Stella commented that Andrew seldom

got to do comedy roles,

much less the sort of slapstick comedy

that she put him through.

In fact, he called one of his scenes

a Jerry Lewis type scene

and he is not known for his comedy,

but I enjoyed working with him in that genre.

- Did he listen to you? - He did actually very much

and I think we grew closer

from the experience of working together.

She really made this opportunity happen for herself,

but after The Ranch, which was a comedy,

chances for her to direct another movie

just were not forthcoming.

I've gone into despair many times

and the only thing that has kept me going

has been working as an actor.

She always went full force

in every one of these independent movies,

which she could have very easily blown off,

but she refused to.

Her ethic would not let her do it.

I realized how shallow the business is

and when I got to be 45 years old,

I didn't think anybody would ever hire me again.

So now when they hire me,

it's just gravy on a wonderful career I already have.

If the idea of being an actress is to work, she worked.

She worked a lot.

The enormous growth of home video in the 1980s

created a market for fresh titles

that people could rent or buy

once they'd seen the movies they already knew about.

This led to a boom in production of quickie films

that made an equally quick profit.

So long as there was at least one recognizable star

in the cast.

Andrew directed Stella in his directorial debut,

The Terror Within 2.

And Andrew, of course, is your son

who we had on recently, Andrew Stevens.

Oh, I understand you did, yes.

Talented actor, director, producer.

Yes, he's going to direct his first movie

and I'm going to be in it.

How neat.

Yes.

What's it gonna be called?

It's going to be called The Terror Within 2,

which is a sequel to a film he did last year

called The Terror Within,

and it's for Roger Corman.

But Andrew has written the script

and is directing it and starring in it.

Why don't you go get some sleep?

I'll stand watch down here for a while.

You know I can't sleep without you.

It's the first time a mother has directed her son

in the first film she directed

and her son has directed his mother

in the first film he directed.

It was a major breakthrough in our relationship.

As his career took off,

Andrew would go on to hire his mother

in 11 films and television shows over the coming years.

Stella was so busy in 90s television.

I mean, it was just incredible,

just going from show to show to show to show,

but also independent producers came to Stella

over and over and over again and she wanted to work.

And the opportunity to work just was never ending.

You're doing a soap opera.

You're on Santa Barbara now.

It's amazing, yes I am on Santa Barbara.

And how many people in a career can work for 30 years

and find something totally new?

She came on to the soap operas

and she worked on General Hospital

and she was a true professional,

even though it was a different medium

because it was three cameras and it was live kind of.

And she took right to it and everybody that worked with her,

I asked them about it and they have very fond memories

because she was very professional and was very good.

The difference in daytime,

strangely enough it scared me to death to begin with

and now I think I'm thriving on it.

In 1998, Stella sold her ranch in Washington

and moved her quarter horses down to the San Fernando Valley

where she could groom them and take care of them

and ride them at her leisure.

You know, it's kind of interesting.

I think Bob rose to the occasion

because when Stella brought the horses to Los Angeles,

for some unknown reason,

Bob just loved going out to be with the horses

and be with Stella.

Bob had said to me, at some point in time,

I think I might've said something about her repeating things

and him saying, "Oh, well, she just always does that.

She forgets things, that's just who she is,

but she'll remember the important things".

But I didn't believe that.

In 2005, I moved my family from Los Angeles to Texas

to raise my kids in a different environment.

And there was some discussion with Bob,

some of Stella's friends and some relatives,

that my grandmother's great aunt and her mother

both had early onset dementia

and both later succumbed from Alzheimer's disease.

And there was some conjecture that potentially my mother

might have a propensity for the illness.

Despite memory issues,

Stella continued to work in independent film.

It was back to the direct-to-video market movies.

And she continued along those lines.

I worked with Stella one more time

on a movie called The Glass Trap,

which was about giant ants

invading a high-rise office building.

She was already entering into some kind of memory loss.

You know how you can tell when you talk to somebody

that they kind of know you, but they don't?

I remember picking her up for lunch one day

and she opened the door and she said,

"Oh, did we have plans?"

And I had spoken to her about an hour before that

to remind her that I was on my way.

And so it got to be pretty clear

that this was something more serious.

In 2006, Stella appeared in the Crying Game episode

of the series Twenty Good Years.

Twenty Good Years starred John Lithgow and Jeffrey Tambor.

Stella's guest star appearance

would be her television swan song.

I want everyone to hear what I'm about to say

to this beautiful woman.

Oh, Henry, you're being silly.

50 years ago, you married a skinny, love-struck boy.

Well, I'm not so skinny now, but I'm even more love-struck.

So I want to ask you something.

Martha, will you marry me again

and make me happy for the next 50 years?

Of course I will.

You sweet, wonderful man.

Mm.

Man, I'm glad that's over with.

After five years of no work as an actress

and now struggling with severe dementia,

Stella somehow managed to work

on the low-budget sci-fi comedy, Megaconda.

She had aged noticeably in the years

since I'd seen her on Glass Trap.

And she had a very difficult time getting through the role

to the point that we laid the script on the bar

and she would hold her head in her hands

and just look down and see the line

and she would come back up and she would do the line.

And we got through it and everybody was very understanding,

but it seems to me at that time

that we kind of hit the end of what she was able to do.

Unfortunately, dementia just sucks the life force

out of somebody.

After Megaconda, I don't believe Stella

ever worked again.

As far as I know, that was the end of her acting days

and maybe it was for the best

considering the struggles that she had.

As my mother's disease progressed,

I was living in Texas, had Bob and a very close-knit group

of friends and caretakers were very hands-on

with my mother and made sure that she was well taken care of,

particularly when Bob was working.

It was hard for Bob to handle that

because all of a sudden her partner

was turning into a father figure

and she's turning into a child

and he was not a patient father figure.

Bob and I started speaking on a regular basis

and it became more apparent that we really needed

to collaborate on putting my mother

into a good memory care facility

because it became untenable both practically and financially

for her to remain at home.

Stella was a wanderer,

so periodically she would go out onto Coldwater Canyon

where she lived and would wander away from the home.

I think it was the firemen on Coldwater Canyon

found her and brought her after she'd fallen

and she was bruised on her whole left side,

her face and everything was bruised.

But that was the kind of thing that they were trying to prevent,

was her doing those kinds of things.

You know, we tried to keep her busy

and we tried to keep her mind off what was happening

because those are the tough times

when dementia is in its early-ish stages

and the poor person knows that something's wrong.

After moving into the care facility,

my mother's cognitive abilities continued to decline.

She can no longer take care of herself.

She had no memory of having a son or grandchildren.

She had no recognition of her friends.

Occasionally there'd be a spark of a vague familiarity,

but she ultimately lost language and lost the ability to speak.

The very last time I saw her at an autograph show,

she really did not know who I was

and that was really kind of sad.

That was sad.

Even though everyone was very patient with her,

but I think it was extremely hard for my brother,

who again just saw her as a strong, domineering woman,

turn into a child and it had to break his heart.

I was seriously concerned about the handling of the money by Bob.

Out of the blue, I got a call from Steven Seligman,

whom I hadn't spoken to in years.

He told me that Bob had moved to Las Vegas

and was stepping down as the trustee of my mother's estate

and as her primary caregiver

and that he was turning everything over to Steven,

who was the second named successor to be trustee.

I told Steven that I would, of course, help in any way possible with the transition

and the next day I got another call from Steven,

who said that Bob had mysteriously passed away.

It seemed like, because of Stella's condition,

that she would pass sooner than Bob,

the situation being Bob passed before her and it was a shock.

We all knew what happened to Bob, really.

It was not put out, what Bob... what happened to Bob.

His cause of death was not released.

But there was no question in any of our minds what had really happened.

Remarkably, Stella sustained a career

that spanned over six decades,

starring in over 60 films and hundreds

of hours of television.

But her greater contribution was as a proponent

for equality and human rights.

All in all, I've had an excellent adventure in my life.

If there's anything that I stand for, it's peace and harmony

and trying to make the most of every moment of our lives.

I believe that love can conquer hate.

I saw Bob Hope at 83 cracking jokes and having fun.

I said then that I never wanted to quit.

I wanted to be like this man. I want to go on forever.

I want to die on a movie set.

She has a career to be admired

and that there's damn few actresses

that can say that they had the career and

the impact and just the consistent good work

that Stella Stevens did.

Stella recently passed away and

we don't know whether or not it was the timeline,

but her passing wasn't recognized at the Oscars.

In last night's Oscar telecast,

film stars Paul Servino, Tom Sizemore,

Anne Heche and Stella Stevens

were among those whom the Motion Picture Academy

of Arts and Sciences failed to honor in its In Memoriam segment.

More than an iconic movie star, Stevens,

who passed away on February 17th,

was a staunch advocate for women's rights

decades before the Me Too movement.

She was very outspoken against racism in an era of segregation

and a champion for human rights and people of all sexual identities.

Her contribution to cinema, however, was often underrated

and sadly she never received

her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

After a long battle with Alzheimer's disease,

Stella Stevens has died.

She was 84 years old.

Two, ten, six.

Speed.

All right, action...

Professor?

Yeah.

Go.

Are you all right, Professor?

Go ahead.

Are you all right, Professor?

Well, I have these hemorrhoids that happened today.

Oh, you need a shave.

All right, cut.

♪ Stella means celestial star ♪

♪ Che bella, the loveliest by Far ♪

♪ The moon and the stars give Their heavenly light, ♪

♪ But none in the firmament Shine as bright as Stella ♪

♪ Stella, her star with its Glow burning white ♪

♪ None in the heavens are Shining as bright tonight ♪