Stella Stevens, Star Of ‘The Nutty Professor,’ Is Dead At 84

Actress Stella Stevens and actor Robert Vaughn, nominated for best supporting actor for “The Young Philadelphians,” arrive at the Academy Awards fashion show in Hollywood on April 4, 1960. Stevens, a leading lady in 1960s and 1970s comedies best known for playing the object of Jerry Lewis’ affection in “The Nutty Professor,” died Friday. She was 84 years old. (Photo courtesy of A.P.)

Stella Stevens, who played Jerry Lewis’s love interest in “The Nutty Professor” and was a big star in comedies in the 1960s and 1970s, has died. She was 84 years old.

According to her estate, Stevens died Friday in Los Angeles after a long illness.

Estelle Caro Eggleston was born in 1938 in Yazoo City, Mississippi. She married at 16, had her first and only child, actor/producer Andrew Stevens, when she was 17, and divorced two years later. She started acting and modeling while she was at Memphis State University. In 1959, she had a small part in the Bing Crosby musical “Say One for Me,” but “Li’l Abner” was what she thought of as her big break.

“The head of publicity at Paramount turned me into a global sex symbol,” Stevens told FilmTalk in 2017. “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 with wonderful actors and directors … those were the golden years of Hollywood. It was a thrilling time.”

Stevens Was Named PLay Boy Of The Month

Soon after, she was named Playboy’s Playmate of the Month and signed with Paramount Pictures, which led to film work and “Girls! Girls! Girls!” with Elvis Presley, which she only agreed to do because she was promised a Montgomery Clift movie if she did it. She said it was a miserable six days of filming because of director Norman Taurog’s temper, though she said Presley was nice. The Clift film also failed to materialize, at least with her promised co-star. It became “Too Late Blues,” by John Cassavetes, with Bobby Darrin.

“Bobby was a very fine actor, but he was no Montgomery Clift,” she explained.

“The Nutty Professor” then appeared as Lewis’ student, Stella Purdy, with whom he is in love.

“Jerry Lewis had told the Paramount bosses he wanted to cast the most beautiful ingénue working at the studio — or something like that,” she explained. “We all tried to make the characters he’d created in the script special, wonderful, and unique — and I believe that’s why the film still holds up after all these years.”

Stella Worked On Television Series For Most Of the 70’s And 80’s

She’d appear as a nun opposite Rosalind Russell in “The Secret of My Success,” “The Silencers,” and “Where Angels Go Trouble Follows” for Columbia Pictures. Other notable roles include “Slaughter” with Jim Brown, “The Ballad of Cable Hogue” with Sam Peckinpah, and “The Poseidon Adventure,” in which she played Linda Rogo, Ernest Borgnine’s character’s wife.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Stevens worked steadily in television, appearing in pilots for “Wonder Woman,” “Hart to Hart,” and “The Love Boat,” as well as series such as “Night Court,” “Murder She Wrote,” and “Magnum, P.I.”

In 2017, she’d say her favorite director she’d worked with was Vincente Minnelli on “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father,” which was released in 1963. She also directed several films, including the documentary “An American Heroine,” which was never released, and “The Ranch.” She left the company in 2010.

Stevens stated in a 1994 interview that she was concerned that she was not bringing out the best in her directors and that her ambitions had changed.

“I aspired to be like my idols, Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich. “I wanted to be a burst of youth, and then when I got crow’s feet or age, I’d be off the screen,” she explained. ” But I also planned to be a director… At 83, I saw (Bob Hope) cracking jokes and having a good time. I stated at the time that I never intended to quit. I aspire to be like this man. I want to go on and on. “I’d like to die on a movie set.”

SOURCE – (AP)