Stella Stevens - Film Career

Film Career

Stevens made her film debut in Say One for Me (1959), a modest musical produced by and starring Bing Crosby, appearing in the minor role of a chorus girl. Stevens' contract with 20th Century-Fox was dropped after six months. After winning the role of Appassionata Von Climax in the musical Li'l Abner (1959), she signed a contract with Paramount Pictures (1959-1963). In 1960, she won the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – Actress for her performance in Say One for Me, sharing the distinction with fellow up-and-comers Tuesday Weld, Angie Dickinson, and Janet Muro.

Throughout the late 1950s and 1960s Stevens achieved success as a model. When high-speed Ektachrome film was introduced in 1959, Stevens was the first person ever photographed for a formal portrait by the light of a single candle and several reflectors for the cover of a photography magazine. In January 1960 she was Playboy magazine's Playmate of the Month, and was also featured in Playboy pictorials in 1965 and 1968. She was included in Playboy magazine's 100 Sexiest Stars of the 20th Century, appeared at number 27. During the 1960s she was one of the most photographed women in the world.

In 1962, Stevens starred opposite Elvis Presley in Girls! Girls! Girls!. The following year she appeared in two successful comedy films: Jerry Lewis's The Nutty Professor (1963), and Vincente Minnelli's The Courtship of Eddie's Father (1963) playing the would-be Miss Montana beauty queen. In 1964, she signed a contract with Columbia Pictures (1964–1968). Following appearances in Synanon (1965) and The Secret of My Success (1965), Stevens starred opposite Dean Martin in the Matt Helm spy spoof The Silencers (1966). Her final film for Columbia was the popular Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows (1968) in which she played "Sister George".

In 1970, Stevens starred opposite Jason Robards in Sam Peckinpah's The Ballad of Cable Hogue, for which she received positive reviews. In his review in The New York Times, Roger Greenspun wrote, "But it is Stella Stevens, at last in a role good enough for her, who most wonderfully sustains and enlightens the action." In 1972 she starred in Irwin Allen's critically acclaimed blockbuster film The Poseidon Adventure with Gene Hackman, Ernest Borgnine, Roddy McDowell, and Shelley Winters. Stevens played the role of Linda Rogo, the "refreshingly outspoken" ex-prostitute wife of Borgnine's character. Although she continued to appear in feature films for the next four decades, Stevens shifted the focus of her career to television series, miniseries, and movies.