Hollywood actress Stella Stevens, who co-starred with Elvis Presley in Women! Women! Women! and with Jerry Lewis in The Nutty Professor, has died on the age of 84, members of the family say.
Her son informed the Hollywood Reporter she had been in a hospice for a while with Alzheimer’s illness.
She can also be remembered for her position in motion film The Poseidon Journey.
Stevens labored in tv, too, on collection resembling Homicide She Wrote and Magnum, P.I.
Her pal and supervisor, Maria Calabrese, stated: “It was an honour and a privilege to have labored with Stella, who was probably the most great and gifted folks.” Born in Yazoo Metropolis, Mississippi, in 1938 as Estelle Caro Eggleston, she wed electrician Noble Herman Stevens at 16 and gave beginning to her first and solely baby Andrew. Two years later, she divorced and commenced modelling and performing.
She was signed by twentieth Century Fox after they found her acting at her faculty in Memphis, Tennessee. Later the studio dropped her, however she was signed by Paramount.
Stevens gained a Golden Globe for her 1959 movie debut as a refrain lady in Say One for Me, which additionally starred Bing Crosby and Debbie Reynolds.
In Women! Women! Women!, starring reverse Presley in 1962, Stevens stated she didn’t just like the script, however Paramount informed her she was contractually obliged to do it.
They’d promised her she may star reverse ’50s Oscar-winning heartthrob Montgomery Clift in Too Late Blues, however Clift was later changed for the movie.
In considered one of her most memorable roles, 1963 sci-fi comedy The Nutty Professor, Stevens performed a scholar of Jerry Lewis’ socially awkward college lecturer.
Determined to impress her, he concocts a potion to remodel himself right into a charismatic hunk.
Stevens additionally performed one half of a newlywed couple on The Poseidon Journey, a shipwreck film that turned one of many greatest blockbusters of 1972. Her character met a grisly finish.