Stella Stevens, actress who starred alongside Elvis and Jerry Lewis, dead at 84

Stella Stevens, the stunning actress who rejected her label as a sex symbol, died Friday. She was 84.

Stevens died from Alzheimer’s disease at a long-term care facility in Los Angeles, her son, Andrew, told Variety.

In addition to her work as a leading lady next to Elvis Presley in “Girls! Girls! Girls!” and Jerry Lewis in “The Nutty Professor,” Stevens was a Playboy centerfold in January 1960 — a memory she detested.

“I didn’t have any options at all. It was either make that $5,000 or starve,” Stevens said in a 2004 interview. “Then 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!’ I truly hate that institution.”

Born Estelle Eggleston on Oct. 1, 1938, in Yazoo City, Miss., Stevens’ family moved to Memphis when she was 4 years old.

She married a man named Herman Stephens when she was only 16 years old, and they had a son, Andrew. By the time she was discovered while acting in a collegiate production in 1957, they’d already divorced.

Stevens moved to Los Angeles, but 20th Century Fox dropped her contract after only a few films. Desperate to make money and support her young child, she agreed to the Playboy shoot.

Stevens said she tried to back out after signing a new deal with Paramount, but Hugh Hefner wouldn’t let her. The Paramount deal led to Stevens’ Hollywood breakthrough in 1959′s “Li’l Abner,” in which she played a character named Appassionata Von Climax.

That role earned Stevens a Golden Globe for most promising new actress. She went on to star opposite Elvis, Lewis, Dean Martin, Bobby Darin and Glenn Ford, among others.

“I met [Elvis] and the Colonel at the start of filming ‘Girls! Girls! Girls!’ and I went to my room,” she told Delta Magazine in 2010. “And there Elvis stands with two of those tall drinks with a cherry in it. I don’t even like alcohol. I told him he couldn’t barge into me. From that time on he didn’t talk to me very much.”

Stevens’ last major role came in the 1972 disaster film “The Poseidon Adventure” about a shipwreck. She also appeared in several TV shows, including “Murder, She Wrote,” “Magnum, P.I.” and “General Hospital.”

Additionally, Stevens directed two films, 1979′s “The American Heroine” and 1989′s “The Ranch,” though she lamented the lack of support she received during and after the second film.

“I made the film, and brought it in on time, on budget,” she said in 2004. “But no one else ever asked me to make a film with them.”

Stevens never remarried, but she had a lengthy relationship with guitarist Bob Kulick that began in 1983 and ended with Kulick’s death in 2020.

“Stella Stevens was born to be in movies,” said director Henry Hatahaway, “and to drive men crazy.”