Stella Stevens (born Estelle Caro Eggleston; October 1, 1938 – February 17, 2023) was an American actress and model. Stevens began her acting career in 1959 in film Say One for Me produced by and starring Bing Crosby and appeared in TV series such as the anthology series Alfred Hitchcock Presents, General Electric Theatre and Bonanza in 1960. She won the 1960 Golden Globe Award - for "New Star of the Year". That year she appeared in three Playboy Pictorials and was named Playmate of the Month for January 1960. She starred in films such as Girls! Girls! Girls! (1962), The Nutty Professor (1963), The Courtship of Eddie's Father (1963), The Silencers (1966), Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows (1968), The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970), and The Poseidon Adventure (1972). Stevens subsequently focused more on TV roles, miniseries, and movies including roles in The Love Boat (1977, 1983), Hart to Hart (1979), Newhart (1983), Murder, She Wrote (1985), Magnum, P.I. (1986), Highlander: The Series (1995), and Twenty Good Years (2006). Stevens worked also as film producer, director, and writer. Early life Born Estelle Caro Eggleston on October 1, 1938, in Yazoo City, Mississippi, she was the only child of Thomas Ellett Eggleston, an insurance salesman, and his wife, Estelle (née Caro) Eggleston, a nurse who was sometimes called by the nickname "Dovey". One of the younger Estelle Eggleston's great-grandfathers was Henry Clay Tyler, an early settler from Boston and a jeweler who gave the Yazoo City courthouse cupola its clock. When Stella Stevens was four, her parents moved to Memphis, Tennessee; they lived on Carrington Road, near Highland Street, in the city. She attended St. Anne's Catholic School which is on Highland Street and Sacred Heart School on Jefferson Avenue graduating from high school in 1955 at the Memphis Evening School at Memphis Tech High School. At age 16, she married electrician Noble Herman Stephens, on December 3, 1954, in Holly Springs, Mississippi. They moved to Memphis, where their only child, Herman Andrew Stephens was born on June 10, 1955. The couple divorced in 1957. While studying at Memphis State University, Stella became interested in acting and modeling. According to her official biography, "Her schooling in Memphis, included a couple of years at Memphis State University, where she was noticed in the school play Bus Stop. The Memphis Press-Scimitar review of that performance in Memphis sparked her career." Film career