![]() Stevens raised both of her daughters as a single mother, which required her to work constantly in order to make ends meet. Stevens and Fisher were divorced in 1969, just two years after being married. The Philadelphia-born crooner fathered her daughters, Joely and Tricia Leigh Fisher, both of whom followed in their parents' footsteps as performers. After the dissolution of her marriage to actor James Stacy in 1967, she married singer Eddie Fisher, who was coming off the embarrassment of his wife Elizabeth Taylor leaving him for Richard Burton. She was also a regular performer in Bob Hope's jaunts to Southeast Asia for the USO, which would later influence her documentary, "The Healing" (1997), about Red Cross nurses in Vietnam. ![]() ![]() Her recording career dried up in the middle of the decade, so she adjusted her focus to stage and screen projects, including a stint on Broadway in 1967's "The Star-Spangled Girl," which earned her a Theatre World Award. Stevens was soon adrift in a string of misfires, including the sitcom "Wendy and Me" (ABC, 1964-65), produced by George Burns, who co-starred as her landlord who observes her misadventures through his closed circuit television. However, a series of clashes with Warner Bros., including contract disputes regarding "Hawaiian Eye" and a well-publicized outburst over losing the chance to audition for "My Fair Lady" (1962), led to the studio dropping her contract. When Stevens began dating Elvis Presley offscreen, she essentially assured herself pop culture sainthood. Bigger roles in feature films were the next step in her natural progression, and in 1961, she starred in two films by Delmer Daves: "Parrish" was a potboiler with Troy Donahue - Stevens' co-star on "Hawaiian Eye" in its final season - as a young man pitted against his stepfather (Karl Malden), an unscrupulous tobacco tycoon, while "Susan Slade" was an outrageous camp fest about an innocent (Stevens) whose unwanted pregnancy leads to a near-Biblical series of tragedies as well as the attention of two competing suitors (Donahue and Bert Convy). It was soon followed by "Sixteen Reasons (Why I Love You)," a Top Five hit that stayed on the Billboard charts for over two months. A cross-over appearance on ABC's other hip crime show, "77 Sunset Strip" (1958-1963) led to a Top 10 single, "Kookie, Kookie, Lend Me Your Comb," which featured "Sunset" star Edd Byrnes in his series role as suave beatnik Kookie. The following year, she was signed to a contract with Warner Bros., who placed her in their new detective series, "Hawaiian Eye."Ĭast as Cricket Blake, a singer and amateur photographer who helped series' leads Anthony Eisley and Robert Conrad solve cases on the big island of Honolulu, Stevens quickly rose in popularity among the show's audience of young viewers. 1958 proved to be her breakout year, with the release of her debut album, Conchetta, as well as her first major role as Jerry Lewis' love interest in "Rock-A-Bye Baby," a loose remake of "The Miracle of Morgan's Creek" (1944). At 15, she relocated to Los Angeles with her father, where she adopted his surname and worked as an extra and bit player in various teen-oriented films. Blessed with a pleasant singing voice, she was performing professionally at an early age, first with three male vocalists in a group called the Foremost, and later, in an all-girl group called The Three Debs. After her parents' divorce, she was raised largely by grandparents or by the staff of various Catholic boarding schools. 8, 1938, Connie Stevens was the daughter of jazz drummer Peter Ingoglia, who performed under the stage name of Teddy Stevens, and singer Eleanor McGinley. Throughout the ups and downs of her life, Stevens maintained the same sparkle she showed as Cricket Blake, which endeared her to several generations of fans.īorn Concetta Rosalie Ann Ingoglia in Brooklyn, NY on Aug. A reversal of fortune came in the 1990s when she launched a successful line of cosmetics. After her divorce from singer Eddie Fisher in 1969, which gave her daughters Joely and Tricia Leigh Fisher, Stevens doggedly pursued her career as an actress and nightclub crooner throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Actress and singer Connie Stevens was a vivacious presence on television and the pop charts in the early 1960s, thanks to her popularity as Cricket Blake on the hit detective show "Hawaiian Eye" (ABC, 1959-1963) and singles like "Sixteen Reasons." Stevens' perky turn as Cricket, a singer and sometime photographer who aided a pair of Honolulu hotel detectives in solving crimes, granted her a brief time as an idol for younger viewers, but after the show's cancellation, she struggled to maintain her presence in the entertainment business.
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