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| Ed Wood gave us two sides of actress Jean Stevens. |
In his magnum opus Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957), writer-director-producer Edward D. Wood, Jr. summoned an iconic femme fatale – TV horror hostess Vampira as the striking Vampire Girl – to haunt men for decades to come. Plan 9’s cult status and the fervor directed toward Vampira have caused Ed’s other femme fatales to be largely overlooked.
Two of his lesser-regarded films – Final Curtain (1957) and Night of the Ghouls (1959) – feature a [White] Vampire and a Black Ghost, respectively. Each role was played by the same little-known actress who managed to exude a mysterious, foreboding air of eroticism not unlike that of Vampira herself. A large measure of credit must be given to the cinematographer, William C. Thompson, whose knack for capturing feminine beauty in crisp, moody black-and-white mirrored the timeless Universal horror classics of the 1930s and 1940s. The young actress in question, Jean Stevens, was no newcomer as far as Ed was concerned. He had known her since his earliest days in Hollywood.
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| Future Ed Wood star Jean Stevens |
Jean Stevens (born 1929/30) and her sister Sue (born 1930/31) appear to have been raised in the Denver area. Early biographical details are elusive due to their relatively common names and the fact that neither major Denver newspaper (Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News) has had their 1930s-1940s archives digitized yet. The Stevens family also does not appear in the U.S. Census for 1930 – 1950. This is probably due to the fragmentary nature of the census data itself: people not at home when the census is taken are not recorded, and people with itinerant lifestyles or living in temporary circumstances are often not captured by census-takers. Over nearly 30 years of known stage and film performances, Jean was also credited as Jeanne, Jeannie and Jenny.
During World War II, the Stevens sisters traveled with USO troupes, modeled, and played various road shows across several western states. After the war, the sisters garnered several additional years of stage experience as dancers and singers in a variety of Denver-area productions including the Roundup Review, Music Extravaganza of 1946, The Taborites, and the Gala Girls Review. They appeared on radio as vocalists with Warner Matson "Happy" Logan and his Orchestra (a popular Denver-area dance band from the 1930s-1950s). Their talents were also featured at the 1946 "Frontier Days" in Cheyenne, WY.
Real estate records suggest that in the summer of 1947 the Stevens family moved from Denver to Los Angeles. They lived at 4352 Coldwater Canyon Avenue in a large Cape Cod style house with a pool and guesthouse out back. In 1980 this North Hollywood property was cleared and redeveloped into a three-level, multi-unit condominium. Over the winter of 1947 the sisters performed in a Hollywood musical show and appeared on a local television program on KTLA (DuMont Network) broadcast to some 1,200 TV sets then existing in the Los Angeles area.
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The summer of 1948 found Jean (17) and Sue (16) working at Mammy’s Donut Shop (12224 Ventura Blvd; Art’s Delicatessen since 1957). It was there that they were "discovered" by someone associated with Ed Wood’s play Casual Company, then in pre-production [Figure 1]. Perhaps it was Ed himself and they should be considered his first ingenues, years before the celebrated Valda Hansen made her appearance in Night of the Ghouls (1959). As summer progressed into autumn, Jean began her senior year [Figure 2] and Sue her junior year [Figure 3] at North Hollywood High School (5231 Colfax Avenue). Despite their previous stage experience, neither girl took part in the school’s amateur theatrical productions.
Casual Company's opening night on October 25, 1948 was commemorated earlier in the day with a tree-planting to mark the launch of the new Village Theater (5271 Bakman Avenue, formerly the Horseshoe Theater; no longer exists, current-day site of the Soka Gakkai International USA Buddhist Center). Several cast members were captured in action by a Valley Times photographer [Figure 4]. Casual Company was a three-act farce concerning "the antics of five healthy men who are employed in a Navy hospital to keep the records of the patients." The cast included Ed, Don Nagel, the Stevens sisters and nine others. The girl’s mother, Alice Stevens, was the Stage Manager.
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| The cast of Casual Company included Jean Stevens and playwright Ed Wood. |
The day after Casual Company premiered, the arts critic for the Valley Times reviewed it with tepid enthusiasm. The play was "ho-hum" and "lacking the essential ingredients that make up a successful farce… [a good deal of effort and hopeless plodding that falls flat]… There is no central story… It has several character threads… [tied together with] funny situations which, because of the dated dialogue, are neither funny nor original anymore." While Sue’s performance was singled out for praise, Jean and the rest of the women were described as being wooden. All newspaper mentions of theatrical work by Sue ceased after the October 1948 run of Casual Company.
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| Jean's big break? Not really. |
In the summer of 1949 Jean graduated from North Hollywood High School. Her classmates included two future stars: TV actor Martin Milner (Route 66, Adam-12) and writer/political activist Susan Sontag who appropriately served as Yearbook Editor [Figure 5 and Figure 6, respectively].
From April 25-30, 1950 "Nina" (Sue or another sister?) and Jean Stevens were part of a large cast starring in a production of John Rand’s three-act play Go West, Young Man! at the Key Theater (the yet again renamed Village Theater). The plot of this ribald comedy centered around two New York playboys who find themselves caught in a complicated spy hunt on a dude ranch. At the time of the 1950 Census (mid-May), the Stevens family was no longer living at the house on Coldwater Canyon Avenue. Later that summer Sue graduated from North Hollywood High School. One of her classmates was John Williams, the future composer of the most popular, recognizable and critically acclaimed film scores in cinema history [Figure 7].
At some point in the early 1950s, Jean attended and graduated from the Pasadena Playhouse (39 South El Molino Avenue, Pasadena). The Playhouse has staged thousands of original productions since its founding in 1917 including premieres of works by Tennessee Williams, Eugene O'Neill, Suzan Lori Parks and others. For decades, its pioneering School for Theater Arts has been a training ground for actors who’ve gone on to make significant contributions in the entertainment industry. Jean’s craft clearly benefitted from her time spent at the Playhouse; critical appraisals of her performances are invariably positive from this point forward.
In January 1954 Jean appeared in a dramatic two-act Philip Barry play Second Threshold staged at the Call Board Theatre (8451 Melrose Place, current-day Maison Margiela Designer Boutique [Figure 8]). The play concerned a highly successful man who had given little thought to spiritual values when he suddenly felt the tragic impact of life. Mark Bennett as the male lead garnered the attention of movie studio scouts for his strong nightly performance. Jean played the female lead (the protagonist’s estranged daughter) with delicate emotional feeling. Critics called the show brilliant and applauded her performance.
From June 7-19, 1954 Jean appeared as part of a cast of four in a J. Lee Thompson mystery Murder Without Crime also staged at the Call Board Theatre. Critics said that it was a highly-entertaining and polished production. "The mistress is played by Jenny Stevens. Miss Stevens has only a limited part, since she is stabbed and stuffed into an ottoman early in the play… she was most attractive in the role and delivered a dramatic and exciting enactment." [Intentional echoes of Tommy Hood’s fate? See Pontolillo (2023a, 2023b)]
After a nine-year interruption, Jean returned in the autumn of 1957 to work with Ed Wood again on a major project. Following a well-established TV trend, Ed proposed a suspense anthology series entitled Portraits of Terror in which he would write and direct each episode. Only one episode was ever produced, a 22-minute pilot called Final Curtain that was shot silent with music, narration and sound effects added in post-production. William C. Thompson once again provided his distinctive chiaroscuro camerawork, lending Final Curtain an expressionistic feel with extreme contrasts between light and shadow.
Casting was minimal: Duke Moore as the Actor and Jean Stevens as the beguiling [White] Vampire [Figure 9]; Dudley Manlove provided endearingly overwrought narration. The plot is basic: an actor confronts a perplexing entity in a darkened theater late at night. As Blevins (2013a) observed however, "all those who are interested in Ed Wood should see it. It's a major find. Seemingly all of Ed's pet themes and motifs are present here." Duke Moore plays the protagonist with a fetish for the tactile qualities of female clothing. Dudley Manlove delivers iconic Woodian dialogue during the opening crawl: "The creatures in this story of terror were – Once human ---- Now --- monsters ---- In a void between the living and the dead. Creatures to be pitied. Creatures to be despised…."
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| Duke Moore and Jean Stevens. |
While Portraits of Terror failed to become an ongoing series, the material in Final Curtain did not go to waste. Footage from it was reused in Night of the Ghouls (1959) and Dudley Manlove’s opening narration was slightly reworded and reprised by Criswell in both Night of the Ghouls (1959) and Orgy of the Dead (1965). Thereafter, Final Curtain was forgotten and seeming lost for nearly fifty years. A copy of it was then rediscovered, restored, and received film festival screenings beginning in 2012. Final Curtain was later commercially released for internet streaming by The Film Detective as part of their Restored Classics series.
In April/May 1958 Jean took part in her last project with Ed Wood: filming for the movie Revenge of the Dead. The plot revolves around the machinations of a dubious psychic and his girlfriend (Valda Hansen) using an allegedly haunted house out by Willows Lake to bilk gullible clients. Jean appeared as two separate characters. Early in the movie, we see her as the silent, menacing and darkly-alluring Black Ghost roaming the Willows Lake area [Figure 10]. She stalks and kills a teenage couple who had parked for an amorous interlude. Jean was not available for all of this sequence and portions were filmed with a veiled Ed Wood as her stand-in [Figure 11]. Later in the movie, Jean reprises her role as the [White] Vampire from Final Curtain. Actually, it’s just a case of Ed reusing footage. In the movie’s penultimate scene, Jean returns again as the Black Ghost to drag Valda Hansen down into the underworld.
Revenge of the Dead is usually judged to be Ed’s weakest mainstream directorial effort: a mélange of footage recycled from previous failed projects (Final Curtain and Hellborn) and newly shot sequences assembled into a plodding haunted house tale. After a workprint of Revenge of the Dead was screened in 1959 at the Vista Theatre (4473 Sunset Drive), Ed felt that it needed further editing but this never occurred. The movie languished in storage at Film Service Laboratory, Inc. (6327 Santa Monica Blvd; currently The Episcopal School of Los Angeles) for nearly 25 years because an impoverished Ed was unable to pay $6,000 in lab fees. After several attempts, Revenge of the Dead was rescued by Ed Wood fans and commercially released in 1984 as Night of the Ghouls.
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From January 1960 through December 1962, Jean appeared in a series of female-centric, elaborately-costumed song and dance shows such as Playmates of 1960 and Gals and Dolls. The shows drew record-breaking attendance to the otherwise normally sedate Terrace Room of the Statler Hilton Hotel (930 Wilshire Blvd; this iconic hotel was demolished in 2013). Jean shared the stage with the likes of comedienne Jo Anne Worley, singer Bill Carey (a lyricist for Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Nat King Cole, Joni Mitchell, Frank Sinatra, and Sarah Vaughan) and "the exotic Ingeborg." As the press breathlessly reported it, four spectacular production numbers were imported from the Flamingo Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas and executed by "a bevy of gorgeous girls daringly-draped." Jean’s role varied from that of solo dancer to being a member of the showgirl chorus line. No additional information has surfaced regarding her life and career beyond this point.
Sources
Sources
- 1930, 1940 and 1950 United States Federal Census, National Archives and Records Administration (hosted on Ancestry.com)
- Blevins, Joe, 2013a, Final Curtain (1957) / The Bride and the Beast (1958), Ed Wood Wednesdays, Week 4
- Blevins, Joe, 2013b, Night of the Ghouls (1959), Ed Wood Wednesdays, Week 11
- Craig, Rob, 2009, Ed Wood, Mad Genius – A Critical Study of the Films, Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company
- Final Curtain, 1957, E.S. Moore and Associates, 22 minutes
- Grey, Rudolph, 1992, Nightmare of Ecstasy, Los Angeles: Feral House
- Hollywood Citizen-News
- The Los Angeles Times
- Motion Picture News
- The News-Pilot (San Pedro, CA)
- North Hollywood High School El Camino Yearbooks, 1947-1950
- Pontolillo, James, 2023a, “Tommy Hood and the City of Broken Dreams,” Ed Wood Wednesdays
- Pontolillo, James, 2023b, “More about Tommy Hood!,” Ed Wood Wednesdays
- Rausch, Andrew J. and Pratt Jr., Charles E., 2015, The Cinematic Misadventures of Ed Wood, Albany, GA: BearManor Media
- Revenge of the Dead, 1959, Edward D. Wood, Jr., Tom Mason and Anthony Cardoza, 69 minutes [released as Nights of the Ghouls (1984) by Wade Williams Productions]
- Valley Times (North Hollywood, CA)