Connie Stevens Biography

Connie Stevens was born Concetta Rosalie Ann Ingoglia in 1938 in Brooklyn, New York. Connie’s father was already a well-established actor working under the stage name Stevens, and so when she began her pursuit of a career in entertainment, she too adopted her father’s professional surname.  Stevens began performing with a number of singing groups in New York before moving to Los Angeles with her father and appearing in small roles in a number of films.

After Jerry Lewis spotted her performance in one of her films, he cast her in the film Rock-A-Bye Baby, which led to her first contract with Warner Brothers. With Warner Brothers, Connie’s first gig was on the television series Hawaiian Eye in the early 1960’s, and she quickly became a household name. Although Connie continued to act throughout the 1960’s and beyond, she also continued to perform as a singer, releasing her debut album Concetta in 1958. The albums From Me to You and The Hank Williams Song Book followed, both in 1962, but by the mid 1960’s Connie was such a sought-after actress that her career as a musician was put on hold for quite some time.

Throughout the 1960’s, 1970’s, and even into the 1980’s, Connie Stevens could be seen in a number of major film roles, including: Parrish (1961), Palm Springs Weekend (1963), Two on a Guillotine (1965), Way… Way Out (1966), The Grissom Gang (1971), Grease 2 (1982), Back to the Beach (1987), and Love Is All There Is (1996.) In the 1990’s Connie Stevens began performing live on the Vegas strip with greater frequency, and in the new millennium she moved behind the camera, writing and directing the documentary film A Healing (1997) and making her feature-film directorial debut in Saving Grace B. Jones (2009.)

Connie Stevens continues to make appearances and has even released a series of albums in the last few years, including Sensational (2012) and The Very Best of Connie Stevens (2012.)