#scorchy

Eeyuh

“Connie Stevens was just another Monroe-style starlet with platinum hair and a little girl voice when she first hit Hollywood in the late fifties. Had she appeared on the scene just a trifle earlier, that image probably would have stuck. However, by the time Connie started to make the rounds, the Era of the Teenager was in full flower, so Warners decided to turn her into the girl-next-door type – a sort of singing Sandra Dee … When the time seemed right, Warners paired her with Edd Byrnes on “Kookie, Kookie (Lend Me Your Comb).” She couldn’t miss, and she didn’t. For Connie’s first solo release, Warners provided her with “Sixteen Reasons”, a formula ballad which had Connie pledging her Ten Commandments of Love. The lyrics were corny, but it was a passable slow dance tune and as such hung around the top of the charts for twenty-four weeks … All things considered, Connie Stevens was one of the few studio-manufactured teen stars of the fifties who managed to hold onto lasting stardom. She continues to show up in things like The Hollywood Squares and Grease 2 and of course her celebrity hasn’t been hurt by her much-publicized marriages to actor James Stacey and the inimitable Eddie Fisher.”

/ From Rock’n’Roll Confidential (1984) by Penny Stallings /