European Film Star Postcards: Elaine Stewart

18 November 2023

Elaine Stewart

Ravishing redhead Elaine Stewart (1930-2011) was a glamorous American actress and model. During the 1950s, she starred in a dozen films before turning to television.

West German postcard by Universum-FilmAG, Abt. Film-Foto, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. FK 510. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. (The logo is printed in reverse).

British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. D. 387. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Vintage postcard by I.F.P.A., no. 8.

Miss See

Elaine Stewart was born Elsy Henrietta Maria Steinberg in Montclair, New Jersey, in 1930. She was the daughter of Jewish German immigrants, Maria Hedwig (Hänssler) and Ulrich Ernst Steinberg, a police sergeant. Elsy developed into a beautiful young woman and while still a teen, she was taken on by the Conover Modeling Agency.

She made her modelling debut by winning Miss See in See Magazine in 1952. Changing her name to the more glamorous-sounding Elaine Stewart, she was in many magazines such as Life and Photoplay. Her portfolio and beauty awards eventually caught the attention of Hollywood executives.

Hal B. Wallis offered her $200 a week to play the small, unbilled role of a nurse in the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis slapstick comedy Sailor Beware (Hal Walker, 1952). MGM subsequently signed the glamour girl to a contract to build her up as a dark-haired Marilyn Monroe type. The build-up was gradual with window-dressing bits as a chorine, stewardess and the like in such MGM films as Singin' in the Rain (Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly, 1952), You for Me (Don Weis, 1952) and Everything I Have Is Yours (Robert Z. Leonard, 1952).

She then moved up to more visible parts in Sky Full of Moon (Norman Foster, 1952). During this time, she became a popular pin-up and made the cover of Life Magazine. She later appeared nude on the Playboy Magazine pages (September 1959). She had her breakthrough as Lila, the sexy lush and opportunist starlet who has a romantic fling with a producer played by Kirk Douglas and who has a marvellous "descending staircase" bit in The Bad and the Beautiful (Vincente Minnelli, 1952).

Stewart hit sultry "B" co-star status in the semi-documentary-styled police drama Code Two (Fred M. Wilcox, 1953) opposite Ralph Meeker. She had a small but key role, as the ill-fated queen Anne Boleyn, mother to Queen Elizabeth (Jean Simmons) in Young Bess (George Sidney, 1953). She was featured as Julie, the love interest of Sgt Ryan (Richard Widmark) and provided a lovely distraction in the macho war film Take the High Ground! (Richard Brooks, 1953). She co-starred with Mickey Rooney in the comedy, A Slight Case of Larceny (Don Weis, 1953). The next year, Stewart played a princess-in-peril in the Cinemascope Arabian adventure The Adventures of Hajji Baba (1954) starring John Derek. She also glamoured up the musical Brigadoon (Vincente Minnelli, 1954), co-starring with Gene Kelly, Van Johnson and Cyd Charisse.

Dutch postcard by Takken / 't Sticht, no. 1544. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Dutch postcard by Takken / 't Sticht, no. 1814. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Italian postcard by Bromofoto, Milano, no. 827. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

A charming co-hostess

Elaine Stewart left MGM around 1956. She appeared with James Stewart and Audie Murphy in the Western Night Passage (James Neilson, 1957). She co-starred with Jeff Chandler in the Film Noir The Tattered Dress (Jack Arnold, 1957), with Victor Mature in the Western Escort West (Francis D. Lyon, 1958) and shared top billing with John Derek in the adventure film, High Hell (Burt Balaban, 1958).

In the crime film The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond (Budd Boetticher, 1960), she co-starred with Ray Danton and Karen Steele. In the early 1960s, she made a couple of films abroad. In Yugoslavia, she filmed with bodybuilder Ed Fury the Italian Peplum Le sette sfide/The Seven Revenges (Primo Zeglio, 1961), in which rival Mongol chiefs battle for leadership of the tribe.

Then she travelled to Mexico for the Science-Fiction film Most Dangerous Man Alive (1961), the final film of legendary director Allan Dwan. Ron Randell features as escaped mobster Ron Candell (!) who, after wandering in a nuclear testing area in the desert, starts mutating and seeks revenge on his former crime partners. Finally in Italy, she acted opposite Mark Damon, Dorian Gray and Daniela Rocca in Peccati d'estate/Island Affair (Giorgio Bianchi, 1962). It was her last film.

Her sultry allure could also be witnessed on such TV series as Bat Masterson (1960) and Burke's Law (1963), both starring Gene Barry. In her last acting appearance on TV, she played Irene Grey in the Perry Mason episode The Case of the Capering Camera (Jesse Hibbs, 1964).

Briefly married to actor Bill Carter in the early 1960s, she wed Emmy Award-winning game show creator Merrill Heatterin in 1964 and left her career to raise two children. In 1972, she became a charming co-hostess of the Heatter-Quigley game show Gambit (1972) with perennial game show emcee Wink Martindale and later partnered in the dice-rolling gamer High Rollers (1975) with Alex Trebek. Following an extended illness, the actress died in her home in Beverly Hills at the age of 81 in 2011. She was survived by her second husband Merrill Heatter, son Stewart Heatter and daughter Gabrielle Heatter. Upon her death, Elaine Stewart was promptly cremated.