Born Concetta Rosalie Ann Ingolia on August 8, 1938, in Brooklyn, NY, Connie Stevens entered the world into a household steeped in jazz, with both parents performing as musicians and a brother keeping time on drums. She adopted her professional surname from her father’s stage persona, Teddy Stevens, and at sixteen began performing with the vocal trio known as the Three Debs. By the closing years of the 1950s she had embarked on parallel paths in song and screen, securing a Warner Bros. contract that yielded her first long-player, Conchetta, in 1958, while also appearing in motion pictures and television programs that included Young and Dangerous and Rock-a-Bye Baby.
Throughout the following decade she sustained her recording activity, achieving commercial breakthroughs with a duet alongside actor Ed “Kookie” Burns titled “Kookie Kookie (Lend Me Your Comb)” and the chart-topping single “Sixteen Reasons” in 1961. Her portrayal of Cricket Blake on the television series Hawaiian Eye, however, proved the most decisive factor in establishing her public identity. During the same period she wed vocalist Eddie Fisher; the union endured from 1967 until 1969 and produced two daughters, Joely Fisher, who later pursued acting, and Tricia Leigh Fisher, who later pursued both acting and singing.
After releasing the albums From Me to You, The Hank Williams Song Book, and As Cricket, Stevens ceased issuing new recordings in the middle of the 1960s and concentrated on screen roles in features such as Grease 2, Back to the Beach, and Tapeheads. She subsequently created the Forever Spring line of skincare products and, during the late 1990s, inaugurated the Connie Stevens Garden Sanctuary Executive Day Spa in Los Angeles, CA. She also established the Windfeather initiative, which furnishes scholarships for Native American Indian students. In 1991 the Shriners Hospital presented her with its Lady of Humanities Award, while the Sons of Italy in Washington named her Humanitarian of the Year. Four years later she returned to the studio for Tradition: A Family at Christmas, a project undertaken with both of her daughters.
