Connie Stevens was born Concetta Rosalie Ann Ingolia in Brooklyn, New York City, the daughter of musician Peter Ingolia (known as Teddy Stevens) and singer Eleanor McGinley. She adopted her father’s stage name of Stevens as her own. Her parents divorced and she lived with her grandparents and attended Catholic boarding schools. At the age of 12, she witnessed a murder while waiting at a bus stop in Brooklyn. The event traumatized Stevens, and she was sent to live with family friends in Boonville, Missouri.
Coming from a musical family, Stevens joined the singing group called The Fourmost with Tony Butala, who went on to fame as founder of The Lettermen. Stevens moved to Los Angeles with her father in 1953. When she was 16, she replaced the alto in a singing group, The Three Debs.
Her first notable film role was in Young and Dangerous (1957) with Mark Damon, a low budget teen movie. She also was in Eighteen and Anxious (1957); an episode of The Bob Cummings Show (“Bob Goes Hillbilly”); and the movie Dragstrip Riot (1958).
Stevens’ big break came when Jerry Lewis saw her in the latter and recommended her for Rock-A-Bye Baby (1958) as the young girl who loves Lewis. In December 1957 she signed a seven-year contract with Paramount starting at $600 a week going up to $1,500 a week. Stevens made another film with Damon, The Party Crashers (1958), also at Paramount.
In May 1959, she signed a seven-year contract with Warner Bros. starting at $300 per week. Like many Warners contract players, Stevens was kept busy guest-starring on their regular TV shows such as The Ann Sothern Show, Maverick, Tenderfoot, 77 Sunset Strip and Cheyenne.
Stardom came when she was cast as Cricket Blake in the popular television detective series Hawaiian Eye from 1959 to 1963, a role that made her famous; her principal costar was Robert Conrad. First televised on December 23, 1960, she appeared (uncredited) in “The Dresden Doll”, Episode 15 of Season 3 of 77 Sunset Strip as her character from Hawaiian Eye, Cricket Blake.
Stevens’ first album was titled Concetta (1958). She had minor single hits with the standards “Blame It on My Youth” (music by Oscar Levant and lyrics by Edward Heyman), “Looking for a Boy” (music by George Gershwin and lyrics by Ira Gershwin), and “Spring Is Here” (music by Richard Rodgers and lyrics by Lorenz Hart).
She appeared opposite James Garner in a comedy episode of the TV Western series Maverick entitled “Two Tickets to Ten Strike,” and after making several appearances on the Warner Bros. hit TV series 77 Sunset Strip, she recorded the hit novelty song “Kookie, Kookie (Lend Me Your Comb)” (1959), a duet with one of the stars of the program, Edd Byrnes, that reached #4 on the Billboard Hot 100.
She had hit singles as a solo artist with “Sixteen Reasons” (1960), her biggest hit, reaching #3 on the Billboard Hot 100, (#9 in the UK) and a minor #71 hit “Too Young to Go Steady” (1960) (music by Jimmy McHugh and lyrics by Harold Adamson). Other single releases were “Apollo”,[13]”Why’d You Wanna Make Me Cry?”, “Something Beautiful,” “Mr. Songwriter,” “Now That You’ve Gone,”[citation needed] and “Keep Growing Strong” (which was remade by the Stylistics under the title “Betcha by Golly, Wow”).
When Hawaiian Eye ended Stevens guest-starred on Temple Houston and The Red Skelton Show. She played the lead in the horror film Two on a Guillotine (1965), for Warners.
Stevens later starred as Wendy Conway in the television sitcom Wendy and Me (1964–1965) with George Burns, who also produced the show with Warners and played an older man who watched Wendy’s exploits upstairs on the TV in his apartment. She had a percentage of the show, and had three and a half years left on her contract with Warners. She said “I’ve done the teenage epics… and want to move up into something like Virginia Woolf or Any Wednesday. I want to be a big star but do I have to throw tantrums and behave badly to get there? Can’t I just be talented and work hard and be happily married?”
Stevens was married twice during her twenties: her first husband was actor James Stacy from 1963 until their 1966 divorce, and her second husband was singer Eddie Fisher from 1967 until their 1969 divorce. She is the mother of actresses Joely Fisher and Tricia Leigh Fisher.