Born: Feb 03, 1924 in Washington, District Of Columbia
Died: Apr 24, 1998 in Los Angeles, California
Occupation: Writer, Director
Active: '60s-'70s
Major Genres: Science Fiction, Action
Career Highlights: The Marriage-Go-Round, The Left-Handed Gun, Battlestar Galactica
First Major Screen Credit: Playhouse 90: Charley's Aunt (1957)
Biography
Writer/producer/director Leslie Stevens sold his first play, entitled Mechanical Rat, to Orson Welles's Mercury Theater when he was 15 years old. He continued writing, graduated from Yale Drama School, and after achieving the rank of captain in the U.S. Army Air Force during World War II, turned to producing and directing for the stage. He began in movies as a writer with Arthur Penn's Left-Handed Gun, a psychological study of the life of Billy the Kid starring Paul Newman, and produced and directed his first film, Private Property based on his own screenplay (1960). Marriage-Go-Round, based on his own play, followed a year later. Steven's 1962 feature Hero's Island, starring James Mason and Stevens' wife Kate Manx, with Warren Oates and Harry Dean Stanton in supporting roles, attracted some favorable critical attention with its unusual story, about the fight for possession of an island off the Carolinas in pre-Revolutionary America. During this period, Stevens also entered television production, with the 1962 rodeo-based series Stoney Burke, starring Jack Lord and Bruce Dern, and Outer Limits, a science-fiction anthology series that ran from 1963 thru 1965, achieving a major cult following, resulting in its release on videocassette and laserdisc in the '80s, and a planned revival in the '90s. Stevens later directed and wrote the movie Incubus (1966), worked as supervising producer on the series Battlestar Glactica (1979), and wrote Return to the Blue Lagoon (1991). ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
Leslie Stevens was born in Washington, D.C.. His interest in science was sparked when he studied for Annapolis at the behest of his father, an admiral in the United States Navy. But the Broadway theater intrigued him more than a military career, and he headed for New York as a fledging writer. He wrote the Broadway comedy The Marriage-Go-Round, which he adapted to the screen, and produced, as a starring vehicle for Susan Hayward in 1961. He wrote the screenplay for the film The Left Handed Gun (1958) directed by Arthur Penn and starring Paul Newman.
Other films which Stevens produced, and directed and wrote included Hero's Island (1962) starring James Mason, and Private Property (1960) starring Warren Oates. In television, he created the series The Outer Limits, which he also wrote, directed and supervised as executive producer. He was writer, director and executive producer of the pilot film and major episodes of It Takes a Thief and McCloud, wrote and produced installments for the series The Invisible Man and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, and produced the 1st season Tony Franciosa episodes of The Name Of The Game. He was also co-producer of the original science fiction film Battlestar Galactica (1978), and the short-lived NBC science fiction series Search (1972–1973) (about futuristic, high-tech secret agents). Stevens died of a blood clot in 1998 in Los Angeles, California at the age of 74.
Leslie Stevens was married to:
Kate Manx (Kathrynne B. Myrolie), actress[1] (11 May 1958 – 1964) (divorced)
Allyson Ames, actress[2] ( ? – 1966), appeared in many of his film and television productions
Shakti Chen, actress [3] (? – 24 April 1998) (widowed)