Elaine Stewart, a ravishing redhead, burst onto the film scene in the early 1950s and adorned numerous eastern and western films, as well as crime dramas, as a second-tier MGM star. Her striking, shapely beauty and "come hither" sensuality were on full display throughout the decade, often as a temptress or schemer.
Born Elsy Henrietta Maria Steinberg on May 31, 1930, in Montclair, N.J., Elaine was the daughter of German immigrants, Maria Hedwig (Hänssler) and Ulrich Ernst Steinberg, a police sergeant, who was of Frisian background. As a teenager, Elaine worked as an usherette and cashier at her hometown movie theater. She eventually developed into a beautiful young woman and was taken on by the Conover Modeling Agency, where she changed her name to the more glamorous-sounding Elaine Stewart.
Her whistle-worthy portfolio and beauty awards caught the attention of Hollywood executives, and she was offered the small, unbilled role of a nurse in the Dean Martin/Jerry Lewis slapstick comedy Sailor Beware (1952). MGM subsequently signed her to a contract, intending to build her up as a dark-haired Marilyn Monroe type.
Elaine's movie career progressed gradually, with window-dressing bits as a chorine, stewardess, and the like in such MGM films as Singin' in the Rain (1952),You for Me (1952),and Everything I Have Is Yours (1952). She then moved up the movie ladder to more visible parts in Sky Full of Moon (1952) and, most pointedly, as Lila, the sexy lush and opportunist who has a marvelous "descending staircase" bit in The Bad and the Beautiful (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 hit sultry "B" co-star status the following year in the semi-documentary-styled police drama Code Two (1953) opposite Ralph Meeker, appeared briefly as the ill-fated queen "Anne Boleyn", mother to "Queen Elizabeth" in the Jean Simmons starrer Young Bess (1953); provided lovely distraction in the macho war film Take the High Ground! (1953) alongside Richard Widmark; played a princess-in-peril in The Adventures of Hajji Baba (1954) and, co-starring with Gene Kelly and Van Johnson, glamoured up the musical Brigadoon (1954).
Elaine left MGM around 1956 and finished off the decade with the films Night Passage (1957),The Tattered Dress (1957),and Escort West (1959). In the early 1960s, she made a couple of films both here and abroad and her standard sultry allure could be witnessed on such TV dramas as Burke's Law (1963) and Perry Mason (1957).
Briefly married to actor Bill Carter in the early 1960s, she later wed Emmy Award-winning game show creator Merrill Heatter and left her career to raise two children. In 1972, she became a co-hostess of the Heatter-Quigley game show Las Vegas 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 Beverly Hills at the age of 81 in June of 2011. She was survived by her second husband Merrill Heatter, son Stewart Heatter, and daughter Gabrielle Heatter.
