Leslie Stevens IV, the son of esteemed Admiral Leslie Stevens, grew up as a Navy brat and later made a name for himself in the entertainment industry.
His first notable achievement was the Broadway play "The Marriage Go-Round", which became a huge hit, and he later adapted it into a screenplay for a movie version in 1960.
Stevens' next project was adapting Gore Vidal's "The Left-Handed Gun" to the screen in 1959, followed by producing a low-budget melodrama, "Private Property" (1960),starring his then-wife Kate Manx, which was filmed at his Hollywood Hills home.
The success of "Private Property" led to more work, and in the early 1960s, Stevens became the head of Daystar Productions, an independent TV production company that survived the majors.
Under his leadership, Daystar created the popular TV series "Stoney Burke" (1962) and "The Outer Limits" (1963).
In 1965, Stevens released the movie "Incubus" (1966),starring William Shatner, which featured dialogue spoken in Esperanto, but the film was withdrawn from circulation by Stevens, who never released it beyond a few film festival showings.
Stevens claimed that the deaths of two actors from the film made it impossible for him to watch, and in the 1970s, he went on the payroll at Universal Studios, producing science-fiction series such as "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century" (1979) and "Gemini Man" (1976).
Stevens' final film as a director was "Three Kinds of Heat" (1987),and although his output in the 1990s was sporadic, he did write a children's film, "Gordy" (1994).
