Steve Cochran was a natural for the hoods and cutthroats he so often portrayed in the movies, and he was seen to good advantage in several entries from the film noir era, including The Chase (1946), White Heat (1949), The Damned Don’t Cry (1950), and Private Hell 36 (1954) in a career that included more than 40 films during a span of three decades. Named for his lumberman father, Robert Alexander Cochran was born May 25, 1917, in Eureka, California. Steve Cochran arrived in New York in the fall of 1942, confident that Broadway was waiting for him. It didn’t take long, however, for him to be faced with the reality that the Big Apple was crowded with dozens of talented young actors like him, all hungry to be noticed. The competition was tough. All the wannabe actors hung out at Walgreens drugstore on Times Square or in the ballroom of the St. James, an affordable hotel on 45th Street and Broadway, where many actors, including Steve, rented a room for $10 a night. Working like a unit, the aspiring stars shared all possible information about casting calls while sipping coffee and eating mayonnaise sandwiches on stale bread.
It was around this time that Steve met actress Ruth Roman, with whom he would later star in two films. “There were a lot of times when Ruthie and I would sit at the lunch counter trying to figure out where we could land any kind of job in the theater,” said Steve. “We belonged to the same crowd of acting hopefuls who found the going tough, with not much chance of making the grade in New York.” Unfortunately, the lights of Broadway refused to shine for Steve, and he soon found himself broke and in need of employment. He accepted a modeling job with Roman, posing for pulp magazines about confessions or murder for $5 a job. Still in need of money, Steve went to Madison Square Garden ready to start an alternative career in boxing. He spoke to a manager and figured that he could earn $50 by fighting, so he bought fighting clothes, locker space, manager fees, practice time, and the rest. But as he risked damaging his face and ending any future film career, Steve decided professional fighting wasn’t for him.
In December 1942, Steve arrived to Hollywood with the hope of finding a job. On the day of his arrival, while reading the “wanted” ads in the paper of a drugstore, he bumped into Ruth Roman, who had arrived in town that same day. Since they were both looking for a place to live, they joined forces and found two single rooms in the same building. After that they saw each other frequently. Steve introduced Roman to one of his agents, who signed her and eventually got her a job. But there was no such luck for Steve. Jobless and broke, he decided that there was nothing in Hollywood for him so he went back to New York. Before leaving California, Roman loaned Steve thirty dollars In Manhattan, while looking for stage work, Steve got hired as a store detective at Macy’s department store for twenty-five dollars a week. His job was to mingle with customers and keep an eye out for shoplifters. Unlike the other security guards who blended in with the crowd, Steve’s habit of patrolling the lingerie and the fabric departments and delivering threatening glares to anyone he thought might be stealing, backfired. “Four or five times a day I would be the one turned in by a well-meaning customer as a shoplifter suspect,” he said.
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Steve arrived in Hollywood from New York just to learn that production of The Kid from Brooklyn had been pushed back a week because of Goldwyn’s inability to assemble his crew, as they were still busy on a different set. In the meantime, Danny Kaye, the two leading ladies Virginia Mayo and Vera-Ellen, plus more than two hundred women had been rehearsing the musical numbers for several weeks under the direction of choreographer John Wray. While Steve was under contract with a basic salary, Goldwyn paid Vera-Ellen $1,000 a week as Kaye’s dancing partner. Virginia Mayo received costar billing as Goldwyn was grooming her for stardom. Because of the wartime housing shortage, Steve could not find a house or an apartment to rent. He had to stay in hotels which he had to change every five days, in accordance with the Office of Price Administration Administration regulations that controlled rents after the outbreak of World War II. The problem also affected Kaye and Vera-Ellen, who had to be hosted by friends. Principal photography began on July 12, 1944, but was suspended a week later after Kaye suffered an injury to his knee when he fell during a strenuous dance routine with Vera-Ellen.
In her autobiography, Virginia Mayo discussed her long-lasting friendship with Steve, which began on the set of The Kid from Brooklyn: "It was after The Kid from Brooklyn that I met a man who would become a dear friend for all the rest of my life, and his life too, right up until he died. His name was Steve Cochran and I loved him. Like a brother. He was tall, and in spite of the fact that he was photographed as if he was a really big man, he wasn’t. Steve was a man with a slight frame, had unusually dark, deeply smoldering eyes, thick black eyebrows, black hair, and was often cast as a gangster or a rough, hard man. Steve was none of those things in real life. He was polite and sensitive, and very kind. But indeed, he was extremely sexy and women just couldn’t get enough of him. I loved acting with him, and we went on to make many films together." Over the next few years, Steve and Virginia would appear together in five films: The Kid from Brooklyn (1946), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), A Song Is Born (1948), White Heat (1949), and She’s Back on Broadway (1953).
Off set, Steve was often photographed in the company of a pretty actress named Fay McKenzie (1918-2019), a sultry brunette with whom he shared the same agent. The couple became the talk of the town after they were constantly spotted together in Hollywood’s fanciest restaurants and nightclubs. Born in Hollywood in 1918, Fay McKenzie made her acting debut with Gloria Swanson in the silent film Station Content. During World War II she made two overseas tours with Frank Sinatra, both sponsored by the United Service Organizations, in order to entertain troops abroad. From 1934 until the time she met Steve, Fay appeared in five successful westerns made by Republic Pictures opposite “the singing cowboy” Gene Autry. Fay and Steve surprised everybody when, in January 1946, they secretly married in Acapulco.
Two months after they returned from Mexico, Fay left for Rio de Janeiro to fulfill a six-week singing contract at a local casino, while Steve started working on his next film. Their rollercoaster “marriage” confused friends, colleagues, and the press as Steve was seen flirting with other women. Many reporters talked of an alleged affair between Steve and Virginia Mayo during the shooting of The Best Years of Our Lives, a liaison that was thought to have continued after the filming ended until Virginia met actor Michael O’ Shea, whom she married in 1947. However, Virginia Mayo insisted that Steve and she had nothing more than a solid, long-lasting friendship. In fact, Mayo was happy to play matchmaker. According to a Lana Turner biographer, Virginia Mayo introduced the two film stars after Lana saw Steve on screen, and they went on to have a brief fling.
“Steve Cochran is excellent in The Chase as the Miami bad man, a role that probably will bring stardom to the handsome, Gable-like young man,” wrote fan magazine Movieland. “Steve Cochran will give you goose pimples as the menace,” wrote Photoplay, while Variety found “Robert Cummings being overshadowed by the dominating personality and looks of a newcomer, Steve Cochran, who plays the killer. Cochran is handsome, suave, confident, and menacing in the manner of Humphrey Bogart.” The Chase was a box-office disappointment and failed to recoup its costs, thus leaving the producers out of pocket. However, in recent years it has been rediscovered, with some critics including it among the most unusual and visually interesting examples of the film noir genre.
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In spite of their differences and clashes, Steve called his collaboration with Mae West “an invaluable acting experience.” He learned a lot from the veteran of stage and screen, including onstage timing: “I never ceased to marvel at the brilliant rhythm of her performance, all the while I was with her in New York and on the road in Diamond Lil. Mae has a sixth sense for timing and she gave me pointers that would have otherwise taken me years as an actor to contemplate and handle.”
In The Damned Don’t Cry, the idea was suggested by Vincent Sherman, who remembered the title from a 1939 novel by Harry Hervey whose rights Warner had acquired. In April 1950 The Damned Don’t Cry opened nationwide. Sherman hoped that the picture could repeat the success of Crawford’s earlier Warner Bros. films, and while the reviews were mixed, the box-office revenues earned more than $1.5 million. The motion picture trade journal Harrison’s Reports dismissed the movie as “an unpleasant drama, sordid, unethical and unmoral, and it leaves a feeling of bad taste,” while The Hollywood Reporter’s critic stated: “The Damned Don’t Cry has strength, suspense, and fine entertaining values. Steve Cochran’s portrayal of the avowedly rough diamond has real force.” Today The Damned Don’t Cry is a perfect example of the film noir genre thanks not only to Sherman’s brilliant direction but also Ted McCord’s superb and suggestive cinematography. Steve’s performance was excellent, portraying the type of character for which he would become best known: the handsome, sinister alpha male who attracts equally tough women.
Later, this became a curse, as he would often be typecast in similar roles. “I do a sort of moronic type in Storm Warning,” Steve explained to the press. “I play the dumb Klan member who blows his top through mob hysteria and commits murder…. It’s a picture that pulls no punches.” Watching how Ginger Rogers approached each scene was an education for Steve. “She never commences a picture without first carefully examining all its possibilities down to the slightest detail,” he revealed in an interview. “From her, I realized that logic is the best means to break down emotion and to reassemble it. There isn’t a thing that Ginger does as an actress that isn’t clearly motivated. She is not a rusher.” Although Steve and Rogers had nothing other than the utmost professional respect for each other, no one imagined that almost a year later they would start dating. While filming, Rogers was seeing lawyer-to-the-stars Greg Bautzer, while Steve was often seen in the company of actresses Denise Darcel, Virginia Grey and Yvonne De Carlo.
Filming proceeded smoothly until there was a big fight scene between Steve, Rogers, and Day. “Ginger slapped me hard enough to feel it during a rehearsal,” he recalled. “I had a headache for two days.” The reviews for Storm Warning were generally good. Steve gave brute power to the despicable role of the Klansman, which was undeniably one of the best performances of his career, an opinion confirmed by Ginger Rogers, who called it “outstanding” in her autobiography. Many critics agreed. “Cochran scores soundly as the stupid killer husband,” wrote Variety, while Sight and Sound remarked: “As the killer Steve Cochran suggests a cross between the familiar hoodlum, and the husband in A Streetcar Named Desire: it is a very assured and capable performance.” After the premiere, the cast celebrated at The Beach, a trendy nightclub in Miami Beach. At the party Rogers accepted a dinner invitation from Steve. “Maybe she was just feeling sorry for me—because I had a broken leg, but we had a lot to say to each other and had a wonderful time,” he explained in an interview. “It was just about the time she and Bautzer were beginning to cool. But it wasn’t until they were definitely through that she let me take her to parties and theaters and see her most of the time.”
Louella Parsons discussed their romance in a lengthy article of Photoplay. Steve explained to the columnist that though Steve and Ginger had an exclusive dating relationship, they were not interested in marriage as many speculated. The tabloids loved it and called their romance “the hottest twosome since Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner.” Steve explained he was smitten with Rogers, who was six years his senior, because she made him feel like a big, strong hero. “I know it’s nonsense,” he stated. “But I like gals to be impressed by me. We both know it’s an act—but it sure makes me feel good.” In order to impress Ginger, who was an avid tennis fan (she even took part in the mixed doubles at the US Open in 1950 but was knocked out in the first round), Steve started taking tennis lessons on the Beverly Hills Hotel Court, but quit when they broke up.
Despite only having a small part, actress Barbara Payton became the center of attention for most of the men working on Dallas (1950), including Steve and Gary Cooper. This attention was unappreciated by Ruth Roman, who had star billing with Cooper and who clashed with Payton during the shooting. According to Payton’s biographer, the starlet admitted that “she and Steve Cochran fooled around with each other when they were making Dallas. During breaks they used to go to the Western sets of WB ranch in Calabasas and grab a quickie.” Steve and Payton shared the same passions (notably drinking and sex) and allegedly indulged these in after-work dates and between-scene setups. It was also rumored that their affair continued on the road during the picture’s promotional tour. As if Payton’s torrid liaison with Steve was not enough distraction, the actress allegedly also had a fling with Gary Cooper, who was married. Steve was exhausted and felt he’d been worked to the bone, telling the press: “All I know is that I have done seven pictures in a year with Warner Bros. and that’s more than I did in four years with other studios. I am philosophic about my sinister reputation. When I’m told about a forthcoming picture, I merely say: “If there’s a snide enough heavy in it, I’ll be playing him.”
On December 27, 1950, Warner Bros. called Steve back to the studio from his Christmas in Carmel for a wardrobe test and rehearsals for Tomorrow Is Another Day, in which he was reunited with his old friend Ruth Roman. The picture marked the first time the two stars actually worked together. Directed by Felix Feist Jr., Tomorrow Is Another Day was based on the story Spring Kill by Guy Endore about Bill Clark, a man sent to jail at the age of thirteen for having killed his abusive father, and his complicated relationship with the world when he emerges twenty years later. Ruth Roman, wearing a platinum blonde wig, played the role of a dancehall hostess, who gets involved with Bill and kills a police officer. To prepare for the dance hall scenes, Steve had to learn ballroom steps from dance instructor Gene Nelson. Steve’s dislike for dancing was notorious and for him it was a chore. “It’s a subject that has never interested me,” he said to the press. “But now I guess I’ll have to stimulate some interest—in the interest of drama.” During the first weeks of production, Steve was hospitalized after a fight scene in which he struggled with actor Hugh Sanders for a gun. The brawl became a little too realistic and Steve fell on the ground suffering a fracture in his right leg, just above the ankle.
Steve was seen by his physician, who advised him to work only in close-ups and static shots so he could rest his legs for a few more days. To save time and money, Feist assembled the cast at Steve’s home for rehearsals until his leg healed completely. The rest of the film was completed in two weeks, even though Roman was bedridden for several days after becoming ill with a virus. Roman enjoyed sharing the set with Steve, as she said to a British magazine: “You can well imagine how we used to yackity-yack between shots about those days on Broadway when all we had was good health and determination.”
As she observed: “Steve’s strong, I’m strong and it comes through. We’ve known each other since we were starving actors in New York. When we work together, we keep looking at each other and saying, ‘Is this possible?’” On Ruth Roman, Steve commented: “Working with Ruthie is a joy. Between scenes, she’s a wonderful companion. Before the camera, she’s a gal who knows her business and concentrates on it to the utmost.” Off the set, Steve was often seen in the company of a new girl, Trudy Williams, a gorgeous New York model.
Trudy had been introduced to Steve by Ruth Roman and her husband Mortimer Hall. That spring Steve's love for animals encouraged him to get involved with the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, one of his favorite nonprofit organizations. He attended a special event where he offered for sale one of his shirts that sold in a flash, and for a hefty price. "I was happy for the first three years at Warners, then I’ve felt itchy. Like the brakes were dragging," observed Steve Cochran to the press gathered at the event. A Christmas feature in Photoplay magazine reported that Steve planned to spend the holidays with his ex-wife Fay McKenzie and their little girl Xandra “but also his ex-mother in-law. Actually they all meet (together with Steve’s mother, who flied in from her home in Alaska) at Carmel, California, where Fay has a house.” The magazine went on to paint a picture of Steve as a generous family man: “It is Steve who foots all the bills, gives everyone terrific presents and enjoys himself very much. Every other day of the year, Steve is very much the lone wolf.”
While in Europe in 1954, one of Steve’s favorite subjects in many of the interviews he gave on set was women. He often compared American women with European ones and although his comments did not raise eyebrows then, today they would be considered sexist. “Now you take those German women,” he told a Hollywood columnist. “The theory is, they’re built square and solid. Well, that’s just not so. German women are very tasty to behold.” He added: “Oh, they’re not skinny like New York models, but they can be very trim and neat. You could not go wrong if you chose a German woman.” In Munich, Steve bought a flashy green Porsche, which he loved to speed around in, always in the company of his latest local female conquest.
One evening on set of Carnival Story, Steve, who was an amateur photographer, decided to climb to the top of a platform to photograph a 110-foot dive into a tank, which is one of the film’s most thrilling scenes. Suddenly a heavy spotlight began to sway toward the platform’s edge and he shouted a warning to the crowd below while at the same time trying to grab the light. He failed but his yell had been enough for the spectators to scatter. The spotlight plunged to the ground, destroying itself on a spot where, a few seconds before, part of the closely packed crowd had stood. Steve’s quick thinking had saved the set from a terrible tragedy, and undoubtedly saved lives. Steve remained in Europe for three months. After Germany, he drove his Porsche across the Alps down to Rome.
Once again, Steve spoke rather candidly about his experience of the local women: “To tell the truth, I was disappointed in the girls in Italy. You see, they refused to chase me. Not once was I chased or even casually pursued. But maybe I’m of a different temperament. Your Italian babe wants to make a game of love. You know, there are certain rules a guy must follow and all that. I believe in short cuts myself, but they always get mad at that and say you’re spoiling all the fun.” He didn’t, however, do too badly in the game of love, because while in Europe Steve was often photographed in the company of Esperanza “Chata” Wayne, a Mexican actress who was separated from her husband John Wayne (they would divorce in 1954). Once again the tabloids hinted marriage was on the cards but Steve was quick to dampen their enthusiasm. “She’s a wonderful person. She has the biggest heart in Hollywood,” he stated diplomatically. “She was teaching me Spanish. I’ve got Mexican movie production plans.”
When he returned to Benedict Canyon, Steve threw a big party at his house for Sadie Hawkins Day (an American holiday inspired by the comic strip Li’l Abner), and invited his neighbor, an aspiring young actress, who lived in a little house on stilts nearby. The woman was Jayne Mansfield, and years later she said: “I discovered one day the big movie star Steve Cochran lived in a house much like ours down the road on Yokum Avenue. I dressed like Daisy Mae [the comic strip’s blonde bombshell] and went to his Li’l Abner party on Sadie Hawkins Day. Steve lived the informal, open-house life always with a couple of pretty starlets to keep his place clean. It was exciting for me to have a real movie star for my next-door neighbor.” Mansfield’s marriage to her first husband Paul Mansfield was on the rocks and, unsurprisingly, Steve’s head was turned by the actress who was only twenty-one at the time. The two started seeing each other, first discreetly at his house and later more publicly. They were photographed together on several occasions, including at the opening of the Ice Follies.
Jayne Mansfield recalled: “Steve Cochran, 36, tall, dark and handsome in a rugged sort of way, was one of my first dates in Hollywood.” She praised the fact he was “casual at all times,” adding: “If a girl proposed to him, he could say ‘no’ so easily that no one would be embarrassed or feel frustrated. He has the he-man charm that women fall for. He doesn’t rely on techniques.” Their affair lasted four months but the two stayed friends. In 1956, when Mansfield had become a bona fide celebrity, they resumed their fling briefly, to the delight of the tabloids. “I don’t act like a hood in my films,” Cochran told Hollywood columnist Joe Hyams. “I’m basically a decent person and I let this come through in my portrayals. After all, a guy has to make a living some way, even if he’s a gangster. The big secret in playing a gangster in movies is to really believe that the character you are playing is doing no wrong.”
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Once again Steve played a bad guy, crooked cop Cal Bruner, and in an interview on set, Steve complained that most of the offers he received typecast him as the villain and he wanted to branch out. “I just don’t care to play heavies anymore,” he said. “I tell them to go find another actor. For years Hollywood offered me heavy roles and nothing else. I don’t work as much now but I make just as much money and I’m a lot happier.” He started to get pickier. “That’s the way I like it,” he said, adding: “I’ll take the picture industry a la carte. Instead of getting salad and soup, I’ll pick the red meat. I may be wrong, but I’ll do pictures I believe in and pass up the junk. If there are any mistakes made, they’ll be mine.” Of his passionate love scenes with Ida Lupino he said, “Wouldn’t you know she’d bar Howard from the set while we were romancing! But when he was pitching woo to Dorothy Malone, Ida was right there watching. Tell you what I’d like to do—I want to direct.”
Although Filmakers Productions invested in a $100,000 national advertising campaign, Private Hell 36 opened to mixed reviews, with the critic for Variety finding it to be “good” but “occasionally slow-paced,” while The New York Herald Tribune hailed it as “a good noir melodrama.” Steve’s performance was appreciated by many reviewers but, without the support of a major studio release, the independently distributed film suffered in the waning market. In 1958, four years after its initial release, Private Hell 36 was rereleased with a new, misleading title: Baby Face Killer. The picture was low budget but full of twists and is well worth rediscovering. Steve’s depiction of the corrupt cop was very convincing and proved his acting ability once again. The extensive racetrack scenes in the film were shot at Hollywood Park Racetrack in Inglewood, California. The interiors of real bars and shops were used so that the actors could walk out into actual streets within the same scene. The film starts with a pre-credit sequence in an early modernist foreshadowing of the action teaser before it became commonplace on television series of the sixties.
Off the set, Steve’s volatile private life became a hot topic for the British tabloids. First he had a heated affair with Kay Kendall that ended just a few weeks before the actress married Rex Harrison. Kendall found Steve sexy and funny, with a wonderfully “raffish sense of humor.” Kendall’s biographer reported an anecdote from Harrison’s good friend Roy Moseley, who visited Cochran at his Mayfair flat and found him playing a trombone. “Down the stairs came Kay, also playing a trombone,” wrote the biographer. “‘What do you think of my latest conquest?’ she asked a startled Moseley.” “Cochran played around, and she loved it,” recalled Moseley. “She was no prude, she loved his kind of jokes and sexual innuendo.” But Kendall favored Harrison over Steve and the tryst was soon over.
She kept denying rumors of romance as Steve had already been married twice, but Sabrina promised Steve she’d come for a longer stay the following fall on her way back from a planned tour of Australia. The two met a few times after that but eventually their relationship fizzled out. Meanwhile, Steve had teamed up with a group of Hollywood actors including Rory Calhoun, Rad Fulton, Michael Landon, and John Smith in the All Stars boxing team at Beverly Hilton Hotel, competing against professional boxers to raise funds for Thalians, a charity set up by Hollywood actors three years earlier and dedicated to mental health causes. That spring Steve guest-starred in “Debt of Gratitude,” an episode of the American western anthology television series Dick Powell’s Zane Grey Theatre. Unusually for him, he played the part of a good sheriff whose justice is obstructed when he has to arrest a popular outlaw played by James Whitmore.
During the filming of The Beat Generation, Steve developed a very negative opinion of the so-called Beat Generation (Kerouac, Ginsberg, etc), which he was only too happy to share. “They aren’t anything except deadbeat bums,” Steve said. “They shirk work and responsibility under the guise of what they think is some kind of an intellectual cult. They’re phony. They’re about as intellectual as they looked.” He explained that his ideas were based on the type of characters he met when he lived at North Beach in San Francisco as a struggling young stage actor. “They were artistic phonies and hangers-on and everyone knew them then as deadbeat bums. Today they insist they’re intellectuals but they are deadbeat bums as far as I’m concerned.”
For his role Steve drew his top salary to date—$75,000—while Mamie Van Doren earned $20,000 for just four days’ work. As his relationship with Barbara Payton had fizzled out, Steve didn’t waste any time in pursuing Mamie Van Doren, who was fourteen years his junior. Later she revealed that Steve had been one of her favorite actors when she was a teenager, so it was like an “animal attraction” when they met on the set for the first time. Mamie gave out spicy details about what she insisted was always a sexual liaison rather than a love story and admitted that this was what she needed at the time. Ironically, considering his perpetual roving eye, Mamie said she liked his loyalty. “I don’t like a girl who goes after another girl’s fellow. Or the fellows who let them,” she said. “That’s one thing I used to like about dating Steve Cochran. When Steve took you to a party and some other girl made a pass at him, he’d say, ‘Get lost, I’m with Mamie.’ When he’s with YOU, he’s with YOU. I must say I sure dig that.”
One person who did try and prise Mamie away from Steve was Cary Grant, who made frequent visits to the set between takes of the Hitchcock-directed North by Northwest (1959), which he was filming at the time. Grant was a fervent admirer of Van Doren, but she refused his advances, preferring to focus on Steve. While he was filming, Sabrina, who was en route to Australia with her own revue, showed up as a visitor at the MGM studios, where she was presented with a gold key to the studio. Steve introduced her to Zugsmith, who was interested in having her as the star opposite Steve in his next film The Private Lives of Adam and Eve (1960), but the roles were eventually assigned to Martin Milner and Mamie Van Doren. By Thanksgiving 1958, the shooting of The Beat Generation was over, as was the affair between Steve and Mamie Van Doren.
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However, they were reunited when Zugsmith recast them in his new film The Big Operator (1959), a gangland story inspired by corrupt union boss Jimmy Hoffa (played by Mickey Rooney). “Steve and I started dating again,” Mamie said. “But it was short-lived. He was an exciting man in bed, partly because of the sense of impending danger he exuded. But I’ve never been good at a relationship the second time around.” In the meantime Steve appeared in the first episode of a new TV series called Bus Stop on the ABC-TV network. The program was adapted from William Inge’s play Bus Stop (which had been made into a successful 1956 film starring Marilyn Monroe and Don Murray).
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The first episode “Afternoon of a Cowboy,” in which Steve was the guest star, was written by New York writer Sally Benson, author of the short story collections Junior Miss and Meet Me in St. Louis, which were later adapted into two successful films. Steve’s episode aired on October 1, 1961, and received excellent reviews from the Los Angeles Times, which called it “the most moving and memorable hour the networks have given us thus far in the new season. Superbly written and ably directed. Steve Cochran was marvelous as the sluggish, driven cowboy.” This was echoed by The Hollywood Reporter: “Steve Cochran gives a memorable performance… if producer Robert Blees matches the quality of this opener on future segments, there’ll be plenty of consideration when Emmytime rolls around.” It was not to be, as Bus Stop was canceled after twenty-six episodes—not for poor ratings but for the explicit violence of one episode that was so highly controversial it attracted negative comments from politicians in Washington and twenty-five ABC affiliates refused to air it.
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Some rumors persisted that Steve was feuding with his costar Merle Oberon because she was obsessed with getting more close-ups than him. He confirmed the troubles on the set of Love and Desire in a funny postcard he sent to Hollywood columnist Mike Connolly writing: “Having a wonderful time, wish you were here instead of me!” Yet, according to Richard Rush, Steve and Oberon got on perfectly fine on the set and there was no sign of rivalry. In fact, the two were involved in a short but intense sexual affair that left Oberon with a sense of attachment to Steve for the rest of her life. Love and Desire was shelved for over a year and a half until summer 1963, when it was sold to Twentieth Century-Fox for $1 million. According to Oberon’s biographer, the actress saw Steve “at previews and the premiere of the film in Hollywood, however his behavior became more elusive and erratic….” He wasn’t the Steve she had known: “Several people got the impression that he was being marked down by some unknown enemy. There was even a gossip that somebody in love with Merle Oberon was jealous of him, a rumor that persisted into 1980s.”
The New York Times’ critic Bosley Crowther didn’t hold back, labeling the film “garish” and the script “embarrassing,” adding: “What you will see in this picture is a sadly worn Merle Oberon playing a coy, bright-eyed, come-hither, race-you-across-the-swimming pool coquette to a hairy-chested Steve Cochran, who acts as though he thinks he’s Bobby Darin.” Steve let the criticism roll off him. He had never particularly cared about critics and reviews, paying almost no attention to them. Oberon, however, was so offended she sent the critic an angry telegram. Crowther met the actress at a party afterward and expressed his shock, saying that he was sure Oberon did not mean it because all professionals had to take bad reviews. Oberon didn’t agree and attacked him verbally until he was forced to leave the room.
As the shooting of Tell Me in the Sunlight kept being postponed, Steve made a few TV appearances including The Dick Powell Theatre, Route 66, and the two Western series The Virginian and Stoney Burke. It seemed that whenever TV producers had a villainous guest role to fill, Steve sprang to mind. Ironically, however, he refused roles in popular shows including Mr. Lucky, Philip Marlowe, Peter Gunn, Mike Hammer, and Cain’s Hundred. “It’s this way with me,” he said. “Some actors take on a series and find out too late that playing the same role week after week is tearing their insides out, I know without even trying that I couldn’t stand it for even one season.” He had also rejected most of the heavy roles offered to him. “This past year I’ve turned down five heavy guestings,” he said.
Finally in May 1963, without notifying the press, Steve took off for the Bahamas, where he produced, directed, and acted in Tell Me in the Sunlight. Six weeks later he returned to California to edit the film but realized that it was unwatchable. A Costa Rican woman, whom he had cast as the leading lady because she looked like a natural, showed all her inexperience on camera. Steve needed to reshoot the film with a new actress and began looking for a new cast. In the meantime, singer, actor, and activist Harry Belafonte invited him to participate in the March on Washington on August 28, 1963, along with other actors including Frank Silvera, James Garner, Marlon Brando, Anthony Franciosa, and Rita Moreno. Steve was thrilled to be a part of the antiracist protest, which would go down in history.
According to close friend Bruce Pennington, Steve never looked after his health. Steve knew he had a heart condition (he was dismissed from the army for a heart murmur) but had never done anything about it. In fact, not only had he ignored it, he had punished his body with excessive drinking and smoking. He had tried to cut back on cigarettes but never on alcohol. When he returned from Africa in the middle of September, he closed Robert Alexander Productions (probably due to debt) and formed a new production corporation under the name Britannia Films Ltd. The first move for the new organization was the purchase of Tell Me in the Sunlight, which Steve planned to release under the Britannia banner, yet he was struggling to find a distributor. Nobody seemed interested. While Tell Me in the Sunlight’s postproduction was about to be completed, Steve ran into trouble.
On an eight-day sailing trip from Acapulco down the Pacific Coast to Costa Rica, where the picture was to be filmed on location. Cochran and his crew set sail on June 5, 1965. It would be his last adventure. Three weeks later, on June 26, 1965, the actor’s 40-foot schooner was towed into the Guatemala port of Champerico. On board there were three women – and the dead body of Steve Cochran. Officials later determined that Cochran had fallen ill from a paralyzing lung ailment during the voyage and died 10 days after departing from Acapulco. For nearly two weeks, the women drifted helplessly in the schooner before being rescued in Guatemala. Allegedly his last whispered words were, “Head east, you will hit land.” Then he let out a deep sigh, opened his eyes for the last time and shortly after 5:00 a.m. on June 15, 1965, Steve passed away at the age of forty-eight. The Hollywood community was stunned by Cochran’s strange and sudden death.
But his estranged wife, Jonna Jensen (who lived in San Francisco), wasted no time in laying claim to his money. Just four days after the actor’s body was discovered, Jensen filed a petition in Los Angeles Superior Court for letters of administration over his estate, estimated to be worth $150,000. Jensen had filed for divorce from Cochran in October 1964, but the case was never finalized, meaning that despite the protests of Cochran’s mother, Jensen inherited his entire estate. Cochran’s body was flown to San Francisco and buried next to his father, near the ocean in Monterey. His reputation was so tarnished that an old friend saw the need to defend his standing in an article in the Van Nuys News. Published two weeks after his death, actress and columnist Jeanne Markham Keating characterized Cochran as a kind and extremely good-looking man who was sadly a target for “numerous kooks who seemed to spot an easy mark.”
Today, Steve Cochran’s legacy as an actor has faded from collective cultural memory, becoming merely a cross-reference in news articles, cinema books, or an icon to fans of film noir. His performances are often overlooked, or dismissed by film historians and critics as simply fulfilling the cliché of the “bad boy” of classic gangster B movies. Although Steve Cochran was typed as the heavy throughout his career, he nonetheless demonstrated in numerous movies that he had a genuine talent, and he will be remembered for his unforgettable portrayals in films such as White Heat, Storm Warning, The Chase or I, Mobster. Despite his brushes with the law, Cochran seemed to be more of a rebel adventurer than any kind of real menace, and while his acting career appeared to be waning at the time of his death, he was just starting in a new direction as a director and producer. Because of these realities, his premature end is that much more tragic.
Major stardom always eluded him, although it is thought by some film historians that Steve Cochran could have been as big as Bogart or Cagney if the right role had come along. Paul Auster included a digression concerning Steve Cochran’s life and his tragic fate in his novel Sunset Park (2010). He appears as the possible former lover of the actress mother of the book’s main character. Steve Cochran would be pleased that after his short and eventful life, his legacy lives on, decades after his death, but he probably wanted to be remembered for his films rather than his dramatic ending, which will always remain a Hollywood mystery. —Steve Cochran: Bad Boy of Hollywood (2026) by Michelangelo Capua
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