On Friday, October 17, 2008 the Biography Channel aired Mickey Cohen's story in which Steve participated. Here's a partial video:
Steve Stevens has been in show business for over fifty years. He has been an actor, producer, casting director, and for more than thirty years, a Screen Actors Guild franchised talent agent.
About me: Who would have thought that an acting career that began as a teenage star in the "Annette" series on The Mickey Mouse Club, Walt Disney's Zorro, The Roy Rogers Show, and That's My Mom would lead to the role of confidante and assistant to Southern California crime-boss Mickey Cohen?
King of the Sunset Strip is a pistol-to-the-side-of-your-head Hollywood story. Beginning with the parties, boozing, and sex and the "good-time" macho whoring and gambling of the mob, the story covers the action in Sunset Boulevard penthouses, Beverly Hills mansions, Brentwood estates, and across state lines to Las Vegas. Steve Stevens takes his readers down the palm-lined streets of Hollywood to meet film and entertainment giants like Frank Sinatra, Bobby Darin, Louis Prima, Robert Mitchum, and many more.
Stevens's relationship with Cohen began as a friendship and deteriorated into witnessing bloody beatings by Cohen, crimescene drive-bys, and much more. Peppered with familiar celebrity names and faces from film, TV, and organized crime, this classic Hollywood tale reads like a box-office script.
After Mickey Cohen was arrested on charges of income-tax evasion, gangsters hustled Stevens out of California to a remote ranch in Nevada and ordered him to stay in hiding. During Cohen's trial, Stevens remained quiet while Cohen was eventually sentenced to Alcatraz.
Beginning with the casting call that resulted in Stevens's association with Cohen, King of the Sunset Strip takes readers through the exciting story to the curtain call that eventually led him out of the life of crime.
Reviews:
"Steve's startling account of his friendship with Mickey Cohen and his boys brings you face to face with '50s Tinseltown, it's glittering surface and its darkest corners. With rich detail of Hollywood and its great hangouts, you are there in the dim, smoke-filled interiors brushing past Burt Lancaster, Sandra Dee, and Frank Sinatra. Irresistible!"
- Laurie Jacobson, Author of Dishing Hollywood: The Real Scoop on Tinseltown's Most Notorious Scandals
"Mr. Stevens's own personal L.A. Confidential. A great visit back to the Los Angeles of the 1950s with all the gangsters, punch-outs, honeys, hey-hey and Tinseltown landmarks you could want. A time long gone but, luckily, not forgotten. Recommended!"
- Norm Stringer, True Crime Ink
"A struggling actor meets the mob in the person of Mickey Cohen, and he allows his fascination with The Life to nearly do him in. But he relates his experience with the sardonic humor of a survivor who 'lived to tell the tale' and now would do well to turn it into a screenplay."
- William J. Helmer, Author of Baby Face Nelson and The St. Valentine's Day Massacre
"Vividly written and packed with shocking disclosures. King of the Sunset Strip delves into the dark side of the Hollywood story and exposes a world in which seeing the light is followed by savage retribution or death."
- Rose Keefe, Author of The Man Who Got Away: The Bugs Moran Story and Guns and Roses: The Untold Story of Dean O'Banion, Chicago's Big Shot Before Capone
"This story unfolds like a work of well-written fiction. Unfortunately for Stevens, life wasn't imitating art. What the youthful Stevens experienced [was] the unfolding realization that he had been seduced into a world of fear and danger. [His} period of experimentation with the mob became a 'psychosocial moratorium' or a coming-of-age story unique in the literature of true crime."
- M.K. Gustinella, Ph.D., Clinical Psychologist, Forensic Evaluator for Orange County Superior Court
Available at amazon.com
If you'd like a personally autographed book, you may send Steve a check or money order for $25.00 (which includes shipping) at:
The Stevens Group
14011 Ventura Blvd.
Suite 201
Sherman Oaks, CA. 91423
Hey Steve, just a note to let you know that I thought you did a great job last night on the Biography Channel's story on your old pal, Mickey Cohen. I bet now, looking back on your association with him, you must wonder how you walked away from that lifestyle unscathed. Very scary to think about. Oh, and you looked really handsome in that suit and tie. You're a real class act.
