Leslie Stevens

Leslie Clark Stevens IV (February 3, 1924 – April 24, 1998) was an American writer, director, and producer born in Washington, D.C. His father, Leslie Clark Stevens III, was an admiral in the United States Navy who steered his son toward the United States Naval Academy, where Stevens's study of science began. The pull of the theater proved stronger than any military ambition, however, and Stevens left for New York to pursue a career as a playwright. During World War II he served in the United States Army Air Forces, reaching the rank of captain at age 20. After the war he enrolled in Yale's Drama Department.

Stevens sold an early play, The Mechanical Rat, to Orson Welles's Mercury Theatre and attempted to join the company before truant officers returned him home. His first produced play, Bullfight, starring Hurd Hatfield, opened off-Broadway in 1954. The following year brought The Champagne Complex to the stage. In 1956 his play The Lovers, which starred Joanne Woodward, reached Broadway; the work was later adapted into the 1965 film The War Lord. That same year Stevens wrote the Broadway comedy The Marriage-Go-Round, which he subsequently adapted for the screen and produced as a 1961 film starring Susan Hayward. His Broadway credits as a book writer also include Lovers. Stevens wrote the screenplay for The Left Handed Gun (1958), directed by Arthur Penn and starring Paul Newman.

Among the films Stevens produced, directed, and wrote were Private Property (1960), starring Corey Allen, Warren Oates, and his then-wife Kate Manx, and Hero's Island (1962), starring James Mason. He directed the horror film Incubus (1966), which stars William Shatner and was filmed entirely in the constructed language Esperanto, making it the second film to use that language.

Through his production company Daystar Productions, Stevens created the ABC television series Stoney Burke (1962–63) and The Outer Limits (1963–65), on which he served as executive producer and wrote or directed a number of episodes, including the pilot, The Galaxy Being, for which he also supplied the voice of the extraterrestrial. Film composer Dominic Frontiere maintained a long working relationship with Daystar Productions as a production executive. Stevens went on to serve as writer, director, and executive producer on the pilot film and major episodes of It Takes a Thief and McCloud, and wrote and produced installments for The Invisible Man and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, which he co-developed with Glen A. Larson. He produced the first-season Tony Franciosa episodes of The Name of the Game and created the NBC science fiction series Search (1972–73). Director Alan J. Levi has alleged that Stevens wrote the original script for the 1978 Battlestar Galactica pilot episode, though Stevens received only a supervising producer credit on that production. Stevens also contributed writing to the revival of The Outer Limits between 1996 and 1997.

Stevens is credited with coining the term "bottle show" to describe a television episode produced quickly and at minimal cost. He also wrote est: The Steersman Handbook (1970), an early work of New Age philosophy, and his contributions to the New Age movement and their relationship to The Outer Limits are examined in the book Taoism for Dummies (John Wiley and Sons Canada, 2013). Stevens was married five times, to Ruth Mostoller, Kate Manx, Allyson Ames, Yolanda Kocourek, and Shakti Chen. He died on April 24, 1998, in Los Angeles, California, at the age of 74, from complications following an emergency angioplasty.