Stella Hammerstein Stella Hammerstein Stella Hammerstein was an American actress. She was sometimes billed as Stella Steele. Hammerstein was the daughter of Oscar Hammerstein I and Malvina Jacobi Hammerstein, both of whom initially opposed her going into show business as a profession. In 1908, she told a "New York Times" reporter of her father's reaction when, at age 20, she told him that she was going into musical comedy: "Papa without more ado piled me over his knee and applied the hairbrush vigorously." Eventually he accepted her desire to be an actress. In 1902, Hammerstein joined the stock theater company headed by
Elaine Hammerstein were traveling at high speed up a curving hillside road when they struck an oncoming car. The six occupants of the Mexican vehicle all survived with minor injuries, but Hammerstein and her companions were trapped when their car skidded off the embankment and tumbled down the hill. Hammerstein, Kays and their three passengers – Los Angeles residents Jane Shafer Richards, Gladys Goldie Hall, and Richard Garvey Jr. – were all killed. At her death Elaine Hammerstein Kays was 51 years old and her husband was 66. They are interred at Calvary Cemetery in East Los Angeles. More than half of