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
Willie Hammerstein vaudeville theatre on 110th Street, Manhattan, called Little Coney Island. He also managed burlesque shows. Willie Hammerstein managed his father's Olympia Theater, which opened in 1895. In November 1896 Willie Hammerstein brought the Cherry Sisters to the Olympia roof garden. The sisters put on a terrible act where they sang sentimental, dialect or patriotic songs. One of them played the piano and another banged a drum. Willie knew how bad they were. He provided a net that protected them when the audience, as expected, started throwing produce and garbage at the stage. The word spread, and the sisters became a