How Mamie Van Doren narrowly avoided being stranded at sea with dead lover's 'decomposed' body

Ryan ColemanMon, May 25, 2026 at 3:30 PM UTC

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Mamie Van Doren
Credit: Bettmann/GettyKey Points -

Mamie Van Doren tells a harrowing story of near-tragedy in her new memoir, You Thought I Was Dead.

The blonde bombshell says she nearly took a voyage with her "one-time boyfriend," actor Steve Cochran in 1965, but passed.

Cochran went on to die at sea during that trip, leaving his three other shipmates stranded and drifting for 10 days while his body "decomposed."

At 95, silver screen legend Mamie Van Doren, whose storied career spanned from the studio era to Slackers, has plenty of stories to tell. But few are as harrowing as the time she narrowly avoided being marooned for 10 days on a drifting schooner with the "decomposed" body of her famous lover.

In her new memoir, the outrageous You Thought I Was Dead, the star of bawdy comedies like Sex Kittens Go to College and gritty B-films like Running Wild looks back on the late ’50s, when she starred in a pair of films with the dashing troublemaker Steve Cochran.

"My one-time boyfriend, Steve Cochran, once modestly bragged that he had slept with every leading lady he ever worked with. I didn't pursue it. I have a few notches in my gun too," she quips. Van Doren and Cochran lined two films up for back-to-back release in 1959 — the crime drama The Big Operator, starring Mickey Rooney, and the attempted counterculture exposé The Beat Generation, which featured Louis Armstrong as himself.

They would never make another film together, but then they'd only have a few more years left for the opportunity. In 1965, Cochran's boat, a large schooner called the Rogue, was found drifting off the coast of Guatemala. Discovered on board were three terrified young Mexican women and Cochran, who had died 10 days prior. According to Van Doren, she was very nearly part of that fateful voyage.

Van Doren, Tony Curtis, and Mara Corday on the set of 'All American'
Credit: Bettmann/Getty

Van Doren recalls impishly asking Cochran if she was just "one of the pack" of his veritable horde of lovers, when he confessed to a tryst with Joan Crawford. "'No, Mamie, you're different. I never told the other thirty-eight I loved them. I love you,'" she remembers him saying. "That stopped me in my tracks. I was not in the market for true love at that stage of my life. Especially one as jealous and volatile as Steve Cochran."

By that point, Van Doren, who had previously been married to bandleader Ray Anthony from 1955 to 1961, "had already decided to gently put on the brakes of our relationship. When he asked me to do another movie with him, part of which would be shot on his sailboat on the way to Mexico, it was the perfect excuse for me to pass. I was a single mom with a young son who needed me, and I had another movie on the horizon."

That decision would spare her from unimaginable horrors.

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"A short time later, Cochran set sail on his boat with three girls he recruited in Mexico. When he fell ill during the voyage, his condition quickly worsened, and he ultimately died. Because none of the girls knew how to sail, they drifted aimlessly while Cochran’s body rapidly decomposed. After ten days, they were rescued by a passing fishing boat. It was trip I was glad to miss."

Born in Eureka, Calif. in 1917, Cochran roughed it for years in the great West as a cowboy before getting involved in troop entertainment during World War II. He was recruited by super-producer Samuel Goldwyn, the co-founder of Paramount Pictures, in 1945, and put immediately to work in films like Wonder Man and The Gay Senorita which exhibited his defined physique.

Cochran played notable roles in acclaimed films like White Heat, opposite James Cagney, and Storm Warning, opposite Ginger Rogers and Ronald Reagan. But his mysterious and troubling death would come to eclipse his accomplishments as a screen star.

Van Doren in 1956
Credit: Earl Leaf/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty

In 1965, he sailed south to Acapulco, Mexico, to commence production on a new film. Conflicting reports (per SFGate) describe Cochran placing ads in local newspapers for "young ladies" or "servants" to join him aboard the Rogue. Eventually, three did, and the group set sail for Costa Rica that June.

Contemporary news articles that featured interviews with the surviving passengers detail how one of the ships masts broke during a storm, after which, Cochran began to succumb to a rapidly worsening illness. He tried to explain to his shipmates how to steer the vessel toward safe harbors, but Cochran eventually died, leaving the three women to drift aimlessly while his body lay lifeless in the cabin.

The boat was eventually recovered near the Guatemalan port town of Champerico, and Cochran's body was flown to San Francisco, where he was buried beside his father.

You Thought I Was Dead is available in bookstores and online.

on Entertainment Weekly

Original Article on Source

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