Steffi Sidney-Splaver never flaunted her inside Hollywood connections, not even a film role with the legendary James Dean.

“She knew all the really top stars of that era when she was a child,” her husband, Rick Splaver of Langley, said Monday.

“Major, major stars came to her house,” Splaver said. “She just grew up with them. Leonard Bernstein played the piano in her living room.”

“She was never a snob about this stuff,” he added. “She liked to reminisce, but she never looked down on people.”

Sidney-Splaver, of Langley, who at age 20 appeared with Dean in his most famous movie, 1955’s “Rebel Without a Cause,” died Feb. 22 in Seattle’s Swedish Medical Center of kidney failure. She was 74.

She and her husband had moved to Whidbey Island in 1998, winding down a public relations firm they ran together since the 1980s in Southern California.

The daughter of a noted Hollywood columnist, Sidney-Splaver was born on April 16, 1935 in Los Angeles and grew up around movie stars and other Tinseltown characters.

She and her older sister, Nina, attended children’s birthday parties for child star Shirley Temple, Splaver said.

“She spoke of Jimmy Cagney pacing the hospital floor with her father when she was born, and Gary Cooper giving her her first dog,” he said.

Her father, Sidney Skolsky, dished the celebrity news from his stool at Schwab’s Pharmacy on Sunset Boulevard, where several movie stars were said to have been discovered.

“She was especially proud of the fact that her father was the first person to call the Academy Awards statuette ‘Oscar’ in print,” he said.

Sidney-Splaver befriended many stars of the day, including Marilyn Monroe and Susan Strausberg, her husband said.

Strausberg, daughter of famous acting coach and family friend Lee Strausberg, became her best friend and named her godmother to her daughter, Jennifer.

“Steffi had a terrific laugh,” Splaver said. “Kind of crystal tinkly and giggly. Susan Strausberg once said she knew Steffi was in the audience, because she could hear her laugh.”

After studying at the Actors Lab in Los Angeles, Sidney-Splaver landed her first movie role in “The Eddie Cantor Story” in 1953, which her father produced.

Two years later, billed as Steffi Sidney, she played “Millie” in “Rebel Without a Cause,” a film about teenage torment starring Dean and Natalie Wood.

In the film, she was one of a group of teens who taunted Dean’s character.

In 2000, just before a special showing of the film attended by surviving cast members, Sidney-Splaver told a Los Angeles Times reporter about a drive in one of the actor’s Porsches she and Dean took during a break from shooting.

“I started talking to him, and he said, ‘Don’t talk to me. I never talk when I’m driving,’” she said.

Dean died in a car crash on Sept. 30, 1955 at age 24.

Sidney-Splaver and Dean ran into each other a month before he died at a Hollywood party for Frank Sinatra.

“Jimmy came in with his then-girlfriend, Ursula Andress, who couldn’t speak a word of English,” Sidney-Splaver told a Times reporter.

“He was very drunk,” she was quoted in the story. “He came over to me and threw his arm around me and said, ‘We’ve never taken a picture together, Steffi.’ I said, ‘Fine, let’s take a picture.’ Afterwards he got thrown out.”

Her husband said that that may have been one of the few times his wife passed along gossip, despite numerous requests from publishers and journalists.

“Steffi had no real dirt,” Splaver said Monday. “Only Dean’s possible inebriation at a party. Today that would be pure Pablum.”

During her brief acting career, Sidney-Splaver also appeared in a few other movies, including “Hold Back Tomorrow” (1955), “Peyton Place” (1957) and “The Hot Angel” (1958) before leaving films to write about Hollywood for teen magazines, and to produce for television.

She married television-commercial producer Splaver in 1985. A brief earlier marriage to talent manager Leonard Grant had ended in divorce.

She and Splaver formed their public relations agency, Splaver Associates, focusing on the television industry.

Splaver said the couple had never heard of Whidbey Island until his wife came to Edmonds to visit friends. They took her on a tour of Puget Sound, ending with a ride down the island from the north.

Splaver said that when she came down the hill into Langley, the view of the village and the sea reminded her of one of her favorite California places, Mendocino.

They returned to the island together for a visit, and decided to build a small house in Langley to use as a second home.

Property here was so cheap at the time compared to Southern California, “we used to joke that we could buy a house for our sushi money for a year,” Splaver said. “We lived happily ever after.”

They moved here permanently 12 years ago.

“It was a period of adjustment for both of us,” Splaver said of island life after the Beverly Hills fast track.

“I couldn’t sleep for a week. It was too quiet.”

Splaver said the couple eventually decided to cut back on their public relations business “by attrition,” not replacing clients when they left.

“It worked,” he said. They retired in 2003.

Splaver said the couple spent much of their time “hopping on and off the island,” and enjoyed the cultural scene in Seattle. Sidney-Splaver was a volunteer supporter of the Seattle Repertory Theater.

“It was always great to get on the ferry and come back here,” Splaver said.

His wife also immersed herself in arts and crafts, working with paper and stamps to make cards and other decorative items.

Classes in the activity were conducted by their Langley next-door neighbor, Lynda Glassmoyer.

“She was fun in a group setting,” Glassmoyer said Monday. “Spunky is the first word that always comes to mind. She was enthusiastic about anything she was doing.”

Glassmoyer said that during the classes, Sidney-Splaver would offer “snippets” of her Hollywood days, but would never go into much detail.

“She was always a great presence in the room,” Glassmoyer said. “Everyone who met her would remember her.”

Splaver said that at the time of her death, his wife was working on a book of Hollywood anecdotes, “Upon a Time in Hollywood by the Daughter of the Man Who Gave ‘Oscar’ its Name.”

He said the book has yet to find a publisher, mostly because there isn’t enough “dirt” in it.

“Hollywood is very, very snobby,” Splaver said. “Even the groupies become snobs. That wasn’t Steffi’s attitude. She had an honest interest in people.”

“She was never enthusiastic about any book about herself,” he added.

“She was bold and intrepid, yet she had a very vulnerable, caring side,” Splaver added. “She had a spectrum of characteristics that worked very well together in that little body of hers.”

Sidney-Splaver is survived by her husband, and her sister Nina.

A local memorial service will be at 2 p.m. Saturday, March 27, at Langley United Methodist Church, Third Street and Anthes Avenue in Langley.

Another service will be at Mount Sinai/Forest Lawn Cemetery in Hollywood Hills, Calif. on April 16.