Mamie Van Doren has shared a chilling chapter from her past in her new memoir. The Hollywood icon revealed that she narrowly escaped becoming part of a doomed sea voyage with her former boyfriend, actor Steve Cochran.
While Van Doren declined his invitation to join him aboard his schooner, the trip ended in tragedy when Cochran died at sea, leaving three young women stranded for days alongside his decomposing body.
Mamie Van Doren Almost Became Part Of Steve Cochran’s Fatal Journey
Van Doren’s chilling story begins with her relationship with actor Steve Cochran, whom she starred alongside in the 1959 films ‘The Big Operator‘ and ‘The Beat Generation‘. While the pair shared both screen time and a romance, Van Doren never became fully invested in their relationship despite Cochran’s strong feelings for her.
Looking back, she recalled Cochran’s confidence when it came to women. “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 wrote in her memoir.
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At one point, Van Doren jokingly asked whether she was simply another woman among his many romances. The conversation quickly became more serious. “‘No, Mamie, you’re different. I never told the other thirty-eight I loved them. I love you,'” she remembers him saying. While the declaration surprised her, it also reinforced her doubts. “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 the mid-1960s, Van Doren had already begun distancing herself from Cochran. As a single mother raising her young son and focusing on her career, she felt it was time to slow the relationship down. That decision led her to decline an invitation that would later prove life-changing. Cochran asked her to join him on another film project that would involve sailing to Mexico aboard his schooner, the Rogue. Instead of accepting, Van Doren chose to remain at home.
She explained in the memoir that she “had already decided to gently put on the brakes of our relationship.” She added, “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.”
What happened next transformed a routine career decision into a narrow escape. Shortly after Van Doren declined the offer, Cochran left on the voyage without her. Three young Mexican women joined him aboard the schooner as the group headed south.
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The Horrifying Fate Mamie Van Doren Escaped
The trip quickly turned into a nightmare. During the voyage, Cochran became seriously ill. According to Van Doren, his condition deteriorated rapidly until he eventually died at sea. The women traveling with him suddenly found themselves trapped in an impossible situation. None of them knew how to sail the vessel. As a result, they drifted helplessly for days while Cochran’s body remained onboard and continued to decompose.
Recalling the ordeal, Van Doren wrote, “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.”
Contemporary reports later revealed that one of the schooner’s masts had broken during a storm before Cochran’s health collapsed. Despite his attempts to explain how to navigate the vessel toward safety, he died before the women could reach land. Authorities eventually recovered the drifting ‘Rogue‘ near the Guatemalan port town of Champerico. Looking back decades later, Van Doren knows that a single decision spared her from becoming one of the stranded passengers forced to endure ten days at sea with her dead lover’s decomposing body.
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