By the time The Bold and the Beautiful debuted in 1987, the former Stephanie Douglas had already helped designer husband Eric Forrester turn their fashion house into such a lucrative business that all their competitors could do was exclaim, “What the frock!” The couple’s division of labor? He sketched the gowns, she wore the pants in their relationship.

Although Stephanie and Eric had churned out a line of inordinately attractive children — the curiously named Ridge and Thorne as well as Felicia and Kristen — the Forresters’ marriage lay in tatters. Why? At heart, the family man was a playboy who was forever having his head turned by other women, from old flame Beth Logan to besotted assistant Margo Lynley.

When not wringing her hands over Eric’s straying — the only surefire way to keep from throttling him! — Stephanie busied herself by meddling in the lives of her kids. Golden boy Ridge was by far her favorite, but she did care about the lot of ’em. For instance, fearing that Kristen was frigid, Mom went so far as to hire designer Clarke Garrison to thaw her out.

By the time Stephanie revealed to Eric that stillborn daughter Angela wasn’t dead, just brain-damaged and comatose, she really was dead and had been replaced with an actress whose specialty was napping by a caretaker reluctant to stop receiving the fat checks that Mrs. Moneybags mailed every month. If Eric hadn’t known before that his wife could keep a secret, this should’ve been a heckuva tipoff!

How did Stephanie hate Brooke Logan? Let us count the ways. First, the queen bee despised the younger woman because she was Beth’s daughter. Then, Stephanie also detested Brooke because she sought to steal Ridge away from fiancée Caroline Spencer. Then, as if all that wasn’t bad enough, the Forrester family’s matriarch loathed Brooke because she seduced Eric right out from under her!

As the years passed, unbelievably, Stephanie’s animosity toward Brooke continued to grow. Not only did “the slut from the Valley” pop out one (Bridget) after another (Rick) of Eric’s new line of designer offspring, she kept boomeranging back into Ridge’s arms. To top it all off, Brooke got involved with Thorne, thereby giving Mom a reason to remember that he existed.

Able to smell a rat at 20 paces, Stephanie had no trouble whatsoever sensing that Sheila Carter was as interested in sinking her claws into Eric’s wallet as she was into him. Ha — if only that had been the worst that the Young & Restless psycho had had in (warped) mind. Before all was said and done, the homicidal maniac had shot Stephanie and myriad other Forresters.

Years after Stephanie strong-armed Ridge’s teenage sweetheart Morgan DeWitt into aborting their child, the designing woman conspired to get pregnant again by her ex. Miraculously, her cuckoo plan worked. (Don’t ask.) In response, Stephanie drugged her tea, and when ultimately Morgan lost the baby, she also lost her marbles and enrolled in scary clown college. You know, as one will.

The arrival in Los Angeles of Stephanie’s old beau, shipping magnate Massimo Marone, was accompanied by a jaw-dropping reveal: He and not Eric was Ridge’s biological father. This was a big, big deal. Until it wasn’t anymore. By now, the plot point has all but been forgotten and Thorne, banished once again to his usual place in Ridge’s shadow.

Stephanie was disgusted, if not surprised, to discover that Brooke had had a fling with daughter Bridget’s husband, Deacon Sharpe. But when the fertile Myrtle went into labor with their love child at the Big Bear cabin, rather than shrug, “Good luck with that, toots!” Stephanie pitched in and helped her archrival give birth to baby Hope.

Although for decades Stephanie had been at odds with Sally Spectra, whose fashion house was constantly ripping off Forrester designs, the two eventually buried the hatchet — and not in one another’s backs, either. All it took was a whole lot of alcohol and a soused Sally giving her new pal an extreme makeover. Looking back, Stephanie was probably lucky she didn’t lose an ear!

“Here we go again!” Stephanie sighed when Eric was led by his zipper toward Massimo’s estranged wife, Jackie Payne. And when the latest “other woman” just happened to go flying off the balcony at the Forrester mansion? What could Stephanie sigh, then, but “Here we go again again”? She just knew that although Jackie had taken the tumble, she herself would be taking the fall!

Much in the same way that Stephanie always favored Ridge over Thorne, she also preferred Ridge’s spare wife Taylor Hayes to Brooke. So when the shrink rose from the grave, Stephanie pretended that she’d had a near-fatal heart attack in order to ensure that her son remarried her and not “the whore of Beverly Hills.” After all, nothing says “Marry her!” quite like one’s mother having a near-fatal heart attack.

When Brooke got mixed up with Bridget’s latest ex, Ridge’s half brother Nick Marone, Stephanie took it in stride. By which we mean that she gift-wrapped a gun and presented it to the strumpet in hopes that she would turn it on herself. Spoiler alert: Brooke did not turn the weapon on herself.

No matter how many times Eric broke Stephanie’s heart — in the end, her poor ticker must’ve been held together with Scotch tape and wishful thinking! — she never could quit the philanderer, not really. So as their daughter Felicia was “dying” of cancer, Mommy remarried Daddy.

When Stephanie confronted Mommie Dearest Ann (TV icon Betty White) about the abuse she’d suffered at her father’s hand, tea was served but no sympathy. It wouldn’t be until much later that Ann would admit that she’d turned a blind eye to her late husband’s mistreatment of their older child.

At least by the time Ann reached the end of her days, she and Stephanie had mended their fractured relationship. Stephanie and kid sister Pam even got to show their mom one last beautiful sight before she crossed over.

Perhaps the wickedest deed that Stephanie ever committed was setting up Brooke to be raped. In the aftermath, perhaps not surprisingly, the mother of all connivers was shot. Whodunit? Half of L.A. had a reason to want to sing, “Ding-dong, the witch is dead!” But the culprit turned out to be someone who was…

Brooke’s brother, Storm, had tried (and failed) to lay Stephanie to unrest. He then attempted (in vain) to frame his father for the crime, accidentally shot kid sister Katie (for reals) and committed suicide to ensure that she received a replacement heart in time to save her life.

After being thrown over by Eric for Brooke’s sister Donna, Stephanie rebounded by teaming up with tycoon Bill Spencer, who took over Forrester Creations for a hot minute. A very fun hot minute. Only after Donna made the mistake of blaming Stephanie for Beth’s death did Eric pull another wife swap and reunite with his OG missus.

Like daughter, like father. Refusing to accept that La Forrester wasn’t responsible for Beth’s passing, her widower Stephen seduced impressionable Pam, enticed her to quit taking her meds and put a gun in her hands in hopes that she’d give her sister a one-way ticket to the grave. Nice try, pal. Pam instead took aim at Stephen, who in turn… Well, you can see what he did in turn.

Stephanie originally took a hard pass on receiving treatment for lung cancer. But after meeting down-on-her-luck Dayzee Leigh, the gazillionaire changed her tune and decided that she had to, had to, had to live, if only so that she could advocate for the homeless (which, coincidentally, the she had been during a bout of amnesia decades earlier).

To celebrate 50 years with Stephanie, give or take a marriage or three to a Logan, Eric had Sally’s old pal Phyllis Diller Gladys Pope officiate as they retied the knot. Re-retied it? Re-re-re? Suffice it to say, the on-again/off-again exes married a lot.

Maybe Stephanie didn’t have quite the same kind of fun in bed with Eric that Brooke did. But no one could say that the marrieds didn’t have a grand time!

In 2012, Stephanie was informed that her lung cancer had returned. Though her loved ones encouraged her to fight the disease as hard as she ever had Brooke, Stephanie declined treatment. Instead, she savored her final days before finally slipping away at the Big Bear cabin with, of all people, Brooke by her side.

In the years that followed, Eric regained the spring in his step with younger woman Quinn Fuller, then — as he’d done so often with Stephanie — traded her in for a Logan, in this case, Donna. But there would only ever be one Mrs. Forrester whose portrait truly deserved to hang over the mantel in the living room.

Thankfully, more than Stephanie’s memory lives on, so does her namesake Steffy, the daughter of Ridge and Taylor and, in her own right, a force to be reckoned with. Just ask the reddened left cheek of her monster-in-law, Sheila!