Sultry, glamorous blonde Venetia Stevenson was a British-born starlet of late 1950s Hollywood whose face was her initial fortune; the camera simply adored her and, in her early years, she dotted the covers of several magazines. Her acting talent, however, never measured up and, within a few years, she willingly retired.
Born in London on March 10, 1938, Venetia came from strong entertainment stock. Her mother, actress Anna Lee, was a well-known co-star of the British cinema, and her father, director Robert Stevenson, was well-respected for his directing of such classy Grade “A” motion pictures as Tudor Rose (1936), King Solomon’s Mines (1937), Back Street (1941) and Jane Eyre (1943). Just prior to the beginning of WWII in Europe, the family moved to Hollywood. By 1944, her parents had divorced and Venetia, eventually, decided to live with her father and new stepmother.
Venetia’s photogenic beauty was apparent from the start. As part of the youthful Hollywood scene, she was quickly discovered and moved with ease into junior modeling work. This, plus her parents’ obvious connections, led to a natural progression into acting. Self-admittedly, she was never a confidant actress. Making her TV debut playing a corpse on Matinee Theater (1955), she also appeared with her mother and the husband/wife team of Fernando Lamas and Arlene Dahl in a 1955 Arizona stage production of “Liliom”, in order to gain experience. Signed with RKO, Venetia took acting lessons and posed for publicity stills but she made little progress there. Warner Bros. eventually took her on and she made several guest appearances on TV, including that of Ricky Nelson’s girlfriend on the popular series, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (1952). Other WB series work included roles on Cheyenne (1955) and 77 Sunset Strip (1958).
Venetia made her film entrance with a decorous, second-lead femme role in the WB war picture The Young Invaders (1958), starring James Garner, Peter Brown and Edd Byrnes. As part of the Hollywood dating swirl, there were obvious set-ups with such big stars as Tab Hunter, Anthony Perkins and, even, Elvis Presley. Such a set-up led to a 1956 marriage to up-and-coming actor/dancer Russ Tamblyn, but the bloom quickly fell off the rose and the couple divorced a year later.
For the most part. Venetia was cast as a beautiful distraction in action-adventure and crime movies. Her handful of hunky movie co-stars included Jeff Richards and Guy Madison. Such routine roles in Day of the Outlaw (1959), Island of Lost Women (1959), Studs Lonigan (1960), Seven Ways from Sundown (1960), The City of the Dead (1960), which was made in her native England and released here as “Horror Hotel”, and The Sergeant Was a Lady (1961), her last, did little to boost her feelings of adequacy or her Hollywood ranking. Mother Anna Lee, who found renewed recognition as a daytime soap doyenne (“Lila Quartermaine” on General Hospital (1963)), appeared in support of her daughter in two films: Jet Over the Atlantic (1959) and The Big Night (1960). Divorced from Tamblyn, Venetia married one of The Everly Brothers, Don Everly, of “Wake Up, Little Susie” fame, in 1962. At this point, she had no qualms about retiring from the ever-competitive acting world and did so. The couple went on to have two daughters and a son. Stacy Everly and Erin Everly both dabbled in acting, and son Edan Everly delved into music as both a singer and guitarist. He also teaches music and produces/writes for other artists.
In later years, Venetia became a script reader for Burt Reynolds’s production company and, subsequently, became vice-president of Cinema Group, a production company that made several films in the 1980s. Since her 1970 divorce from Everly, the still-beautiful lady, who enjoys horseback riding, had not remarried.
Venetia died in 2022 aged 84.
The telegraph obituary in 2022
. Venetia Stevenson, who has died aged 84, was a Hollywood starlet and model who was once described as “the most photogenic girl in the world”; her face adorned magazine covers – as well as cans of Tennent’s Sweetheart Stout.
Her father was the British-born director Robert Stevenson, best known for Mary Poppins, The Love Bug and Bedknobs and Broomsticks, while her mother Anna Lee, also born in Britain, was Arthur Conan Doyle’s goddaughter who became known as “The British Bombshell” and starred in How Green Was My Valley.
Joanna Venetia Invicta Stevenson was born in London on March 10 1938, but the family moved within a year to Hollywood, where her father worked for the producer David O Selznick. Her parents divorced when she was six, Venetia staying with her father and her new stepmother, Frances.
She enjoyed a life of privilege: “All those I associated with were movie stars or the children of movie stars. I had no idea of the cost of anything beyond fame. I did witness how in Hollywood youth is everything, and growing old makes people irrelevant
By her own admission, Venetia Stevenson only dated celebrities. On St Valentine’s Day 1956, she married Russ Tamblyn before he found fame in Tom Thumb (1958) and West Side Story (1961), but he left her a year later for another starlet, Irish McCalla.
After that she played the field for a few years, and the celebrated Hollywood gossip columnists Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons gave her as many column inches as the likes of Natalie Wood. Her beaus included Elvis Presley, Robert Wagner, Audie Murphy and Guy Madison, earning her the sobriquet of “Hollywood’s Most Dated Doll
When she was interviewed for the 2015 documentary Tab Hunter Confidential, Venetia Stevenson revealed that as a client of the agent Dick Clayton, who had a roster of secretly gay actors, she and other actresses such as Debbie Reynolds and Charlotte Austin were used as “beards” to protect closeted actors, including Tab Hunter and Anthony Perkins, who had a long-term relationship.
Her career had begun when she was spotted in her teens on the beach in Malibu by the glamour photographer Peter Gowland (son of the British-born actor Gibson Gowland, who had appeared in The Birth of a Nation). She modelled for him, and made the covers of magazines that included Gentlemen’s Quarterly and Esquire
In 1956 she signed with RKO and was promptly listed among the hottest newcomers by Hedda Hopper. She beat 4,000 hopefuls to the title “the most photogenic girl in the world” for Popular Photography magazine, and was presented with the honour on The Ed Sullivan Show. It was around this time that the George Younger Brewery at Alloa, Clackmannanshire, started using her image on cans of their Sweetheart Stout (later made by Tennent Caledonian).
In acting, meanwhile, she was mostly on television from the mid-1950s, on popular shows such as Cheyenne and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. On the big screen she was in the war film The Young Invaders (1958), in the B-movie favourite Island of Lost Women (1959), the disaster flick Jet Over the Atlantic (1959), starring Guy Madison and her mother, Anna Lee.
In the British horror The City of the Dead (1960), starring Christopher Lee, she was a student researching witchcraft in a spooky Massachusetts town, starring Christopher Lee, and the same year was in the western Seven Ways from Sundown, starring Audie Murphy.
She then confronted the suits at Warner’s, demanding better parts. But she was shown the door, and retired after playing the lead in the 1961 army comedy The Sergeant Was a Lady.
She became a script reader for Burt Reynolds’s production company, and in the 1980s worked as a producer and film consultant. She was also much in demand as a guest at film fairs and retrospectives.
Following Russ Tamblyn, her second husband was Don Everly of the Everly Brothers, whom she married in 1962. They divorced in 1970, and she is survived by their two daughters, Erin – who was briefly married to the Guns N’ Roses frontman Axl Rose – and Stacey, and a son, Edan, the singer-songwriter.