Venetia Stevenson

Joanna Venetia Invicta Stevenson (10 March 1938 – 26 September 2022) was an English actress. Early life Born in 1938 in London, England, as Joanna Venetia Invicta Stevenson, she was the daughter of film director Robert Stevenson and actress Anna Lee. The family moved to Hollywood within a year of her birth after her father signed a contract with film producer David O. Selznick. When her parents divorced in 1944, she stayed with her father and new stepmother, Frances. After an education in exclusive Californian private schools, her theatrical debut was with her mother in Liliom, a play produced by the Sombrero Theater, in Phoenix, Arizona, in April 1955 and with the husband-and-wife team of Fernando Lamas and Arlene Dahl. A one-time Miss Los Angeles Press Club, Stevenson was placed on contract by RKO Pictures in November 1956. Hedda Hopper named Stevenson on her list of top movie newcomers in January 1957, alongside Jayne Mansfield. Hopper said of Stevenson, then 18, she is "the most purely beautiful of all the new crop of stars." Film and television actress On 13 March 1957, Stevenson was cast in CBS's Playhouse 90 adaptation of Charley's Aunt, with Tom Tryon, Jackie Coogan, and Jeanette MacDonald. On 12 November 1957, Stevenson appeared as Kathy Larsen in the episode "Trail's End" of the ABC/Warner Bros. Western series, Sugarfoot.