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Venetia Stevenson, the actress whose publicity machine propelled her onto journal covers, film screens, and a stage to simply accept an award for being “probably the most photogenic lady on this planet,” has died, her household confirmed Tuesday.
Her brother, the actor Jeffrey Byron, shared information of Stevenson’s demise on his Instagram web page. “This was not surprising since she had not been nicely for fairly a while,” he wrote, including that she had “lived a glamourous [sic] and busy life.”
Byron advised The Hollywood Reporterthat his sister had died in Atlanta on Monday, following a battle with Parkinson’s illness. Stevenson was 84.
“Should you’ve ever seen a dream strolling,” the legendary gossip columnist Hedda Hopper wrote in 1959, “it’s Venetia Stevenson.”
Born in 1938, Joanna Venetia Invicta Stevenson was the daughter of Robert Stevenson—who would ultimately be generally known as the Oscar-nominated director of Mary Poppins—and Anna Lee, the John Ford muse nicknamed the “British Bombshell.” The household moved to Hollywood when their daughter was lower than a 12 months outdated, its patriarch having freshly inked a contract with mega-producer David O. Selznick.
Venetia was 14 years outdated when she was scouted on a seashore by pinup photographer Peter Gowland, based on The HollywoodReporter. A frequent fixture on journal covers and in fanzine spreads in years to return, Stevenson had secured a contract with RKO Footage by 1956.
Relegated largely to tv appearances for the primary few years of her appearing profession, Stevenson nabbed her first starring position in a film in 1958, showing alongside Peter Brown and James Garner in Darby’s Rangers. She would go on to look in movies like 1959’s Island of Misplaced Ladies and the 1960 Christopher Lee car Horror Lodge.
Even earlier than making her manner onto the silver display, Stevenson had shortly established herself amongst Tinseltown’s glitterati. In early 1956, she married MGM star Russ Tamblyn—17 years outdated to his 21. They divorced a bit over a 12 months later however remained pals. Later, she can be romantically linked to co-star Audie Murphy in addition to rock ‘n’ roll god Elvis Presley.
Stevenson was additionally good pals with Hollywood heartthrob Tab Hunter, with Stevenson appearing as a confidante for him as he labored whereas closeted, not-so-secretly courting Psycho star Anthony Perkins. “I suppose I used to be a beard,” she mused within the 2015 documentary Tab Hunter Confidential.
In September 1957, Well-liked Pictures journal plucked Stevenson from a pool of 4,000 women, designating her “probably the most photogenic lady on this planet.” She accepted the award on CBS’ The Ed Sullivan Present, the place she met a good-looking, harmonizing rocker, Don Everly of the Everly Brothers.
Stevenson and Everly have been wed in 1962. She formally retired from appearing across the identical time; her ultimate movie position was in 1961’s little-known The Sergeant Was a Woman. The couple had three kids—Edan, Erin (who would go on to marry Weapons N' Roses’ Axl Rose, serving as inspiration for “Candy Little one O’ Mine”), and Stacy—and break up eight years later. Stevenson by no means remarried.