K.T. Stevens (Gloria Wood)

K.T. Stevens

Actress. Born Gloria Wood, she was the daughter of legendary film director and producer Samuel Wood. At the age of 2, she got her start in films, in her father’s 2nd 1921 silent film “Peck’s Bad Boy” with Jackie Coogan. Following high school, she decided to pursue acting full-time, taking drama lessons and apprenticing in summer stock. In 1938 she toured in the productions “You Can’t Take It with You” and “My Sister Eileen”. The following year, she made her Broadway debut in a walk-on role in “Summer Light”, directed by Lee Strasberg. As an adult, she changed her name to K.T. Stevens to distance herself from her father’s fame. She appeared in a number of films in the 1940s and 1950s, including “The Great Man’s Lady” (1942, with Barbara Stanwyck), “Address Unknown” (1944, with Paul Lukas), “Port of New York” (1949, with Yul Brynner), “Harriet Craig” (1950, with Joan Crawford), “Vice Squad” (1953, with Paulette Goddard), and “Missile to the Moon” (1958, with Richard Travis). In 1946 she married actor Hugh Marlowe whom she had worked with on Broadway in “The Land is Bright” (1941), Additionally, she appeared on television episodes in such series as “I Love Lucy,” “Crossroads,” “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” “The Rebel,” “The Real McCoys,” “Perry Mason,” “The Brothers Brannagan,” “Dick Powell’s Zane Grey Theater,” “The DuPont Show with June Allyson,” “The Rifleman,” and “The Big Valley.” After her divorce from High Marlowe in 1967, she abandoned acting for a time in favor of teaching nursery school, eventually returning to television, in daytime soap operas, most notable “The Young and the Restless” (1973) as the veiled facially burned ‘Vanessa Prentiss’. Her final film performance was in “Corrina, Corrina” (1994, with Whoopi Goldberg) and she died of lung cancer soon afterward at the age of 74. She was the younger sister of actress Jeane Wood. (bio by: William Bjornstad)  Family links:  Parents:  Sam Wood (1883 – 1949)  Clara Louise Roush Wood (1886 – 1968)  Spouse:  Hugh Marlowe (1911 – 1982)*  Sibling:  Jeane Wood (1909 – 1997)*  K.T. Stevens (1919 – 1994) *Calculated relationship

Born

  • July, 20, 1919
  • Los Angeles, California

Died

  • June, 13, 1994
  • Los Angeles, California

Cause of Death

  • after battling lung cancer

Other

  • Cremated

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