K. T. Stevens

The daughter of director Sam Wood, Gloria Wood made her first film appearance when she was just two years old in her father's second 1921 silent film, Peck's Bad Boy.

As an adult, she changed her name to K. T. Stevens to distance herself from her father's fame. She initially called herself Katherine Stevens, which people often shorted to "Katie," leading to the final version with the initials "K.T."

Stevens gained theatrical experience by doing summer stock theatre in Skowhegan, Maine. Her Broadway credits include The Land Is Bright, Yankee Point, Nine Girls and Laura.

Stevens appeared in a number of films in the 1940s and 1950s, including The Great Man's Lady (1942) with Barbara Stanwyck, Address Unknown (1944), Port of New York (1949) with Yul Brynner,Harriet Craig (1950) with Joan Crawford and Vice Squad (1953) with Edward G. Robinson. She also appeared as Phyllis in the 1969 hit movie Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice.

Stevens acted on episodic television in such series as Crossroads, The Rebel, The Brothers Brannagan, and appeared on the daytime soap operas General Hospital as part of the original cast (1963-1965), portraying Peggy Mercer who was engaged to Dr. Steve Hardy, Julie Olson's mother-in-law Helen Martin (1966-1967, 1969) on Days of Our Lives and most memorably, The Young and the Restless (1977-1981) as the veiled facially burned Vanessa Prentiss who plotted against Lorie Brooks to keep her from marrying her son, Lance, then plotted to have Lorie accused of her murder after she committed suicide. In the episode "New Neighbors" of the CBS sitcom, I Love Lucy, she played opposite Hayden Rorke as television actors who Lucy Ricardo mistakenly believes are foreign secret agents.

Stevens appeared in 1957 and again in 1961 in different roles on ABC's The Real McCoys. In 1959 she made her first of three guest appearances on Perry Mason as murder victim Ethel Garvin in "The Case of the Dubious Bridegroom." In 1962 she played Margit Bruner in "The Case of the Ancient Romeo," and in 1965 she played Alice Munford in "The Case of the Hasty Honeymooner." In that episode she was featured as the wife of murderer Guy Munford, played by her then husband Hugh Marlowe. In 1961, she played Ada Kihlgren in "The Broken Wing", one of the last episodes of CBS's Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theater. That same year, she appeared as Lorraine Miller in "A Great Day for a Scoundrel" on CBS's The DuPont Show with June Allyson. Between 1960 and 1963, she guest starred five times on ABC's The Rifleman.

She portrayed Lieutenant Harriet Twain in the Buck Rogers in the 25th Century episode "Return of the Fighting 69th". Her last film role before her death from lung cancer was in the 1994 Whoopi Goldberg film Corrina, Corrina.

In 1946, Stevens married actor Hugh Marlowe. They divorced in 1968; the couple were the parents of two sons. Stevens and Marlowe acted in the Broadway production of "Laura" in which, credited as "A Girl" so as not to alert the audience, she played the part filmed by Gene Tierney.