Evelyn Venable

A delicately lovely leading lady who, after brief stage experience with Walter Hampden's Shakespearean stock company, Evelyn Venable was signed by Paramount and made her debut in director Mitchell Leisen's first film, the sensitive "Cradle Song" (1933). Generally cast as sweet, demure types, Venable received several good opportunities opposite the popular Will Rogers in "David Harum" (1934), in the "old dark house" mystery "The Double Door" (1934), and as Shirley Temple's sister in "The Little Colonel" (1935). Her finest performance, though, was her truly haunting Grazia, carrying on a love affair with Death in the form of an exotic prince (Fredric March) in Leisen's allegorical fantasy "Death Takes a Holiday" (1934). Of interest to trivia buffs was Venable's serving as the model for the illustration of a torch-bearing woman which served as the logo for Columbia Pictures.

Inexplicably, however, Venable's career soon declined; by mid-1935 she was playing a modest supporting role in the fine Katharine Hepburn vehicle "Alice Adams." She did, however, appear in both leading and supporting roles for the rest of the decade in B-films at both major and "poverty row" studios; some of these include "Star for a Night" (1936), "The Frontiersman" (1938), "Hollywood Stadium Mystery" (1938) and "Lucky Cisco Kid" (1940). After providing the voice of the Blue Fairy in Disney's classic animated feature, "Pinocchio" (1940), Venable made one more film in 1943 before retiring to raise her children by cinematographer Hal Mohr. She later earned a Master's degree in Latin and taught for many years on the faculty of UCLA.