K.T. Stevens; Actress, Union President

K.T. Stevens, 74, film, stage and television actress who was president of the Los Angeles performers union. The daughter of film director Sam Wood, she grew up in Malibu and began acting in plays and films as a child under the name Katherine Stevens. Ms. Stevens was educated at USC and went on to play leading roles in such films as “Address Unknown” in 1944 and “Port of New York” in 1949. She made her Broadway debut in “The Land Is Bright” in 1941. Ms. Stevens found early success in the radio soap opera “Mr. Pepper’s Family” and later was popular in four major television soaps. Noting that she enjoyed “the challenge of a new script every day and the security of a fixed income,” she played Peggy Mercer on “General Hospital” from 1963 to 1965, Estelle Kimball on “Paradise Bay” in 1965 and 1966, Helen Martin on “Days of Our Lives” in 1966, 1967 and 1969, and Vanessa Prentiss on “The Young and the Restless” from 1976 to 1980. Always active in the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, Ms. Stevens served as Los Angeles president in 1986 and 1989 and on local and national AFTRA boards from 1978 until her death. On June 13 in Brentwood of cancer.