During a performance in Los Angeles, she was recognized and offered several film contracts. After initially turning down the offers, she signed a contract with Paramount in 1932. Her contract was unique in that she would not have to cut her hair, pose for leg art, or perform in bit parts. A long-believed apocryphal story sprang up that she was forbidden by her father to engage in any kissing scenes in her films, and although this eventually proved to be false, e.g. in Streamline Express (1935), she indeed does not have any kissing scenes in her most memorable films, not even in Death Takes a Holiday (1934), in which she falls in love with Fredric March, or The Little Colonel (1935), in which she plays Shirley Temple’s mother. She played the lead or second lead in a series of films in the 1930s, and claims to be the original model for the Columbia Pictures logo, though the studio has never confirmed it.

She met cinematographer Hal Mohr on the set of the Will Rogers film David Harum (1934). They argued over her make-up the first day on set, apologized to each other the next, and Mohr proposed by the end of the week. Venable had fallen for him but insisted they wait a year to marry because she feared a doomed Hollywood marriage and divorce. They married on December 7, 1934, and had two daughters, Dolores and Rosalia. They were vegetarians.

In 1943, Evelyn Venable retired from acting so that she could spend more time with her family. She resumed her studies at UCLA and became a faculty member there, teaching ancient Greek and Latin and organizing the production of Greek plays within the Classics department.

Her husband, Hal Mohr, died in 1974. She died of cancer in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, on November 15, 1993, four weeks past her 80th birthday.