Concurrently with his early television career, Stenn wrote the biographies Clara Bow: Runnin’ Wild (1988) and Bombshell: The Life and Death of Jean Harlow (1993), both edited by Jacqueline Onassis at Doubleday.
[2] While researching Bombshell, Stenn stumbled across a reference to a long-buried Hollywood scandal about an underage dancer whose career and life were derailed after she was brutally raped by an M-G-M sales representative at an exhibitors' convention in 1937, then stigmatized by the studio's aggressive cover-up of the crime.
[3] Stenn subsequently produced a documentary film on the subject, Girl 27 (2007), which incorporated footage of both the M-G-M exhibitors’ convention and of Douglas herself, who had agreed to appear on-camera for the first time shortly before her death.
The revelations regarding sexual misconduct by certain powerful men in the entertainment industry that received widespread media coverage beginning in late 2017 brought renewed attention to Girl 27, in recognition of its documentary evidence of the perennial existence of this systemic problem.
[5] Stenn has also been active in tracking down other films previously thought to have been lost, including at least one dozen short films featuring silent screen child star Baby Peggy;[6] the feature The Letter (1929), starring theatrical legend Jeanne Eagels;[7][8] and most recently, the original twelve-reel version of director James Whale's The Road Back (1937), which had been cut by almost thirty minutes after its original release at the behest of Nazi Germany.