Grace Lee Whitney

At 85 years old, Grace Lee Whitney has this physical status:

Grace Lee Whitney (April 1, 1930 – May 1, 2015) was an American actress and singer.

Janice Rand appeared on the original Star Trek television series and subsequent Star Trek films.

Early life

Whitney was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on April 1, 1930, and the Whitney family adopted her name to Grace Elaine. She began her entertainment career on Detroit's WJR radio at the age of 14. After leaving home, she began to call herself Lee Whitney, eventually becoming known as Grace Lee Whitney. She toured with the Spike Jones and Fred Waring bands in Chicago in her late teens, opening in nightclubs for Billie Holiday and Buddy Rich.

Early roles

Whitney debuted on Broadway in Top Banana with Phil Silvers and Kaye Ballard, who played Miss Holland. Following the show's success, she rejoined the cast in Hollywood, where she revived her role in the 1954 film of the same name. Whitney was auditioning for and playing Lucy Brown in the national tour of The Threepenny Opera in Los Angeles, taking over Bea Arthur's role as the principal actor in New York off-Broadway.

Following her television debut in Cowboy G-Men in 1953, Whitney made more than 100 television appearances. She appeared on episodes of The Real McCoys, Wagon Train, Hennesey, The Roaring 20s, Gunsmoke, Bat Masterson, The Rifleman, The Rifleman, The Rifleman, 77 Sunset Strip, Mike Hammer, Batman, The Untouchables, and Hawaiian Eye.

Whitney was a regular semiregular on over 80 live television shows, including You Bet Your Life hosted by Groucho Marx in 1953, The Jimmy Durante Show, The Jimmy Durante Exhibition, and The Ernie Kovacs Exhibition, with a majority appearing in gag sketches. She appeared as a "Vanna-type adornment" on the popular daytime show Queen for a Day from 1957 to 1958.

"Controlled Experiment," an episode of The Outer Limits, Bernice Morse and Carroll O'Connor, Mannix, Death Valley Days, The Big Valley, and The Virginian were among her other appearances. She appeared in the episode "The Tin Horn" on The Rifleman in 1962. In the episode "It Shouldn't Happen to a Dog" (Bewitched), she played Babs Livingston, a female character.

In Billy Wilder's comedy Some Like It Hot (1959), Whitney was cast as a member of the all-female band. She performed several scenes with Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, and Marilyn Monroe, including the "upper berth" sequence. She appeared in House of Wax (1953), Top Banana (1954), The Naked and the Dead (1958), and Pocketful of Miracles (1961). In the drama A Public Affair (1962), Whitney was credited as Tracey Phillips and as Texas Rose in the Western The Man from Galveston (1963). Billy Wilder played Kiki the Cossack in Irma la Douce (1963).

Personal life and death

Scott and Jonathan Dweck, Whitney's two sons, were born. She moved to Coarsegold, California, in 1993 to be near Jonathan, and she "continued her service in Fresno and Madera [countries] completely dedicated to helping herself and others recover daily sobriety and a higher level of heroin use." Jonathan Dweck said that his mother preferred to be more known as a survivor of heroin use than as a Star Trek cast member.

Whitney used to attend Star Trek and science-fiction fan conventions from the 1980s.

In 2007, she made her last film appearance (and as a Star Trek character) in the fan fiction film Of Gods and Men. She made her last screen appearance in The Captains, a William Shatner film from 2011.

Whitney died of natural causes at her Coarsegold home on May 1, 2015, at the age 85.

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