Grace Lee Whitney Wiki, Biography, Age, Spouse, Height, Net Worth, Fast Facts

Grace Lee Whitney Wiki, Biography

Whitney was born on April 1, 1930, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and was adopted by the Whitney family, who changed her name to Grace Elaine. She started her entertainment career as a “girl singer” on Detroit’s WJR radio at the age of 14. After she left home, she began to call herself Lee Whitney, eventually becoming known as Grace Lee Whitney. In her late teens, she moved to Chicago, where she opened in nightclubs for Billie Holiday and Buddy Rich, and toured with the Spike Jones and Fred Waring bands.

Whitney debuted on Broadway in Top Banana, with Phil Silvers and Kaye Ballard, playing Miss Holland. Following the successful run of the show, she joined the cast in Hollywood, where she recreated the role in the 1954 movie of the same name. While in Los Angeles, Whitney auditioned for and was cast in the starring role of Lucy Brown in the national tour of The Threepenny Opera, taking over the role from Bea Arthur, who had played the part in New York off-Broadway.^{[citation needed]}

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

During the 1950s and early 1960s, Whitney was a frequent semiregular on over 80 live television shows, including You Bet Your Life hosted by Groucho Marx in 1953, The Red Skelton Show, The Jimmy Durante Show, and The Ernie Kovacs Show, largely appearing in gag sketches.^[1] From 1957 to 1958, she appeared as a “Vanna-type adornment” on the popular daytime show Queen for a Day.^[1]

Her other appearances included an episode of The Outer Limits, “Controlled Experiment”, co-starring Barry Morse and Carroll O’Connor, Mannix, Death Valley Days, The Big Valley, and The Virginian. In 1962, she appeared in the episode of The Rifleman entitled “The Tin Horn”. In 1964, she played a character Babs Livingston on Bewitched in the episode “It Shouldn’t Happen to a Dog”.^[1]

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

Autobiography

Whitney’s autobiography, The Longest Trek: My Tour of the Galaxy, was released in 1998 (ISBN 1-884956-05-X). Along with her hiring and firing from Star Trek, the book recounts her work as the first Chicken of the Sea mermaid and her struggles with and eventual recovery from alcohol and substance abuse.

Personal life and death]

Whitney had two sons, Scott and Jonathan Dweck. She moved to Coarsegold, California, in 1993 to be close to Jonathan, and she “continued her fellowship work in Fresno and Madera [counties], completely dedicating her life to helping herself and others find daily sobriety and a higher power out of addiction.” Jonathan Dweck said his mother wanted to be known more as a survivor of addiction than as a Star Trek cast member. Whitney frequently attended Star Trek and science-fiction fan conventions from the 1980s.

Her last film appearance (and as a Star Trek character) was in the fan fiction film Of Gods and Men in 2007. Her final screen appearance was in the William Shatner documentary The Captains in 2011. Whitney died of natural causes at her home in Coarsegold on May 1, 2015, at age 85.

Daily Habits

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Net Worth

The Estimated Net worth is $80K – USD $85k.