Grace Lee Whitney (born Mary Ann Chase; April 1, 1930 – May 1, 2015) was an American actress and singer. Her entertainment career spanned over a half century in a variety of capacities in radio, on stage, in music as a singer and songwriter, in television and in movies. She played Janice Rand on the original Star Trek television series and subsequent Star Trek films.
Early life Whitney was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan and was adopted by the Whitney family, who changed her name to Grace Elaine. The family moved to Detroit where Whitney attended school. She started her entertainment career as a "girl singer" on Detroit's WJR radio at age 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.'101 Things You Didn't Know about Ann Arbor, Michigan : (but Are about to Find Out)' | Published: October 13, 2010 | Author: Horace Martin Woodhouse | URL: https://archive.org/details/101thingsyoudidn0000hora/page/n47/mode/2up?q=grace+lee+whitney (Internet Archive) During this time she trained to be a nurse for a year.
Early roles Radio Whitney was the original Chicken of the Sea mermaid character created in 1952. Chicken of the Sea has maintained the mermaid as its mascot over the years. Whitney came to play the iconic mermaid character while appearing on The Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy Show on CBS Radio. The show was broadcast in a front of a live studio audience with Whitney in costume and singing the tuna jingle.
Theater Whitney debuted at the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway in Top Banana, with Phil Silvers and Kaye Ballard in 1952, playing Miss Holland. Here she met her future husband, Sydney Stevan Dweck, who was a freelance drummer and percussionist and band member for the show.Obituary: Dr. S. Stevan Dweck (September 2024) | URL: https://www.ocregister.com/obituaries/dr-s-stevan-dweck-corona-del-mar-ca/ | accessed 30 March 2025 Following the successful run of the show in New York, she joined the cast in Hollywood, where she recreated the role in the 1954 musical film of the same name.Passafiume, Andrea."'Top Banana' Background of Musical and Film" tcm.com, accessed March 9, 2024
She was a chorus girl in the off-Broadway musicals Great to be Alive! (1953) and The Pajama Game (1956).
In 1960, while in Los Angeles, Whitney auditioned for and was cast in the starring role of Lucy Brown in the first national tour of The Threepenny Opera, taking over the role from Bea Arthur, who had played the part in New York off-Broadway.
Film Her movie debut was in House of Wax (1953) in an uncredited role. 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 The Naked and the Dead (1958), The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond (1960) 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).
Television Whitney made more than 100 television appearances following her television dramatic debut in Cowboy G-Men in 1953 (credited as Ruth Whitney.)
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, Hawaiian Eye, The Outer Limits, Bewitched, Mannix, Death Valley Days, The Big Valley and The Virginian.
During the 1950s and early 1960s, Whitney was a frequent semi-regular 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. From 1957 to 1958, she appeared as a "Vanna-type adornment" on the popular daytime show Queen for a Day.
Star Trek
Whitney first met Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry when she was cast as the female lead "Sgt. Lilly Monroe" in Roddenberry's TV pilot Police Story which was filmed just weeks after the second Star Trek pilot in 1965.
Both shows shared many of the same crew including associate producer Robert H. Justman and executive in charge of production Herbert F. Solow and eventual Star Trek co-star DeForest Kelley. Police Story was not picked up but Star Trek was. (Police Story was later screened as a TV movie in 1967 along with several other failed pilots; by this time Star Trek was in its second season. The networks again chose not to pick up the show.)
Roddenberry cast Whitney in Star Trek as Yeoman Janice Rand, the personal assistant to Captain James T. Kirk. While the stars of the show were William Shatner (Captain Kirk) and Leonard Nimoy (Mr. Spock), Whitney shared the same billing as DeForest Kelley, who played Dr. McCoy.
On September 1, 1966, one week before the first episode screened on NBC, Whitney, Shatner and Nimoy were interviewed by Barbara Walters on The Today Show where they discussed the new show.'Tales of Lost TV: Star Trek Cast on the Today Show (1966)' | Date: September 21, 2017 | Author: Robert Jay | URL: https://www.tvobscurities.com/2017/09/tales-of-lost-tv-star-trek-cast-today-show-1966/ | Television Obscurities (Accessed March 13, 2024) The first promotional photographs for Star Trek also featured Shatner, Nimoy and Whitney—separately and together—with pre-production costumes for all and an early version of the "beehive" hairstyle that Whitney's character had in the filmed episodes.'The Sixties Special' | Publication: TV ZONE SPECIAL #3 | Date: November 1991 | Pages: 16-17 | Publisher: Irwin Allen Productions | URL: https://archive.org/details/TV_Zone_Special_03_1991_The_sixties_NS2011/page/n15/mode/2up?q=grace+lee+whitney (Accessed March 17, 2024)
Whitney appeared in eight of the first 15 episodes, after which she was released from her contract. The official reason given for Whitney's departure from the show was that her character limited romantic possibilities for Captain Kirk.
At the time Whitney was guaranteed to appear in seven of the first 13 episodes and contracted for four days of work on each. However, she was used for nine additional days. On September 8, 1966, also the date of broadcast of the first episode of Star Trek, "The Man Trap", Whitney's agent was informed that her contract had been terminated, which was around a week prior to the shoot of her penultimate episode, "The Conscience of the King". Roddenberry told Whitney that he did not want to lose Rand as he wanted her relationship with Kirk to continue. In a memo to Star Trek showrunner Gene Coon on October 27, 1966, Roddenberry suggested bringing Whitney back as Rand, albeit with a different hairstyle, similar to the one she had in Police Story, as this "made her look much younger and softer", but she was never invited back to the series.
Whitney said that, while still under contract, she was sexually assaulted by an executive associated with the series. Later, in a public interview, she stated that Leonard Nimoy had been her main source of support during that time. She went into more details about the assault in her book The Longest Trek, but refused to name the executive, saying in the book, "This is my story, not his."
After Star Trek
In between TV guest spots Whitney returned to singing and in 1968 opened her own dress design firm, modeling her own designs while performing. She starred in the 1968 Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color two-part TV episode "Way Down Cellar."
After marrying her second husband in 1970 Whitney took a break from acting to work on her singing career while she and her new husband lived at their home in San Fernando Valley raising the children along with four Great Dane dogs.'The best of Trek : from the magazine for Star Trek fans', Published: 1978, Authors: Walter Irwin (Editor), G.B. Love (Editor), Publisher: NAL Signet, , pages 177-179
Return to Star Trek franchise
Whitney returned to the Star Trek franchise in the mid-1970s after DeForest Kelley saw Whitney in the unemployment line and told her that fans had been asking for her at fan conventions which were starting to become regular and numerous in the United States. She attended her first convention, "Equicon-76", in 1976 and was warmly received. She went on to attend Star Trek and science-fiction fan conventions regularly during the 1970s and 1980s, often performing with her band Star.
In the late 1970s there were talks of Star Trek returning as a new television series, as Star Trek: Phase II. The new series was officially announced on June 10, 1977. Coincidentally, having read the back cover of Susan Sackett's Letters to Star Trek book and discovering that one of the frequently asked questions sent into the production team was "Whatever happened to Grace Lee Whitney?", Whitney herself got in touch with Sackett and was invited along to meet with Roddenberry at his office in Paramount Studios. He hadn’t seen her in over 10 years, so he was excited and happy to see her and immediately offered to bring back the Rand character for Phase II, describing the removal of Rand from The Original Series as his greatest mistake and blaming it on NBC executives.
Despite considerable development, Paramount Pictures changed their minds about the TV series and instead decided on Star Trek returning as a motion picture. Star Trek: The Motion Picture began filming in August 1978 and was released in 1979. Whitney reprised her role as Janice Rand, with a promotion to chief petty officer and in the position of Transporter Chief.
She also made cameo appearances in subsequent films, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984) and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986). In Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991), she was cast as the Communications Officer of the USS Excelsior with another promotion, as Lieutenant Commander Janice Rand.
Five years later, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the franchise, she returned in the 1996 Star Trek: Voyager episode "Flashback", along with George Takei.
As well as these canonical appearances, Whitney reprised her role in two fan fiction Star Trek productions: Star Trek: New Voyages and Star Trek: Of Gods and Men. New Voyages premiered on August 24, 2007, while Of Gods and Men made its debut in late 2007. The latter was her final screen appearance as a Star Trek character. The fifth episode of fan-produced Star Trek Continues, episode "Divided We Stand" (released September 26, 2015), was dedicated to her "lovely and endearing spirit".
In 2009, Whitney appeared in the British Channel 4 TV film Bring Back... Star Trek with Justin Lee Collins.
Her final screen appearance was in the William Shatner documentary The Captains in 2011.
Later TV roles Whitney's roles in the 1970s included The Bold Ones, Cannon, The Next Step Beyond and Hart to Hart. In 1983, she had a small part in the television film The Kid with the 200 I.Q., with Gary Coleman. Her last TV guest appearance was in a 1998 episode of Diagnosis: Murder, which reunited her with her Star Trek colleagues George Takei, Walter Koenig and Majel Barrett.
Music
In the 1960s and 1970s, she sang with a number of orchestras and bands, including the Keith Williams Orchestra. Later, she concentrated on jazz/pop vocalizing while fronting for the band Star. With acting taking a back step in the mid 1970s, she performed with her band at Disneyland, bar mitzvahs, private parties, political events, schools and at Sci Fi conventions throughout the remainder of the 1970s, while raising her children.