Film & TV / Music
Grace Lee Whitney
1930–2015 · actress, singer
Star Trek's Yeoman Janice Rand, who grew up in Detroit and began her career at 14 as a girl singer on WJR radio.
- Born
Ann Arbor, Michigan- Died
Coarsegold, California
aged 85- Birth name
- Mary Ann Chase
- Detroit years
- 1930s–late 1940s
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Grace Lee Whitney was born Mary Ann Chase in Ann Arbor and adopted by the Whitney family, who named her Grace Elaine and moved to Detroit, where she went to school. At fourteen she was already singing on Detroit's WJR, the powerful station broadcasting from the Fisher Building, as a 'girl singer' in the big-band style of the day. She took the stage name Grace Lee Whitney and left for Chicago in her late teens, where she sang in nightclubs on bills with Billie Holiday and Buddy Rich and toured with the bands of Spike Jones and Fred Waring. Film and TV work followed, and in 1966 she was cast as Yeoman Janice Rand in the first season of Star Trek, a role she later reprised in several Star Trek films. After years of addiction she became sober in 1981 and devoted her later life to helping others recover, telling her story in the memoir The Longest Trek.
Highlights
- Yeoman Janice Rand in Star Trek (1966–1967) and several Star Trek films
- Sang on Detroit's WJR radio at age 14
- Sang in Chicago nightclubs alongside Billie Holiday and Buddy Rich
- Memoir The Longest Trek: My Tour of the Galaxy (1998)
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 1
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Performed here · 1944
Fisher Building
WJR has broadcast from the Fisher Building in New Center since December 1928; Whitney sang on the station at 14.