Grace Lee Whitney

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Grace Lee Whitney

Birth name:	Mary Ann Chase
Date of birth:	1 April 1930
Place of birth:	Ann Arbor, Michigan USA
Characters:	Janice Rand

Grace Lee Whitney (born 1 April 1930; age 78) was featured on Star Trek as Yeoman Janice Rand under Captain James T. Kirk (TOS) and Communications Officer under Captain Hikaru Sulu. (Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country). She was born Mary Ann Chase, in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

A prolific actress in the 1950s and 1960s, Whitney debuted on the Broadway stage in "Top Banana" before going on to appear in the 1954 motion picture of the same name. She worked with Jeffrey Hunter in the film The Man from Galveston (1963). Whitney guested on several well-known television series including "Bewitched", "Batman", "Mannix" and Gene Roddenberry's own "Police Story", co-starring DeForest Kelley. She also appeared alongside her TOS co-star George Takei in a 1998 episode of "Diagnosis Murder".

Intended to appear in far more episodes than she ultimately did, Whitney's Yeoman Rand was often written out of episodes, due to the actress' struggle with alcohol, weight, and drug issues. In her autobiography, The Longest Trek: My Tour of the Galaxy, Whitney describes two incidents in which she was sexually assaulted by members of the Star Trek production team, neither of which are identified by name. Replaced by Dr. Helen Noel in "Dagger of the Mind", Whitney was ultimately fired, appearing only in the background of her final episode, "The Conscience of the King". Sliding deeper into addiction and even prostitution, Whitney began her recovery in the 1980s and has gone on to appear in many more Star Trek productions, most recently the 2007 fan films, Star Trek: Of Gods and Men and the Star Trek: New Voyages episode "World Enough and Time" (again working with George Takei).