Actress Grace Lee Whitney, Star Trek's Yeoman Janice Rand, Has Died

SternisheFan writes: Grace Lee Whitney, the actress who played Yeoman Janice Rand on "Star Trek: The Original Series," reportedly died Friday in her home in Coarsegold, California. No cause of death has been reported. She was 85. The versatile actress and vocalist was born Mary Ann Chase in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1930. She was adopted by the Whitney family, and as a teenager, began her career in entertainment as a singer and dancer. She eventually became interested in acting and in 1966, clinched a role as Yeoman Janice Rand, a personal assistant to William Shatner's Captain James T. Kirk in the first season of the original "Star Trek" TV series.

Comments

Re:God bless and keep you, Yeoman Rand

[wcrowe]

Indeed. I recall what St. Nikolai Velimirovic said about death:

"Think of yourself as though you were dead, I say to myself, and you will not feel the coming of death. Blunt the barb of death during life, and when it comes it will not have the means to sting. Think of yourself every morning as a newborn miracle, and you will not feel old age. Do not wait for death to come, because death has indeed already come and has not left you. Its teeth are continually in your flesh. Whatever was living before your birth and whatever will survive your death--that even now is alive within you."

Re:Yawn.

[I'm New Around Here]

On her IMDB page, she says they wanted to do more with her character, but then realized they had a black girl and two blonds. "One of the blondes have to go. The other one was engaged to the boss, so guess who went?"

I was surprised when I saw she was only in 8 of the episodes from the first season. Seemed like she handed Kirk the clipboard more often than that.

Re:Dressed for success?

[BarbaraHudson]

Scotty wasn't just a red shirt - he was THE red shirt. The one that everyone who failed to live up to his level got offed / eaten alive / transporter accident / phasered one time too many / crushed by a rock ... and in the unreleased episodes, killed themselves when they thought their phaser was a blow drier, stepped into to turbo lift without checking to see if it was there, didn't realize that not all planets had earth-normal atmosphere, froze to death when they forgot the difference between 20C and 20K, at the food in the cafeteria ... (that will get you every time, no matter where you are in the universe).