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posted by takyon on Wednesday May 06 2015, @02:09AM   Printer-friendly
from the you're-too-beautiful-to-ignore-too-much-woman dept.

Multiple sources have marked the death of Grace Lee Whitney at 85. Those old-time Trekkies will recall that she played Captain Kirk's luscious yeoman in the first half of the first season before being fired. However, she made numerous appearances in the movies and one episode of Voyager.

What's interesting about this story is that she was, in fact, older than Leonard Nimoy, who died earlier this year, and William Shatner, who somehow manages to hang on, probably due to his amazing hair pieces, even though she played a character who was much younger than both. She wore her age well, and she will be missed.

 
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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by hemocyanin on Wednesday May 06 2015, @03:11PM

    by hemocyanin (186) on Wednesday May 06 2015, @03:11PM (#179546) Journal

    In TFA "appearances", there is this:

    Following a day's filming midway through production on "Miri" (on 26 August 1966), Grace Lee Whitney became intrigued when an executive on the Desilu lot told her, "I think Yeoman Janice Rand has been under-utilized. The character has been developing some interesting possibilities in the past few episodes. I have some ideas–Why don't we find a place to sit down and talk about it?" After finding a private room on the lot, the man persuaded Whitney to adopt the persona of Rand in some sexually oriented role-playing, the man assuming the role of Captain Kirk. Decades later, Whitney recollected, "'You know,' he said after we'd been talking a while, 'the thing that is so fascinating about Janice Rand is her repressed desire–her hunger for sex.' 'Not sex,' I said. 'Love. She loves the Captain.' 'Same thing,' said The Executive. 'She wants the Captain so badly, but she represses it. She doesn't admit it–not even to herself. We all know what she really wants–but she herself doesn't know. She denies it. Janice Rand can't face her own desires, her own sexuality.' 'Absolutely,' I agreed. 'That's the key to the character.'" The man then insisted the sexual repression in Rand was also in Whitney and, later that night, committed a terrifying sexual assault on the actress. (The Longest Trek: My Tour of the Galaxy, pp. 1-6)

    * * *

    Exclusion Edit
    After wrapping production on "Miri" (on Tuesday 30 August 1966), Grace Lee Whitney received a call from her agent, Alex Brewis, about her character of Janice Rand, while the actress was at home just a couple days into a two-week hiatus before shooting was to begin on the next episode, "The Conscience of the King". Brewis first ensured Whitney was sitting before telling her the news that the decision had been made to remove Rand from Star Trek, with Whitney about to be written out of the show and with no intent to replace her. (The Longest Trek: My Tour of the Galaxy, p. 9) In reply to Whitney asking why this choice had been made, Brewis relayed to her that he had been told Rand's romantic relationship with Captain Kirk was becoming too obvious and that – because the network NBC insisted on depicting Kirk having a more varied romantic life with numerous women played by a succession of guest-starring actresses – it would seem Rand was being cheated on by him, if her relationship with him was too intense. (The Longest Trek: My Tour of the Galaxy, p. 9; The Making of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, p. 120; The Best of Trek, p. 178) It was obvious to Whitney that this reasoning was the opposite of what the executive who had violated her had said the previous Friday night: that Rand's relationship with Kirk could be strengthened and that many story possibilities would result from expanding the participation of the Rand character on the show. Brewis told Whitney, "You have a contract for thirteen episodes. You'll have one more episode to shoot. You can finish out your contract, and then you'll be through." (The Longest Trek: My Tour of the Galaxy, p. 9)

    ...Whitney at first felt bitter resentment toward Gene Roddenberry and the studio as well as feeling even suicidal, upon first learning of Rand's exclusion, but by 1976, those feelings had subsided. (The Best of Trek, p. 178) In the intervening years, Roddenberry himself repeatedly expressed regrets that, instead of keeping Rand in the series, he had given in to the pressure from the network. (The Making of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, p. 120) In a 1998 interview, Whitney stated, "I am still often hurt when Yeoman Rand is left out of things [....] I thought I had lost a part of myself – that it was me, Grace, that had been written off, not the character." (Star Trek: Communicator issue 119, p. 56)

    Grace Lee Whitney formed her own unsubstantiated theory to account for Janice Rand's expulsion from Star Trek, suspecting it was related to the incident between her and an executive. "Because those events happened just a few days apart–the Friday night sexual assault and the call informing me that I had been written out of the show–there has always been a clear cause-and-effect linkage in my mind," she related. "I have always believed that The Executive had me removed from Star Trek because he didn't want to be reminded of what he did to me that night [....] Because I never received any official explanation, there was always that faint glimmer of doubt in my mind–the nagging suspicion that maybe I was jettisoned from Star Trek for some other, unknown reason [....] A number of conflicting theories have been advanced in various Trek-oriented books and magazines to explain why I was let go from the series, yet no single, definitive, once-and-for-all answer was ever put forward. No internal memo ever surfaced that said, 'The producers of Star Trek have decided to toss Yeoman Janice Rand out the nearest airlock because...'" (The Longest Trek: My Tour of the Galaxy, p. 15) Gene Roddenberry later repeatedly expressed regrets that, instead of keeping Rand in the series, he had given in to the pressure from the network. (The Making of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, p. 120)

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