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.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by number6 on Wednesday May 06 2015, @10:15PM
IMHO, Anne Francis cast as "Altaira Morbius" in the 1956 Sci-Fi film "Forbidden Planet" was the prototype which influenced all others, including the "Star Trek" girls.
Forbidden Planet Anne Francis - Google Images [google.com]
A bit of personal trivia:
Yesterday night while staring at my computer monitor, and not knowing of anybody's death, I got the urge to watch a movie or TV episode.
So I navigated to my "Film" folder and for no particular reason, I randomly chose this:
/Film/TV--Star Trek (1966-1969)--S[1,2,3]--2004remaster,x264,AAC,MP4/S01E12 - Miri.mp4
In this episode Yeoman Janice gets a lot of screen time and some of the scenes lingered with her in the frame for an unusually long period of time; I remember one closeup scene where Captain Kirk is talking to a young girl and Yeoman Janice is crouched and also in the frame, saying nothing for over a minute; I was more fascinated in staring at her facial expressions than paying attention to what Kirk was saying!
RIP Yeoman Janice