Well this is sad. Grace Lee Whitney, who played the beautiful Yeoman Janice Rand during the first season of the original Star Trek series, died Friday at her home in Coarsegold, California. She was 85. Whitney was kicked off the series early in its run but reprised her role as Rand in four Star Trek films and in a 1996 episode of Star Trek: Voyager. In addition to Star Trek, she also famously inspired the mermaid in “Chicken of the Sea” ads, as well as acted in two Billy Wilder films that starred Jack Lemmon: 1959’s Some Like It Hot (as one of the members of the all-girl band) and as Kiki the Cossack in 1963’s Irma la Douce.
Here’s The Hollywood Reporter on why she was kicked off Star Trek:
“There was much sexual tension between Whitney’s Yeoman Rand and Shatner’s Kirk as the actress appeared in eight of the first 13 episodes of the 1966-69 NBC space drama. But then she suddenly was released from her contract.
“There was a scene that Shatner and I did — and I remember when it happened — that scared the producers, because they said, ‘Uh-oh, they’re getting too close. This is getting too hot,’” she recalled in a 2011 interview. “We have to remove her because he’s going to look like he’s cheating when he falls in love with other women on other planets.”
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