Sondra Lee, the Broadway standout who created the iconic roles of Tiger Lily opposite Mary Martin in Peter Pan and Minnie Fay alongside Carol Channing, Ginger Rogers and others in Hello, Dolly!, has died. She was 97.
Lee died Monday of natural causes in her New York apartment, friend and colleague Joshua Ellis, a former Broadway press agent turned minister, announced.
The 4-foot-10½ Lee made her Broadway debut for choreographer Jerome Robbins in the 1947 musical High Bottom Shoes, starring Phil Silvers and Nanette Fabray, and the two would reunite in 1954 for Peter Pan.
In her nine-decade career, she was a dancer, actor, teacher, author, stage director, playwright, film consultant and painter.
Lee coached the likes of Jane Fonda, Sally Field, Marlon Brando, Dustin Hoffman, Natalia Makarova, John Malkovich, Amy Adams, Matt Dillon, Cyndi Lauper, Joan Jett and John Lloyd Young and served as a consultant on more than a dozen films, among them Places in the Heart (1984), The Morning After (1986) and The Last of the Mohicans (1992).
With Lee as the Native American lass Tiger Lily and Martin as the mischievous little boy who can fly, Peter Pan opened on Broadway at the Winter Garden Theatre on Oct. 20, 1954. Five months later, NBC aired it as the first full-length Broadway production filmed for color TV, and it attracted a then-record 65 million viewers.
Lee then played the young hat-shop assistant Minnie in the original 1964-70 production of Hello, Dolly! opposite Channing, Rogers, Betty Grable and her personal favorite, Martha Raye, as Mrs. Dolly Levis. (Lee and Raye then took the musical on tour with the USO during the Vietnam War.)
From left: Sondra Lee, Carol Channing and Eileen Brennan in ‘Hello, Dolly!’ in 1964.
Courtesy Everett Collection
The older of two kids, Sondra Lee Gash was born on Sept. 30, 1928, in Newark, New Jersey (most internet biographies say she was born in 1930).
“Sondra wanted to correct the error but never got around to it,” Ellis said. “However, she specifically asked that her this obituary press release set the record straight.”
A tiny, sickly child, she received growth hormones and eventually studied ballet, with the endorsement of prima ballerina Alexandra Danilova, at Studio 61 in Carnegie Hall with Vera Nemtchinova and Edward Caton.
As a teenager, Lee “waltzed right into the YMHA Players” in Newark and joined the revue Hi, Neighbor in the Catskills, where she was befriended by comics including Buddy Hackett, Red Buttons, Jack Carter and Joey Adams.
Back in New York, she moved into a boarding house on West 58th Street, where she fellow tenants included Wally Cox, Maureen Stapleton and Brando.
In 1947, Lee heard about an audition for High Bottom Shoes. As she told it:
“I entered the stage door [of the Shubert Theater] and asked, ‘Who’s Robbins? Out of nowhere this guy comes forward, ‘I’m Robbins. Who are you?’
‘I’m Sondra Lee, and I’d like to audition for this.’
‘The audition is over.’
‘Oh [a bit humorously], I just auditioned for Agnes de Mille for Allegro and they found I was too short, so they let me go. So, I’m going home to commit suicide.’
‘Don’t go home and commit suicide. Come over here and dance for me.’”
Lee moved to Paris in 1957 when she joined Roland Petit’s La Revue des Ballets de Paris with Zizi Jeanmarie. At the invitation of Robbins, she was part of his Ballets: U.S.A. troupe performing in Italy in Spoleto, Florence and Trieste; at the 1958 World’s Fair in Brussels; and on Broadway.
Federico Fellini saw her in Spoleto and cast her as an American ballerina for the final party scene in La Dolce Vita (1960).
She returned to Broadway in 1957 for the Feydeau farce Hotel Paradiso, starring Bert Lahr and Angela Lansbury, and in 1961 for Sunday in New York, starring Robert Redford.
The original production of Hello, Dolly!, directed and choreographed by Gower Champion and produced by David Merrick, opened at the St. James Theatre on Jan. 16, 1964. Lee was part of Champion’s vision of a central trope of scene-stealing actors who somehow manage a balancing act, playing brilliantly off one another.
In development, Champion insisted that Dolly and Minnie never touch, with their relationship largely conveyed in dance. Costume designer Freddy Wittop gave Lee a special hat, one that symbolized her character’s endless curiosity and naiveté: a feather in the shape of a giant question mark.
Her success led to an unusual assignment: teaching actors how to die. For a month in 1965, she worked with choreographer John Butler on the new touring division of the Metropolitan Opera, ensuring death scenes evoked an appropriate audience response.
Lee went on to direct cabaret shows based on the music of Stephen Sondheim, including I Know Things Now: My Life in Sondheim’s Words, performed by Jeff Harnar; #Sondheim Montage, performed by Harnar and KT Sullivan; and Another Hundred People, performed by Harnar and Sullivan.
Her last public appearance came at Carnegie Hall on June 23 for the Transport Group’s concert performance of Hello, Dolly! As the musical’s last surviving original principal artiste, she received a prolonged standing ovation.
I’ve Slept With Everybody: A Memoir, her 2009 book, carried readers through 50 years of show business, her lifelong friendship with Brando and her romantic flings. At the time of her death, she was writing her second book, Snapshots Redux.
A celebration of her life and career is being planned.
