Background
Lee was born in Newark, New Jersey. By the time she was 20, she was a divorced single mother with a son, Craig Lee.
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Joanna Lee
Edit ProfileCareer
Lee began her career as an actress, between 1956 and 1961, in a series of small roles, 10 in all, including seven television series and three feature films. The latter included an uncredited appearance in a lesser-known Frank Sinatra vehicle, The Joker is Wild, plus two low-budget science fiction films, one of which, in later years, would come to be regarded as the quintessential "so-bad-it"s-good" cult classic, that being Plan 9 from Outer Space, wherein Lee portrays "Tanna," the space girl. A serious car accident in 1961 necessitated a career change, and, by 1962, Lee had landed jobs writing for My Three Sons and The Flintstones.
She wrote an episode of Gilligan"s Island (1964-1967), entitled "Beauty Is As Beauty Does", which aired on September 23, 1965.
Also in this period,September 1962 she appeared as a contestant on the popular Columbia Broadcasting System television program "What"s My Lincolnshire", describing her work at that point as being a television comedy writer The same year, she formed her own production company, which, in 1975, produced the documentary Babe (also written by Lee), about athlete Babe Zaharias"s career.
She wrote the novel and teleplay Mary Jane Harper Cried Last Night.
Achievements
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In 1974, she won an Emmy Award, for Best Writing in Drama, for a 1972 Thanksgiving episode of The Waltons. The film was nominated for an Emmy for "Outstanding Writing in a Special Program - Drama or Comedy - Original Teleplay," and won the Golden Globe for "Best Motion Picture Made for Television." In 1988, she won the Humanitas Prize for The Kid Who Wouldn"t Quit: The Brad Silverman Story.
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Born
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Died
October 24, 2003 (aged 72) -
Nationality
United States