Welcome to Login

Lee Grant

An attractive brunette with angular features, Lee Grant began her career as a child performer with NYC's Metropolitan Opera. By age 11, she had become a member of the American Ballet Theatre. After music studies at Juilliard, she won a scholarship to attend the Neighborhood Playhouse and switched her focus to acting. Grant understudied the role of Ado Annie in a touring production of "Oklahoma!" before landing her breakthrough stage role as a young shoplifter in Sidney Kingsley's "Detective Story" in 1949. Hollywood soon beckoned and she recreated the role in William Wyler's 1951 superb film version. Grant won the Cannes Film Festival Best Actress prize and earned a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for the role. Seemingly on the verge of a brilliant career, the actress found herself the victim of the blacklist when her husband, playwright Arnold Manoff was named before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Grant herself refused to testify and the film offers over the next decade were sporadic.