Grant was one of many entertainment industry professionals blacklisted during the 1950s. Starting in 1952, for 12 years Grant was largely prevented from finding employment in acting, although she did occasionally get work onscreen, onstage, and as a teacher during this period. She began to be hired for more roles in the mid-1960s and concentrated on rebuilding her acting career.
Lee Grant was born Lyova Haskell Rosenthal[2][3] in Manhattan, the only child of Witia (née Haskell), a child care worker, and Abraham W. Rosenthal, a realtor and educator. Her father was born in New York City, to Polish Jewish immigrants, and her mother was a Russian Jewish immigrant[4] who, along with her sister Fremo, left Odessa to escape the pogroms. The family resided at 148th Street and Riverside in the Hamilton Heights neighborhood of Manhattan.[5]
Her birthday is October 31, but the year is disputed, with all years ranging from 1925 to 1931 having been given as her year of birth at some point; however, census data, travel manifests, and testimony suggest that she was born in 1925 or 1926, while Grant's stated ages at the time of her professional debut and Oscar nomination indicate she was born in 1927.[a]
Grant had her first stage ballet performance in 1933 at the Metropolitan Opera House.[10] In 1938, in her early teens, she was made a member of the American Ballet under George Balanchine.[10] As an actress, Grant had her professional stage debut as understudy in Oklahoma! in 1944. In 1948, she had her Broadway acting debut in Joy to the World. Grant established herself as a dramatic method actress on and off Broadway, earning praise for her first major role as a shoplifter in Detective Story in 1949.[11]
But as quickly as that dream unfolded, her life soon turned into a nightmare... So right when her career should have been blooming, she was banned from working in Hollywood. And that ban lasted for twelve years, a lifetime for an actor.
In 1951, she gave an impassioned eulogy at the memorial service for actor J. Edward Bromberg, whose early death, she implied, was caused by the stress of being called before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Her name soon after appeared in the publication Red Channels, and as a result, for the next twelve years, her "prime years" as she put it,[15] she was blacklisted and her work in television and movies was limited.[16]
Kirk Douglas, who acted with her in Detective Story, recalled that director Edward Dmytryk, a blacklistee, had first named her husband at the HUAC:
Lee was only a kid, a beautiful young girl with extraordinary talent and a big future. You could see it. She was so good that she earned a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her very first film role. But because Eddie Dmytryk named her husband, Lee Grant was blacklisted before her film career even had a chance to begin. Of course, she refused to testify about the man to whom she was married, and it took years before anyone would hire her for another picture.[17]
Grant appeared in a number of plays, two feature films, and in a few small television roles during her blacklisted years. In 1953, she played Rose Peabody in the soap opera Search for Tomorrow, had featured supporting roles in the film dramas Storm Fear in 1955, and Middle of the Night in 1959. On stage, Grant starred in the Broadway production of Two for the Seesaw. In 1959, she succeeded Anne Bancroft in the lead female role.[18] That same year, she had a supporting role in the romantic drama Middle of the Night.
1960s
Grant in 1961
By the time Grant's name was removed from the blacklist in the mid-1960s, she was the divorced mother of a daughter, Dinah. Grant began re-establishing her television and movie career. In her autobiography, she writes:
Dinah was my grail, my constant; nothing and no one could get between us. Dinah and my need to support her financially, morally, viscerally, and my rage at those who had taken twelve working, acting years from my life, were what motivated me.[19]:250
Her experience with the blacklist scarred her to such an extent that as late as 2002, she would freeze and go into a "near trance" when anyone asked her about her experiences during the McCarthy period.[20]
Grant's first major achievement, after HUAC officially cleared her, was in the 1960s television series Peyton Place as Stella Chernak,[21] for which she won an Emmy in 1966. In 1963, she won acclaim for her stage performance in the off-Broadway production of Jean Genet's The Maids. In 1967, she played the distraught widow of a murder victim in the Oscar-winning In the Heat of the Night.[10][22] In 1968, Grant appeared in an episode of Mission Impossible, portraying the wife of a U.S. diplomat who goes undercover to discredit a rogue diplomat. In 1969, she had supporting roles in the crime drama The Big Bounce and science fiction drama Marooned, but they were not successful.
Grant reunited with Peter Falk on Broadway in the original production of The Prisoner of Second Avenue, written by Neil Simon; the playwright said that his "first and only choice" for the part was Grant, who he said was equally at home with dramatists such as Chekhov or Sidney Kingsley, yet could also be "hilariously funny" when the script called for it, for she was able to portray essential honesty in her acting.[23]
Grant won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress playing Warren Beatty's older lover in Shampoo (1975). The film was Columbia's biggest hit in the studio's 50-year history.[24]Shampoo was the second film in which Grant acted under director Hal Ashby. Critic Pauline Kael, comparing her in both films, noted Grant "is such a cool-style comedienne that she's in danger of having people say that she's good, as usual."[25] During the filming, however, she did have some serious disagreements with Beatty, who was also the producer, and nearly quit. During one scene, she wanted to play it in a way she felt was more realistic from a woman's perspective, but Beatty disagreed. After thinking about the scene for a few days, she told director Ashby that she could not do it Beatty's way and was quitting. As she was walking out, Beatty stopped her, and asked what was wrong. "I sat down and told him," she said. "He threw up his hands and said, 'Play it your way. What do I know? I'm a man.'"[26]
Grant in 1975
Despite the success of the film and her career, Grant was feeling less secure in Hollywood, as she was then around 50 years old. She writes:
I was becoming my own worst enemy as an actor, traumatized onstage and fixated on staying young so I could keep working in film. A woman of a certain age does not play in movies or TV; we're kicked to the side or out. And I was a woman of a certain age, terrified I'd be found out and unemployed again.[19]:213
During the 1975-76 television season, she starred in the sitcom Fay, which, to her chagrin, was canceled after eight episodes. In 1977, she starred in the ensemble disaster movie Airport '77 and in 1978, she was the lead actress in the horror film Damien - Omen II, also starring William Holden. Both films drew negative reviews, though they were financially successful. She made a guest appearance in Empty Nest, in which her daughter Dinah Manoff co-starred.
In 1980, Grant directed her first feature film, Tell Me a Riddle, a story about an aging Jewish couple. That debut narrative film was followed by a widely distributed documentary film titled The Willmar 8, which profiled eight female employees of a bank in Willmar, Minnesota who went on strike to protest pay inequities between male and female bank tellers. Grant went on to direct many documentaries on a variety of social issues: women in prison with When Women Kill (1983), transgender individuals with What Sex Am I? (1985), women experiencing domestic abuse with Battered (1989), and women trying to keep custody of their children in court in Women on Trial (1992).
She starred in an HBO remake of Plaza Suite in 1982, co-starring with Jerry Orbach, both playing three different characters in three acts. It was filmed before a live audience.[28][29] Actor Bruce Dern, who acted with her in The Big Town (1987), recalls working with her: "Lee Grant is a fabulous actress. Anytime she works it's a blessing you have her in your movie."[30]
In 1988, she was awarded the Women in Film Crystal Award for outstanding women who through their endurance and the excellence of their work have helped to expand the role of women within the entertainment industry.[31]
Admiring her directing and acting skill, actress Sissy Spacek agreed to act in the romantic comedy Hard Promises (1991) "only to work with Grant", although Grant was later replaced as its director.[32] In 1992, Grant played Dora Cohn, the mother of Roy Cohn in the biographical made-for-TV film Citizen Cohn, which garnered her another Primetime Emmy Award nomination. In 1994, she directed the television film Seasons of the Heart, starring Carol Burnett and George Segal.
2000s–present
In 2001, Lee Grant portrayed Louise Bonner in David Lynch's critically acclaimed Mulholland Drive. From 2004 to 2007, Carlin Glynn, Stephen Lang, and Grant served as co-artistic directors for the Actors Studio.[33] In the early 2000s, Grant directed a series of Intimate Portrait episodes for Lifetime Television, that celebrated a diverse range of accomplished women.
In 2013, Grant briefly returned to the stage, after a nearly forty-year absence, to star in one performance of The Gin Game, part of a benefit for improvement programs at the Island Music Guild, in Bainbridge Island, Washington.[34] Grant played Fonsia Dorsey opposite Frank Buxton as Weller Martin; her daughter Dinah Manoff directed the production.[34]
Grant's career making documentaries in the 1980s and 1990s was honored with an appearance on the American Film Institute's AFI Docs at its Guggenheim Symposium and with a program, "20th Century Woman: The Documentary Films of Lee Grant", on AFI Silver and other virtual cinemas in mid-2020. This became the first virtual repertory film series in America.[36][37]
In January 2024, she attended the New York Film Festival, where the first two films she directed were shown in the revivals program, and talked about her directing career in a panel hosted by Turner Classic Movies.[5]
1 2 3 Grant was born on October 31, but disagreement exists between sources over the year. While secondary and tertiary sources put Grant's year of birth between 1925 and 1931, she was almost certainly born in the mid-1920s. Public records indicate she was born in 1925 but a ship manifest and congressional testimony favor 1926. Recent interviews with Grant and her autobiography suggest 1925, 1926 or 1927, although Grant herself is inconsistent on the subject. Secondary sources
Mid-1920s: The San Francisco Chronicle notes that Grant is "famously inexact" about her age, as a result of being blacklisted.[b]
1925: Encyclopædia Britannica used to have Grant's date of birth listed as October 31, 1927, but it has since updated the year to 1925.[c]
1925: WTOP-FM wrote that Grant was born in 1925 and would be 90 in October 2015.[d]
1926: In an interview in 2017, the Los Angeles Times noted that the actress "turns 91 this year" and that "Grant's legendary caginess about her age has long drawn jokes".[e]
1926–1930, 1931: Who's Who in America lists 1931 as Grant's birth year, but Great Jews in the Performing Arts notes that "Other sources give every year from 1926 through 1930."[f]
1927: While interviewing Grant, Gilbert Gottfried put her age at 24 at the time of her Oscar nomination and Cannes win. These events occurred in April/May 1952, which would date the year of her birth to 1927 using the October 31 date.[g]
1928, 1929, 1931: Current Biography Yearbook gives the day and month as October 31, but notes different sources give 1928, 1929 and 1931 as the year of birth.[h]
Primary sources
1925: New York City birth indexes indicate that a Lyova Rosenthal was born in the Bronx on October 31, 1925.[i]
1925: United States Public Records (under the name Lee Grant Manoff) give Grant's date of birth as October 31, 1925.[j]
1925: Census records indicate that Grant—under her birth name of Lyova Haskell Rosenthal—was aged 4 at the 1930 census,[k] and 14 at the 1940 census.[l]
1925/1926: In a video interview published by X17 Online on April 11, 2017, Grant said she was 90 years old and born in 1925.[m] However, her age would date her year of birth to 1926.
1925/1926: A July 1933 shipping manifest puts Grant's age at 7 years of age, and the year of birth 1926.[n]
1926: In an interview published in September 2023, Grant gave her age as "97 and a half".[o] If the interview occurred shortly before it was published, this would place her date of birth in early 1926.
1927: In her autobiography, I Said Yes to Everything (2014), Grant states she was twenty-four years old when she received her first Oscar nomination at the 24th Academy Awards, held in March 1952, and when she won at the 1952 Cannes Film Festival (held in April/May 1952).[r] Grant reiterated this claim in an interview with Robert Osborne of Turner Classic Movies in 2014.[s]
Rickey, Carrie (July 17, 2014), "'I Said Yes to Everything', by Lee Grant", SFGate.com, retrieved January 22, 2017, Lyova Rosenthal was born in the mid-1920s. The granddaughter of Polish and Russian immigrants is famously inexact about her age. From her mid-20s to her mid-30s, the blacklist left her unemployable in TV and film, so she lied about her years, whatever they were, to remain viable as an actress.
Lyman, Darryl (1999). Great Jews in the Performing Arts. Jonathan David Publishers. p.124. Lee Grant was born in New York City, New York, on October 31, 1931. (The date is so listed in Who's Who in America. Other sources give every year from 1926 through 1930.)
Lee Grant (October 2016). "Lee Grant". Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast! (Interview). Interviewed by Gilbert Gottfried. 11 minutes 41 seconds. Retrieved January 27, 2017. Grant: I was nominated and I was given the Best Actress Award in Cannes in 1952; Gottfried: So here you are and I think you were 24 at the time so this is like your career is exploding and then what happens then?
Block, Maxine; Rothe, Anna Herthe; Candee, Marjorie Dent; Moritz, Charles (1975). Current Biography Yearbook. H.W. Wilson Company. p.150.
"New York, New York, Birth Index, 1910-1965". Ancestry.com. New York City Department of Health. Retrieved February 2, 2018. Note: online record mistranscribed as "21 Oct"; original document states October 31.
"United States Public Records, 1970-2009," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QJZ3-MSLD: May 23, 2014), Lee Grant Manoff, Residence, Wilmington, Delaware, United States; a third party aggregator of publicly available information.
The 1930 census (Source Citation: Year: 1930; Census Place: Manhattan, New York, New York; Roll: 1577; Page: 11B; Enumeration District: 1027; Image: 588.0; FHL microfilm: 2341312. Source Information: Ancestry.com. 1930 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2002. Original data: United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1930. T626, 2,667 rolls) gives her age as 4 and 6/12 months (i.e. 4 ½ years old). (NOTE: a) the census always requests the age of the individual being enumerated as of his or her last birthday; b) the first name is misspelled, as "Lyniva"). View original document at FamilySearch
The 1940 census (Source Citation: Year: 1940; Census Place: New York, New York, New York; Roll: T627_2671; Page: 9A; Enumeration District: 31-1922. Source Information: Ancestry.com. 1940 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc. 2012. Original data: United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Sixteenth Census of the United States, 1940. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1940. T627, 4,643 rolls) gives her age as 14 in April 1940 (NOTE: a) the census always requests the age of the individual being enumerated as of his or her last birthday; b) the first name is misspelled as "Lyoua"). View original document at FamilySearch and FamilyTreeNow.
"New York, New York Passenger and Crew Lists, 1909, 1925-1957," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:24V3-24H: October 2, 2015), Lyova Rosenthal, July 12, 1933; citing Immigration, New York, New York, United States, NARA microfilm publication T715 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.).
Lee Grant (2014). "Conversation With Lee Grant, A". Interviewed by Robert Osborne. Turner Classic Movies. 7 minutes 50 seconds. Retrieved January 27, 2017. By that time I was twenty-four when I was nominated for an Academy Award and I won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress... for this little teeny part in 1952
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