Michele Lee(I)
- Actress
- Director
- Producer
The daughter of a premier makeup artist and the sister of a United
States District Attorney, Michele Lee was born Michele Lee Dusick on
June 24, 1942 in Los Angeles, California. Her childhood was consumed by
the Hollywood entertainment industry. Lee was outgoing and had taken
every chance to do plays in front of her family and friends. In junior
high school, she continued acting in school plays. When she was in the
10th grade at Los Angeles' Alexander Hamilton High School, she tried
out for the band and was the lead singer for that. Prior to her
graduation from Hamilton, she landed her first role in the Broadway
revue, "Vintage '60" and her career was launched. A small role in
"Bravo Giovanni" and the lead role as Rosemary in "How to Succeed in
Business Without Really Trying" followed. Her musical talent was
brought to the attention of Columbia Records (now Sony) and she signed
to the label in a hurry.
Shortly after she appeared in Broadway shows and became a singer, she
began making a number of guest appearances on television doing dancing,
singing and performing comedy routines on most live-action segments,
most notably
The Danny Kaye Show (1963).
She was only 22 and her career was off to a firing start. She continued
making guest appearances on a number of television specials and
live-action series. However, the silver screen took precedence as she
made her movie debut with the film
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967),
followed by The Comic (1969),
co-starring Dick Van Dyke. A year that,
after her first child was born and soon after, she was back at work,
starring as Secretary Carole Bennett on
The Love Bug (1969), that it was the
best movie of 1970 and it made it to the top of the box office all
across the country.
While her laughter was brought unto the world and after giving birth to
David Farentino, several months later
her father passed away of a severe heart attack in 1970 at age 54.
Michele was devastated by the loss of her father but she quickly
directed herself to head back to work. She accepted a role on Broadway
in "Seesaw", where her work gave her a 1974 Tony nomination for Best
Actress in a Musical. However, tragedy haunted Michele when she was
unable to spring back for a long time after her mother died in 1974.
Near the end of 1979, after being on vacation with her husband and only
child, she accepted the leading role of the feisty-yet-friendly
neighbor Karen Fairgate MacKenzie in the prime-time soap opera
Knots Landing (1979), which
spun-off the immensely popular serial
Dallas (1978) on CBS. For 14 of those
years, Michele was the big asset of the series and by the very first
year that it debuted, it had low ratings and producers, at times,
wanted to send "Dallas" stars to the cul-de-sac, including that of
Larry Hagman, who met Lee after the pilot
episode.
By the Fall of 1980, Lee and the producers of "Knots Landing" always
wanted to do something better in order to boost up the ratings and in
September of that same year, after refusing to accept "no" for an
answer, former dancer and movie starlet
Donna Mills came to the series by playing
Lee's manipulative, nasty and least popular sister-in-law Abby Fairgate
Cunningham Ewing Sumner, and the series became #1 for the next 13
seasons, among other 1980s soaps that stood the test of time. By 1982,
she was nominated for one Emmy Award, but had won the Soap Opera Digest
Award, three times. The triumph of the series was splendid but in
real-life, her marriage to
James Farentino was a burden and the
couple was divorced in 1983. In 1989, while going on strong with her
role on "Knots Landing", she also became the series' director, starting
to direct several episodes of the series and just before Donna Mills
left, making Lee the big star of the series.
By the 14th and the final season, most of her co-stars of "Knots
Landing" were asked to be absent (except co-star
Joan Van Ark, who left in 1992) a number of
times on the series, but for Lee, she had declined to be absent and
wanted to show up without pay. In 1993, "Knots Landing" was cancelled
when her second family came to a close and due to high salary amongst
her co-stars. When the series was dropped away from its schedule on
CBS, she was open to new opportunities. She began to produce and
develop her own television movies through her own production company.
She has had an incredible career that spans almost 40 years in
television, film and on stage and in 1999, she earned her own star on
the Hollywood Walk of Fame, which is located not far from the site of
her very first audition for "Vintage
'60".
In 1995, after learning a great deal from her idol Dottie West,
she appeared in the CBS-TV movie
Big Dreams & Broken Hearts: The Dottie West Story (1995),
playing the character of the same name doing all the singing and
knowing what it was like to be Dottie West. Before she came back to do
a reunion movie called
Knots Landing: Back to the Cul-de-Sac (1997),
she played a retarded woman named Dina Blake on Lifetime's
Color Me Perfect (1996)
and was the first lady to star, write and produce a movie for Cable
Television and, like The Love Bug, it was the best movie on Cable
Television in 1996. In 2000, she starred opposite
Valerie Harper in the Broadway play "Tale
of the Allergist's Wife" in New York and almost four years later after
a 35-year-absence, she returned to the big screen to play
Ben Stiller's mother in
Along Came Polly (2004).
States District Attorney, Michele Lee was born Michele Lee Dusick on
June 24, 1942 in Los Angeles, California. Her childhood was consumed by
the Hollywood entertainment industry. Lee was outgoing and had taken
every chance to do plays in front of her family and friends. In junior
high school, she continued acting in school plays. When she was in the
10th grade at Los Angeles' Alexander Hamilton High School, she tried
out for the band and was the lead singer for that. Prior to her
graduation from Hamilton, she landed her first role in the Broadway
revue, "Vintage '60" and her career was launched. A small role in
"Bravo Giovanni" and the lead role as Rosemary in "How to Succeed in
Business Without Really Trying" followed. Her musical talent was
brought to the attention of Columbia Records (now Sony) and she signed
to the label in a hurry.
Shortly after she appeared in Broadway shows and became a singer, she
began making a number of guest appearances on television doing dancing,
singing and performing comedy routines on most live-action segments,
most notably
The Danny Kaye Show (1963).
She was only 22 and her career was off to a firing start. She continued
making guest appearances on a number of television specials and
live-action series. However, the silver screen took precedence as she
made her movie debut with the film
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967),
followed by The Comic (1969),
co-starring Dick Van Dyke. A year that,
after her first child was born and soon after, she was back at work,
starring as Secretary Carole Bennett on
The Love Bug (1969), that it was the
best movie of 1970 and it made it to the top of the box office all
across the country.
While her laughter was brought unto the world and after giving birth to
David Farentino, several months later
her father passed away of a severe heart attack in 1970 at age 54.
Michele was devastated by the loss of her father but she quickly
directed herself to head back to work. She accepted a role on Broadway
in "Seesaw", where her work gave her a 1974 Tony nomination for Best
Actress in a Musical. However, tragedy haunted Michele when she was
unable to spring back for a long time after her mother died in 1974.
Near the end of 1979, after being on vacation with her husband and only
child, she accepted the leading role of the feisty-yet-friendly
neighbor Karen Fairgate MacKenzie in the prime-time soap opera
Knots Landing (1979), which
spun-off the immensely popular serial
Dallas (1978) on CBS. For 14 of those
years, Michele was the big asset of the series and by the very first
year that it debuted, it had low ratings and producers, at times,
wanted to send "Dallas" stars to the cul-de-sac, including that of
Larry Hagman, who met Lee after the pilot
episode.
By the Fall of 1980, Lee and the producers of "Knots Landing" always
wanted to do something better in order to boost up the ratings and in
September of that same year, after refusing to accept "no" for an
answer, former dancer and movie starlet
Donna Mills came to the series by playing
Lee's manipulative, nasty and least popular sister-in-law Abby Fairgate
Cunningham Ewing Sumner, and the series became #1 for the next 13
seasons, among other 1980s soaps that stood the test of time. By 1982,
she was nominated for one Emmy Award, but had won the Soap Opera Digest
Award, three times. The triumph of the series was splendid but in
real-life, her marriage to
James Farentino was a burden and the
couple was divorced in 1983. In 1989, while going on strong with her
role on "Knots Landing", she also became the series' director, starting
to direct several episodes of the series and just before Donna Mills
left, making Lee the big star of the series.
By the 14th and the final season, most of her co-stars of "Knots
Landing" were asked to be absent (except co-star
Joan Van Ark, who left in 1992) a number of
times on the series, but for Lee, she had declined to be absent and
wanted to show up without pay. In 1993, "Knots Landing" was cancelled
when her second family came to a close and due to high salary amongst
her co-stars. When the series was dropped away from its schedule on
CBS, she was open to new opportunities. She began to produce and
develop her own television movies through her own production company.
She has had an incredible career that spans almost 40 years in
television, film and on stage and in 1999, she earned her own star on
the Hollywood Walk of Fame, which is located not far from the site of
her very first audition for "Vintage
'60".
In 1995, after learning a great deal from her idol Dottie West,
she appeared in the CBS-TV movie
Big Dreams & Broken Hearts: The Dottie West Story (1995),
playing the character of the same name doing all the singing and
knowing what it was like to be Dottie West. Before she came back to do
a reunion movie called
Knots Landing: Back to the Cul-de-Sac (1997),
she played a retarded woman named Dina Blake on Lifetime's
Color Me Perfect (1996)
and was the first lady to star, write and produce a movie for Cable
Television and, like The Love Bug, it was the best movie on Cable
Television in 1996. In 2000, she starred opposite
Valerie Harper in the Broadway play "Tale
of the Allergist's Wife" in New York and almost four years later after
a 35-year-absence, she returned to the big screen to play
Ben Stiller's mother in
Along Came Polly (2004).