Esther Ying Lee

Esther Ying Lee was an actress who played a street passerby in the second season episode . As a background performer, she was not credited for her role. She filmed her scenes on Monday at Paramount's Windsor Street backlot.
She was born Ying Lee in a Chinese-American family in Seattle and moved to the old Chinatown neighborhood of Los Angeles with her family at the age of six. She was given the English first name "Esther" by her teacher in first grade and was later known by her married name Esther Lee Johnson.
Lee's first movie role came at the age of seven in the film The Good Earth (1937, with Keye Luke). As a teenager, she worked at a bakery in China City, and began attending auditions with her friends in her spare time, as Hollywood agents were often looking for Chinatown locals to portray background characters in films set in Japan, China, Hong Kong, and other Far East locations. She soon became a prolific extra and stand-in, having appeared in about a hundred film and television productions from the 1940s to the 1990s, usually playing uncredited bit and background roles. (Bonnie Tsui: American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, pp. 118-120)
Her feature film appearances include Blood Alley (1955, with Paul Fix and Walter Soo Hoo), Around the World in 80 Days (1956, with Walter Bacon, Al Cavens, Dick Cherney, Noble Chissell, Bill Couch, Sr., Joe Garcio, Joseph Glick, Lars Hensen, Chuck Hicks, Shep Houghton, Max Kleven, Keye Luke, Monty O'Grady, Victor Paul, Edwin Rochelle, Robert Strong, Sally Yarnell, George Sasaki, and Ron Veto), Twenty Plus Two (1961, with Benjie Bancroft and George Sasaki), Flower Drum Song (1961, with Shep Houghton, Paul Sorensen, and Irene Tsu), The Ugly American (1963, with Benjie Bancroft, William Meader, Paul Power, and Ron Veto), Looking for Love (1964, with Susan Oliver, Joan Marshall, Stanley Adams, Nick Borgani, Robert Buckingham, Joseph Mell, Joseph Paz, Edwin Rochelle, and Clark Ross), Viva Las Vegas (1964, with Terri Garr, Pete Kellett, Lance LeGault, Alan Marston, William Meader, and Edwin Rochelle), The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1969, with Nehemiah Persoff, Patricia Smith, David Brian, Biff Elliot, John Harmon, and Monty O'Grady), (1973, with Bernie Casey, Nick Dimitri, Gene LeBell, and Arch Whiting), and (1991, with Tim O'Connor, Peter Mark Richman, John Fleck, Reiner Schöne, Jane Austin, Robert Buckingham, Bruce Dobos, Allan Graf, Suzanne Lodge, Sherry O'Keefe, and Natalie Wood).
She also appeared in episodes of series like The Untouchables (with Byron Morrow, Benjie Bancroft, and Al Cavens), (with Julie Newmar, Walter Bacon, John Burnside, Robert Hitchcock, and Clark Ross), The Lucy Show (starring Lucille Ball, with William Meader), The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (with Kim Darby, Jill Ireland, Irene Tsu, Jason Wingreen, Grant Woods, Sharyn Hillyer, Dick Crockett, Paul Baxley, Kai J. Wong, Peter Mark Richman, David Hurst, Logan Ramsey, Robert Buckingham, and Robert Hitchcock), The Wild Wild West (with Barry Atwater, Walker Edmiston, Stanley Kamel, Nick Borgani, Dick Cangey, Gary Epper, and Walter Soo Hoo, directed by Marvin Chomsky), , Columbo (with John Fiedler, Len Felber, Lars Hensen, Clark Ross, and Arthur Tovey), The Partridge Family (with Robert Hitchcock), Banacek (with Jason Evers, William Schallert, Gregory Sierra, David Armstrong, and Robert Hitchcock), All in the Family (with Jason Wingreen), The Hardy Boys / Nancy Drew Mysteries (with Rosalind Chao), and (with James Whitmore, Jr.).
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Category:Performers
Category:TOS performers