Lee Wilson


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Lee Wilson began her career as a classical ballet dancer at the age of sixteen in a command performance for Prince Rainier and Princess Grace in Monte Carlo. She danced across Europe with the Hommage au Marquis de Cuevas with stars that included Rosella Hightower, Marjorie Tallchief, and Erik Bruhn. She was première danseuse of the Bordeaux Opera Ballet and danced with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet under the direction of Dame Alicia Markova.

 

At the age of twenty-one, Wilson left ballet for Broadway when she joined the cast of Hello, Dolly!, starring Betty Grable. She continued her Broadway career with Here’s Where I Belong, How Now, Dow Jones, the Lincoln Center production of Oklahoma!, and the original Broadway company of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, in which she played Patty.

 

In 1976, Wilson participated in the legendary rehearsals of A Chorus Line at City Center and arrived in Los Angeles with the National Company, which included most of the original Broadway cast. She acted in numerous TV commercials, received a Clio nomination for the Pepsi “Skywriter” commercial (aka “Marry Me, Sue”), and won the Communications Collaborative Award for the Cleveland Trust commercial, “Ballerina.” She also guest-starred in sitcoms like The Facts of Life and danced in the films Grease 2 and Pennies from Heaven.

 

Wilson returned to Broadway for the record-breaking performance of A Chorus Line in 1983 and for the sumptuous Meet Me in St. Louis in 1989, for which she received the Gypsy Robe (rebranded as the Legacy Robe in 2018).

 

She wrote and produced the holiday special The Elf Who Saved Christmas, starring JoAnne Worley, which has aired on every continent except Antarctica. She also wrote and produced its sequel, The Elf and the Magic Key, as well as the award-winning TV movie, The Miracle of the Cards.

 

Her ballet memoir, Rebel on Pointe, published by the University Press of Florida, was one of five books chosen by the Association of American University Presses, as “best of the best” published by university presses In the U.S. and Canada in 2014. Her Broadway memoir, I Danced on Broadway, was published by McFarland & Company in September 2024.