Sondra Lee Dies: Actor In Original Broadway Productions Of ‘Peter Pan’ And ‘Hello, Dolly!’ Was 97

Sondra Lee, a Broadway actor whose petit size allowed her, at 26, to convincingly play the Native American child princess Tiger Lily in Peter Pan opposite Mary Martin on Broadway and in the treasured 1955 TV presentation, died Monday, February 23, of natural causes in her New York City apartment. She was 97.

Her death was announced by her friend and colleague Rev. Joshua Ellis, a former Broadway press agent who is now an Interspiritual minister.

In addition to creating the role of Tiger Lily, Lee was the first “Minnie Fay,” the energetic young shop assistant, in Hello, Dolly!, originating the role in the iconic 1964 musical starring Carol Channing.

In her later life, Lee would inspire and nurture as a coach for scores of working professionals in theater, film, cabaret and dance. A partial list of her actor clients includes Jane Fonda, Sally Field, Marlon Brando, Dustin Hoffman, Natalia Makarova, John Malkovich, Amy Adams, Matt Dillon, Cyndi Lauper, Joan Jett, Van Halen and John Lloyd Young.

Born Sondra Lee Gash in Newark, New Jersey, on September 30, 1928 – not, her friend Ellis notes, 1930. “Almost all internet biographies have an incorrect birth year,” he said. “Sondra wanted to correct the error but never got around to it.” Lee specifically asked him to set the record straight for her obituary.)

Throughout her nine-decade career, Lee won awards as a dancer, actor, teacher, author, stage director, playwright, theater and film consultant and painter. She was a consultant to film directors on more than a dozen motion pictures including Places in the Heart starring Sally Field, John Malkovich and Danny Glover; The Last of the Mohicans starring Daniel Day Lewis; and The Morning After starring Jane Fonda, Jeff Bridges and Raul Julia.

A sickly child who received growth hormones because she of her small size, Lee, growing up with a younger brother Saul, lived in a dream world of she would describe as “tutus and glitter.” She studied ballet, with the endorsement of prima ballerina Alexandra Danilova, at Studio 61 in Carnegie Hall with Vera Nemtchinova and Edward Caton.

As a teenager Lee “waltzed right into the YMHA Players” in Newark, and joined the revue Hi, Neighbor Revue in the Catskills. There, she was befriended by comics Buddy Hackett, Red Buttons, Jack Carter and Joey Adams. Back in New York City, she moved into a boarding house on West 58th Street where she quickly became pals with fellow tenants Wally Cox, Maureen Stapleton, and a previous acquaintance named Marlon Brando.

In 1947, while walking along Shubert Alley, Lee heard about an audition for a new Broadway musical called High Button Shoes to star Phil Silvers and Nanette Fabray. That choreographer was Jerome Robbins. Lee would later recall, “I entered the stage door [of the Shubert Theater] asked, ‘Who’s Robbins? Out of nowhere this guy comes forward, ‘I’m Robbins. Who are you?’

‘I’m Sondra Lee, and I’d like to audition for this.’

‘The audition is over.’

She responded, jokingly, ‘Oh, I just auditioned for Agnes de Mille for Allegro, and they found I was too short, so they let me go. So, I’m going home to commit suicide.’

‘Don’t go home and commit suicide,” Robbins said. “Come over here and dance for me.’”

Thus began Lee’s Broadway career and a lifelong friendship. She and Robbins reunited for Peter Pan in 1954 and collaborated on the creation of the role Tiger Lily. Lee would later say that critics took “too much notice” of her performance, which pulled focus from star Martin. When Brando came to see the show, she remembered, he asked Lee “why she pushed Mary Martin offstage.”

In 1955, Peter Pan became the first full-length Broadway production filmed for color television, and would rival The Wizard of Oz in the memories of a young TV-viewing generation. Lee’s performance as Tiger Lily was watched by a then-record audience of 65 million viewers.

In one of Lee’s returns to Broadway, she created the role of Minnie Fay in Hello, Dolly!, performing opposite a procession of big-name Dolly Levis: the original Carol Channing, then Ginger Rogers, Betty Grable, and, her personal favorite, Martha Raye, with whom Lee toured as part of USO shows during the Vietnam War.

In 1957 Lee joined Roland Petit’s La Revue des Ballets de Paris with Zizi Jeanmarie, and at the invitation of Jerome Robbins was part of his “Ballets: U.S.A.” troupe performing in Spoleto, Florence, Trieste, the Brussels World’s Fair, and eventually Broadway. At Spoleto, she gained the attention of Federico Fellini, who cast her as an American ballerina for the final party scene in La Dolce Vita (1960).

Let returned to Broadway in the 1957 Feydeau farce Hotel Paradiso starring Bert Lahr and Angela Lansbury (another lifelong friend); and then in 1961’s Sunday in New York starring Robert Redford.

Several years later came Hello, Dolly!, directed and choreographed by Gower Champion and produced by David Merrick. The musical opened at the St. James Theatre on January 16, 1964, with Lee chosen because of what she’d describe as Champion’s vision of a central trope of larger-than-life actors who were, individually, scene-stealers but as an ensemble kept each other in check.

In development, Champion insisted that the characters Dolly Levi and Minnie Fay never physically touch, their relationship conveyed through dance. Costume designer Freddy Wittop gave Lee a special hat for Minnie Fay, one that symbolized the character’s endless curiosity and naiveté, with a feather in the shape of a giant question mark.

With her Broadway success, Lee soon found herself coaching other performers, and in 1965 she was handed an unusual assignment: She was to work with choreographer John Butler on the newly created touring division of the Metropolitan Opera, ensuring that death scenes evoked an appropriate audience response.

Lee went on to direct a number of cabaret shows based on the music of Stephen Sondheim. Among them: I Know Things Now: My Life in Sondheim’s Words performed by Jeff Harnar, #Sondheim Montage performed by Harnar and KT Sullivan, and Another Hundred People performed by Harnar and Sullivan.

Lee’s last public appearance was at Carnegie Hall on June 23, 2025, on the occasion of the Transport Group’s Hello, Dolly! In Concert. As the musical’s last surviving original principal artist, she received a prolonged standing ovation.

Her book, I’ve Slept with Everybody: A Memoir, (Bear Manor Media, 2009) chronicled her more than 50 years in show business, as well as her lifelong friendship with Brando and romantic flings with the famous and not-so-famous. At the time of her death, she was deep into writing her second book, Snapshots Redux.

According to her friend the Rev. Ellis, a celebration of her life and career will occur sometime this year.