Ruta Lee - Consider Your Ass Kissed!
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Today our guest is Ruta Lee, one of Hollywood\'s most multifaceted and top-notched civic contributors. Born in Montreal, Lee is the daughter of a Lithuanian tailor. While at Hollywood High, Lee\'s career in show business began at the famed Grauman\'s Chinese Theatre\\u2026 as an usherette, then candy girl. She was quickly promoted to box office cashier and just as quickly fired. Her dancing was better than her math. She vowed to return to that famous courtyard (years later, talent and serendipity placed her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, directly in front of that box office from which she was fired).
Soon after, she was signed by MGM as the youngest of the Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and subsequently in Funny Face with Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn, as Tyrone Power\'s secret love in Witness for the Prosecution, and Frank Sinatra\'s leading lady in Sergeant\'s Three, to name but a few of the many films in her credits. Simultaneously, Lee launched into television, with over 2000 appearances on shows from Perry Mason to Power Rangers, Twilight Zone to Murder She Wrote, Hogan\'s Heroes to Love Boat, and Roseanne. Lee was also co-host on NBC\'s High Rollers with Alex Trebek, and a regular on Hollywood Squares with Peter Marshall.
Ms Lee\\u2019s connection to her roots in Lithuania, stem from her grandmother, whose release from Siberia made international headlines, and the subject in her recently released, best-selling memoir title\\xa0Consider Your Ass Kissed. A title referencing the actions required and gratitude for the monumental effort to bring her family to America from Russia during the Cold War. At the time her grandmother made all the news and even went on Johnny Carson with her.
Lee is highly acclaimed for her leadership role in The Thalians, a charitable organization which is committed to good mental health from pediatric to geriatric. She has been either chairman or president for over 45 years\\u2026 roles exchanged between herself and Debbie Reynolds. The Thalians honored Ruta Lee for her dedication to mental health, where she joined the ranks of previous honorees, Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Mary Tyler Moore, Whoopi Goldberg, Angela Lansbury and and Clint Eastwood, to name just a few.
Recently, the legendary actress received Lithuania\'s highest honor from President Valdas Adamkus at a magnificent ceremony in the Vilnius Presidential Palace. Her famous Hollywood Estate served as the perfect backdrop to receive a visit from the Lithuanian President and First Lady, with Lithuanian Ambassador To the US Audra Plepyte in attendance. The President and First Lady remarked on how the visit to the estate gave them the rare experience of Hollywood\\u2019s golden era, as the former home of entertainment icons, Rita Hayworth and Orson Wells. \\xa0In addition to the Hollywood luminaries that were imagined to have gathered at galas in the estates palacios living room, or having dinners of 20 or more in the dinning hall, as well as the thought of Ms Hayworth and Mr Wells themselves making an entrance on the grand staircase, is like stepping back in time, as mental images of Citizen Kane come to mind.
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/consider-your-ass-kissed-ruta-lee/1139109864
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