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Sondra Lee, who created the iconic roles of Tiger Lily opposite Mary Martin in Peter Man on Broadway and on television, and Minnie Fay in the original production of Hello, Dolly!, died of natural causes in her New York City apartment on Monday evening, February 23, 2026, at age 97. A celebration of the life and career of Sondra Lee will occur sometime in 2026.
The announcement of Lee’s passing was made by her friend and colleague Rev. Joshua Ellis, a former Broadway press agent who is now an Interspiritual minister.
“The first matter at hand is clarifying her birthdate and age,” states Rev. Ellis. “Almost all internet biographies have an incorrect birth year. Sondra wanted to correct the error but never got around to it. However, she specifically asked that her this obituary press release set the record straight…She was born Sondra Lee Gash on September 30, 1928 in Newark, New Jersey, not 1930.”
Throughout her nine-decade career, Lee won awards as a dancer, actor, teacher, author, stage director, playwright, theatre and film consultant and painter.
Peter Pan was the first full-length Broadway production filmed for color TV. Lee’s performance as Tiger Lily was cherished by a then-record audience of 65-million viewers. She later returned to Broadway, creating the role of Minnie Fay in Hello, Dolly!, opposite a star-studded procession of Mrs. Dolly Levis: the original Carol Channing, then Ginger Rogers, Betty Grable; and her personal favorite, Martha Raye, with whom Lee took the musical on tour with the USO during the Vietnam War.
She inspired and nurtured scores of working professionals in theatre, film, cabaret and dance. A partial list of actors whose Lee coached 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.
Lee was 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.
Born Sondra Lee Gash on September 30, 1928, in Newark, New Jersey to David and Belle Gash, she was a sickly child who received growth hormones because she was so tiny. Growing up with a younger brother, Saul, she lived in a dream world of “tutus and glitter,” eventually studying ballet, with the endorsement of prima ballerina Alexandra Danilova, at Studio 61 in Carnegie Hall with Vera Nemtchinova and Edward Caton.
As a teenager Sondra “waltzed right into the YMHA Players” in Newark, and joined the revue Hi, Neighbor in the Catskills. Here, she was befriended by comics including Buddy Hackett, Red Buttons, Jack Carter and Joey Adams. Back in New York, Sondra moved into a boarding house on West 58th Street where she quickly befriended fellow tenants Wally Cox, Maureen Stapleton, and a pal from an earlier time, Marlon Brando.
In 1947, while walking along Shubert Alley, Sondra heard about an audition for a new Broadway musical High Bottom Shoes to star Phil Silvers and Nanette Fabray. That choreographer was Jerome Robbins.
The two reunited for Peter Pan in 1954 and in collaboration, created the role of Tiger Lily. The critics took notice of Sondra. Too much notice. Sondra pulled focus from the show’s star, Mary Martin. When Marlon Brando came to see a performance, he asked Sondra why she pushed Mary Martin offstage.
Sondra’s Paris years began in 1957 when she joined Roland Petit’s La Revue des Ballets de Paris with Zizi Jeanmarie. At the invitation of Jerome Robbins, she was part of his “Ballets: U.S.A.” troupe performing in Spoleto, Florence, Trieste, the Brussels World’s Fair, and eventually Broadway. Consequently, Sondra gained the admiration of Federico Fellini who saw her in Spoleto and cast her as an American ballerina for the final party scene in La Dolce Vita (1960).
She returned to Broadway in the Feydeau farce Hotel Paradiso starring Bert Lahr and Angela Lansbury (another lifelong friend); and Sunday in New York starring Robert Redford, just before she did Hello, Dolly!.
The original production of Hello, Dolly!, directed and choreographed by Gower Champion and produced by David Merrick, opened at the St. James Theatre on January 16, 1964. Sondra Lee was part of Champion’s vision of a central trope of larger-than-life actors who somehow manage a balancing act, playing brilliantly off one another. They were each scene-stealers who kept each other in check.
Sondra’s success led to an unusual assignment: teaching actors how to die. For one month in 1965 she worked with choreographer John Butler on the newly created touring division of the Metropolitan Opera, ensuring their death scenes evoked an appropriate audience response.
Lee went on to direct a number of cabaret shows based on the music of Stephen Sondheim. 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, each won numerous awards including “Best Revue” “Best Show” and “Outstanding Achievement.”
Sondra 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 artiste – and a legend of Broadway – the entire auditorium cheered, giving her a prolonged standing ovation.
Her book, “I’ve Slept with Everybody: A Memoir,” (Bear Manor Media, 2009) took readers through 50 years of a showbiz, her lifelong friendship with Marlon Brando, and her 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.”
