Joanna Lee (April 7, 1931 - October 24, 2003) was an American actress, writer and producer.
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Lee was born in Newark, New Jersey; by the time she was 20, she was a divorced single mother with a son, Craig Lee.
She started with small roles in low-budget movies, including the 1959 cult classic Plan 9 from Outer Space, where she played "Tanna". After a serious car accident she switched from acting to writing, and by 1960 had landed a job writing for Flintstones.
In 1974, she won an Emmy Award, for Best Writing in Drama, for a 1972 Thanksgiving episode of The Waltons. The same year, she formed her own production company, which produced the documentary Babe, about athlete Babe Zaharias's career. The film was nominated for an Emmy for "Outstanding Writing in a Special Program - Drama or Comedy - Original Teleplay" in 1976.
She wrote the novel and teleplay Mary Jane Harper Cried Last Night.
In 1988, she won the Humanitas Prize for The Kid Who Wouldn't Quit: The Brad Silverman Story.
Her son, Craig Lee, then a music director at L. A. Weekly, died of AIDS in 1992. Another son, Christopher Ciampa, appeared in several of her films.[1]
Her autobiography, A Difficult Woman in Hollywood, was published in 1999.
Lee died from bone cancer on October 24, 2003, in Santa Monica, at the age of 72.