“Soundies” were three-minute musical films meant to be played on jukeboxes, and Lee starred in more than 100 of them. In a career that stretched from the age of nine to this past summer, she achieved dance stardom after graduating from the Apollo Theater’s chorus line, was part of the first all-black USO tour, starred in the national tour of Bubbling Brown Sugar, and took part in the tap-dance revival that started in the 1980s, teaching the likes of Michelle Dorrance. – The New York Times