Judee Morton

Though she was born in Detroit, Michigan, Judee Morton's family moved a great deal, living in Shawnee, Oklahoma; Dallas, Texas; Akron, Ohio; Allentown, Pennsylvania; and Los Angeles, California. Her mother was a waitress, telephone operator and radio parts technician, who worked overtime to provide dance lessons for her daughter. Her father was a mechanical engineer, insurance salesman, airplane pilot, boat captain and gambler. The middle child in between two brothers, Judee acted out plots from Tarzan movies in which she was Jane, her older brother was Tarzan and her younger brother played Cheetah, the chimpanzee. She auditioned for dance troupes in Canada and New York, and danced in clubs in order to save enough money to attend Oklahoma State University and later U.C.L.A. After a number of stage and screen roles, she met and married Ian Fraser, an Emmy-Award-winning composer and musical director. Since then, she has been known as Judith Morton Fraser. She left film acting for two decades while raising a family and earning an M.A. in educational psychology from California State University at Northridge and became a marriage and family therapist. (California is one of a handful of states that license this designation). She has returned to film acting but is also a practicing psychotherapist in Los Angeles. She is the author of the self-help book, "What's So 'Good' About 'Bad' Feelings?". Her daughter, Tiffany Fraser, is a Los Angeles-based, certified Yoga instructor and her son, Neal Fraser, is a prize-winning Los Angeles chef.