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Debralee Scott was born in 1953 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, as the youngest of four daughters to William Henry Scott, Jr. (March 1, 1914 – September 17, 1993) and Marion Jones (February 11, 1916 – October 1993). Her older sisters included producer Carol Ann Scott (later Scott Bushnell) and Beverly Hills talent manager Jerilyn Scott, while Ardith Lynn Scott passed away in infancy. When her sisters reached young adulthood, the family moved from Elizabeth to San Francisco, California.
Scott grew up in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, where she was a high school cheerleader. While attending Stroudsburg High School and taking a Greek-Latin course, she worked at a movie theater. At age 16 in 1969, she joined her sisters in San Francisco, graduating from Galileo Academy of Science and Technology in 1971 before beginning acting at the American Conservatory Theater.
Her first acting role came in 1971 as an uncredited extra in Dirty Harry, portraying the nude corpse of Ann Mary Deacon, a 14-year-old victim of the Scorpio Killer. She then appeared as Harrison Ford’s character’s girlfriend in American Graffiti (1973), delivering the line "Ain't he neat?"
In the mid-1970s, Scott moved to Los Angeles and secured an agent. She played Rosalie 'Hotsy' Totsy, a semi-recurring character on Welcome Back, Kotter (1975). At 22, she starred as Cathy, the younger sister of the lead character in Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (1976), reprising the role in the spin-off Forever Fernwood (1977). After Forever Fernwood concluded, Scott hosted several celebrity quiz shows, including The $10,000 Pyramid, Super Password, and Match Game. Her film credits include Pandemonium (1982) and Police Academy (1984). Her romantic relationships included Desi Arnaz Jr., Micky Dolenz, Richard Dreyfuss, Jonathan Frakes, Peter P. Lucia Jr., Neal Schon, and Ringo Starr.
By the mid-1990s, Scott became a talent manager at Empowered Artists. On December 15, 1995, she met her future fiancé, John Dennis Levi, an NYPD officer with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, at the Greenwich Village bar Hogs & Heifers. She later lived with Levi and his mother in Brooklyn, New York. In 2001, during a cross-country trip, Levi proposed at a hotel in Winslow, Arizona, and she accepted. Their wedding, planned for March 2002, was never realized as Levi was killed in the South Tower during the September 11 attacks. Devastated, Scott struggled with alcoholism and developed cirrhosis of the liver.
In March 2005, Scott moved from Brooklyn to Fernandina Beach, Florida, to care for her eldest sister Carol Ann, who was battling emphysema and heart issues. After collapsing and falling into a coma of unknown origin, Scott awoke on March 31, underwent eye surgery, and was discharged two days later on her birthday. However, on April 5, 2005, she died peacefully in her sleep at age 52. An autopsy found no definitive cause of death, and she was cremated.
