Jerome Lawrence Schwartz was born in
Cleveland, Ohio, on July 14, 1915. Lawrence's father, Samuel Schwartz, operated a printing press, while his mother Sarah (née Rogen) wrote poetry and did volunteer work. After he graduated from
Glenville High School in 1933, Lawrence attended the Ohio State University, where he graduated with a
bachelor's degree in 1937. While a student at Ohio State, Lawrence was initiated into the Nu chapter of the
Zeta Beta Tau fraternity, a historically
Jewish social fraternity. Two years later, he completed graduate studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. Lawrence worked for several small newspapers as a reporter/editor before moving into radio as a writer for
CBS. In 1941, Lawrence co-created with
Aleen Leslie the radio series
A Date with Judy, which was based on Leslie's “One Girl Chorus” column in the Pittsburgh Press. Lawrence left the show in 1943. With his writing partner,
Robert E. Lee, Lawrence worked for
Armed Forces Radio while serving together in the
U.S. Army during
World War II. Several of Lawrence and Lee's plays draw on events from United States history to speak to contemporary issues.
Inherit the Wind (1955) addressed
intellectual freedom and
McCarthyism through a fictionalized version of the Scopes Monkey Trial. ''The Gang's All Here
(1959) examined government corruption in the 1920s. The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail'' (1970) was a
Vietnam-era exploration of
Thoreau's resistance to an earlier war. Lawrence taught playwriting in the
Master of Professional Writing Program at the
University of Southern California. Lawrence's one
Tony Award nomination was for Best Book of a Musical for
Mame. He died due to complications from a
stroke in
Malibu, California. The Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute, a research facility and archive, was dedicated in Lawrence and Lee's honor at the Ohio State University in 1986. His niece is flutist
Paula Robison. ==References==