Jerome Lawrence was born July 14, 1915, in Cleveland, Ohio, into a literary family. As a teenager, Jerome Lawrence studied writing with Eugene C. Davis. After graduating from Glenville High School in Cleveland in 1933, Lawrence went on to study with Harlan Hatcher, Herman Miller, and Robert Newdick at Ohio State University. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Ohio State in 1937. Between 1937 and 1939, Lawrence was a graduate student at the Universty of California at Los Angeles. Together, Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee have written famous works of American drama, including Inherit the Wind, The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail, and Auntie Mame. For their work as playwrights, they have won two Peabody Awards, the Variety Critics Poll Award, multiple Tony Award nominations, and many more awards. Both Lawrence and Lee were fundamentally shaped by their participation in World War II. Staff Sergeant Lawrence served as a consultant to the Secretary of War and later as an Army correspondent in North Africa and Italy. In addition to his service in themilitary, he worked as a journalist, reporter, and telegraph editor of small Ohio daily papers and as a continuity editor at KMPC in Beverly Hills. Before World War II, he had worked from 1939 to 1941, as a senior staff writer for CBS Radio, experience that became useful when he and Lee founded Armed Forces Radio. Lawrence's interest in drama extends back to his high school and college days, when he acted in and directed school and summer theater productions. Working together on Armed Forces Radio, Lawrence and Lee produced the official Army-Navy radio programs for D-Day, VE-Day, and VJ-Day. After the war, they created radio programs for CBS, including the series "Columbia Workshop." They also co-wrote radio plays including The Unexpected in 1951, Song of Norway in 1957, Shangri-La in 1960, a radio version of Inherit the Wind in 1965, and Lincoln the Unwilling Warrior in 1974. Inherit the Wind earned Lawrence and Lee numerous awards in the year after its production. The play won the Donaldson Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award, the Variety New York Drama Critics Poll Award, and the Critics Award for Best Foreign Play and was nominated for a Tony Award. Since its publication, the play has been translated into thirty languages. Lawrence and Lee's excellence in theatre has been rewarded by the Ohioana Award, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Theatre Assocation, and a number of honorary degrees. Lawrence is the recipient of honorary doctorates from Villanova, the College of Wooster, Farleigh Dickinson University, and Ohio State University. Together, Lawrence and Lee have won numerous Tony nominations, in two separate instances keys to the city of Cleveland, the Moss Hart Memorial Award for Plays of a Free World, a US State Department Medal, an Ohio State Centennial Medal, a Pegasus Award, the Ohio Governor's Award, and a Cleveland Playhouse Plaque. Lawrence was a visiting professor at Ohio State and a master playwright at New York University, Baylor University, and the Salzburg Seminar in American studies. He currently serves as an adjunct professor at the University of Southern California.
Robert Edwin Lee, 1918 - 1994 Robert E. Lee was born on October 15, 1918, in Elyria, Ohio. Lee may have inherited his interest in writing from his mother, Elvira Taft Lee, who was a teacher. Lee graduated from Elyria High School in 1935. He studied at Northwestern University in Chicago in 1934 before transferring to Ohio Wesleyan, where he was a student from 1935 to 1937. Lee worked after college, from 1938 to 1942, as an executive at the firm of Young and Rubicam in New York City. Together, Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee have written famous works of American drama н including Inherit the Wind, The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail, and Auntie Mame. For their work as playwrights, they have won two Peabody Awards, the Variety Critics Poll Award, multiple Tony Award nominations, and many more awards. Both Lawrence and Lee were fundamentally shaped by their participation in World War II. The conflict gave both their first opportunities to put their writing talents to use. Lee was appointed Expert Consultant to the Secretary of War in 1942. He also served in the USAF from 1943 to 1944, during which time he and Lawrence co-founded Armed Forces Radio. Working together, Lawrence and Lee produced the official Army-Navy radio programs for D-Day, VE-Day, and VJ-Day. After the war, they created radio programs for CBS, including the series "Columbia Workshop." They also co-wrote radio plays including The Unexpected in 1951, Song of Norway in 1957, Shangri-La in 1960, a radio version of Inherit the Wind in 1965, and Lincoln the Unwilling Warrior in 1974. Lee was awarded a Peabody Ward for a UN radio series in 1948. As co-founder, with Lawrence, of the American Playwrights Theatre and the Margo Jones Award, Lee has been involved with both academic and professional theater communities, working as a director and teacher as well as a playwright. The duo is perhaps best know for their play, Inherit the Wind, which earned Lawrence and Lee numerous awards in the year after its production. The play won the Donaldson Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award, the Variety New York Drama Critics Poll Award, and the Critics Award for Best Foreign Play and was nominated for a Tony Award. Since its publication, the play has been translated into thirty languages. Lee received an honorary doctorate in literature from Ohio Wesleyan, a doctor of letters from the College of Wooster, and a doctor of humanities from Ohio State. Together, Lawrence and Lee have won many Tony nominations, in two separate instances keys to the city of Cleveland, the Moss Hart Memorial Award for Plays of a Free World, a US State Department Medal, an Ohio State Centennial Medal, a Pegasus Award, the Ohio Governor's Award, and a Cleveland Playhouse Plaque. For twenty years, Lee served as an adjunct professor of playwriting at UCLA. In 1990, Lawrence and Lee wer named Fellows of American Theatre at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. On July 8, 1994, Lee died in Los Angeles.
