Jerome Lawrence Schwartz was born on July 14, 1915 in Cleveland, Ohio, to Samuel Schwartz, a printer, and Sarah Rogen Schwartz, a poet. During his high school and college years, Lawrence was a prolific reader, reading every play — from Greek drama to current comedies — that he could find in the Cleveland and Ohio State University libraries. He also loved the theater. Because live theater was not commonplace throughout the United States during the 1930s, he hitchhiked to New York City to experience it.
Lawrence received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Ohio State University in 1937. He worked for a short time as a reporter and telegraph operator for the Wilmington News Journal and as an editor for the New Lexington Daily News. His work as a newspaperman supplied him with a great deal of writing material that he made use of in later years. Also in 1937, Lawrence moved to California and began work as an editor for KMPC radio station in Beverly Hills. In 1939, he accepted a position as a writer for Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) in Los Angeles and New York, and he attended the University of California, Los Angeles graduate school.
Lawrence met Lee in New York City in 1942, and their partnership, which was to prove long-lasting and successful, was formed. Lawrence joined the United States Army in the early 1940s and was co-founder of the Armed Forces Radio Service. Although the majority of Lawrence's work over the next five decades was in collaboration with Lee, he continued to write plays and books on his own, using his given name Jerome L. Schwartz, Jerome Lawrence, and other pseudonyms. Lawrence independently wrote Actor: The Life and Times of Paul Muni (1974), which has been hailed one of the best theater biographies of the twentieth century. Today, Lawrence lives in Malibu, California, and spends his time writing and teaching aspiring playwrights.
