LUCILLE LORTEL
Name: Lucille Lortel
Born: 16 December 1900
Died: 4 April 1999
Lucille Lortel (December 16, 1900 – April 4, 1999) was an American actress and
theater producer who is remembered as the namesake of an off-Broadway playhouse
and theatrical award.
Born Lucille Wadler in New York City, Lucille Lortel was originally an actress
during the 1920s (she once recollected comparing breast sizes with Helen Hayes).
She went on to become an off-Broadway theater producer and impresario with the
help of a wealthy husband, industrialist Louis Schweitzer, whom she married in
1931. Her age was a well-kept mystery until nearly the end of her life.
Lortel founded The White Barn Theatre at her estate in Norwalk, Connecticut in
1947.
It is for her that both the Lucille Lortel Theatre on Christopher Street in
Greenwich Village, New York City, and the Lucille Lortel Awards for achievement
in off-Broadway productions are named.
She died of natural causes in New York at the age of 98 and is interred at the
Westchester Hills Cemetery in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.
Name: Lucille Lortel
Born: 16 December 1900
Died: 4 April 1999
Lucille Lortel (December 16, 1900 – April 4, 1999) was an American actress and
theater producer who is remembered as the namesake of an off-Broadway playhouse
and theatrical award.
Born Lucille Wadler in New York City, Lucille Lortel was originally an actress
during the 1920s (she once recollected comparing breast sizes with Helen Hayes).
She went on to become an off-Broadway theater producer and impresario with the
help of a wealthy husband, industrialist Louis Schweitzer, whom she married in
1931. Her age was a well-kept mystery until nearly the end of her life.
Lortel founded The White Barn Theatre at her estate in Norwalk, Connecticut in
1947.
It is for her that both the Lucille Lortel Theatre on Christopher Street in
Greenwich Village, New York City, and the Lucille Lortel Awards for achievement
in off-Broadway productions are named.
She died of natural causes in New York at the age of 98 and is interred at the
Westchester Hills Cemetery in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.