- Lucille Lortel
Lucille Lortel (
December 16 ,1900 –April 4 ,1999 ) was an American actress and theater producer who is remembered as the namesake of anoff-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 withHelen Hayes ). She went on to become anoff-Broadway theater producer andimpresario 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.The
Lucille Lortel Theatre , onChristopher Street , inGreenwich Village , New York City, which hosts theLucille Lortel Awards for achievement in off-Broadway productions, and the Lortel Archives, which provides the Internet Off-Broadway Database, are named in her honor and supported by her foundation.She died of natural causes in New York at the age of 98 and is interred at the
Westchester Hills Cemetery inHastings-on-Hudson, New York .External links
* [http://www.lortel.org/LLF_biography/index.cfm "Lucille's Biography"] – Official Website of the Louise Lortel Foundation.
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Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
