Ray lawler funeral

Ray Lawler

Australian playwright (1921–2024)

Ray Lawler


AO OBE

BornRaymond Evenor Lawler
(1921-05-23)23 May 1921
Footscray, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Died24 July 2024(2024-07-24) (aged 103)
Melbourne, Australia
Occupation
  • Playwright
  • dramatist
  • actor
  • director
  • producer
Notable works (1953)
Spouse

Jacklyn Kelleher

(m. 1956)​
Children3

Raymond Evenor LawlerAO OBE (23 May 1921 – 24 July 2024) was an Australian playwright and dramatist, actor, theatre producer and director.

Lawler's most notable play was his tenth, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (1953), which had its premiere in Melbourne in 1955. The play was notable for changing the direction of Australian drama, considered one of the greatest of the 20th century, it was adapted to a film in 1959, starring Angela Lansbury and Ernest Borgnine.[1] The story of The Doll is preceded by Kid's Stakes, set in 1937, when the characters of The Doll are young adults, and then Other Times, which is set in 1945 and i

Ray Lawler, 'trailblazing' playwright of Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, dies aged 103

Venerable playwright Ray Lawler has died at the age of 103, leaving behind a rich legacy of theatrical works regarded as having set a precedent for contemporary Australian drama.

Lawler's family said he passed away "peacefully" in his Melbourne home of Elwood last Wednesday after battling a brief illness, according to performing arts publisher Currency Press.

An esteemed figure in theatre whose career spanned decades, Lawler first shot to fame with Summer of the Seventeenth Doll in 1953 — a play that to this day is considered unparalleled in significance.

On his birth centenary in 2021, arts journalist John Bailey wrote the coming of the play was like an "epic, landmark event", which redrew the landscape of theatre such as which "can obscure what came before, and The Doll looms so large on the theatrical horizon that many histories of Australian theatre simply start there".

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The Doll — Lawler's tenth play — was fi

Ray Lawler

My original plan was to research and write a biography of the Australian playwright, Ray Lawler.

The sudden and overwhelming success in the mid-1950s of Lawler’s  play, The Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, marked both the beginning of Lawler’s career.

The Doll, as it became known, quickly became an Australian classic.  When I interviewed Lawler, I was struck by the way he declined to accept the proposition that The Doll was a great Australian work or that he occupied a significant position in the history of Australian drama.

Lawler was being more than modest. He believed he had written a good play but he also believed he could not accept credit for The Doll after the play left his hands.

The story to be told, then, is not just that of Lawler’s life, but of the relationship between Lawler and The Doll. Lawler’s life was so closely linked to that of The Doll that the scope of this thesis was widened to take account of the careers of both.

 The Coming of Age: an account of Ray Lawler and the Summer of the Seventeenth Doll 

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