Actress, Producer. She was an American stage actress as well as being a theatrical producer and artistic director. Born Lucille Wadler, one of four children of Jewish Polish immigrants, she attended Adelphi University after being privately home schooled. Starting in 1920, she began acting and theatre classes at the Academy of Dramatic Arts, traveled to Europe to study, and began using the stage name of Lortel. She made her Broadway debut in 1925 in "Caesar and Cleopatra" with Helen Hayes. She also appeared in David Belasco's "The Dove" with Judith Anderson the same year. In 1926 she appeared in "One Man's Woman" at the 48th Street Theatre. In the stage version and the 1928 film, which was one of the first talkie films, she had the lead role in "The Man Who Laughed Last." In a touring company production, she played the role of "Poppy" in "The Shanghai Gesture. She had several roles in short films as well as on radio. In 1931 she married Louis Schweitzer, becoming a socialite wife. In 1947 on her husband's property in Norwalk, Connecticut, she founded the White Barn Theatre with the mission of developing the talents of new playwrights, composers, and directors. She made premier productions at the White Barn Theatre with a host of plays that were adaptions of best-selling novels. Many of her productions were very successful, advancing eventually from the White Barn Theatre to off-Broadway or Broadway in New York City. As a theatrical producer, she produced or co-produced nearly 500 plays, five of which were nominated for Tony Awards: "As Is" in 1985; "Angels Fall" in 1983; as an off-Broadway production in 1964, "Blood Knot," nominated in 1985; in the category Best Costumes, "Sarafina!" in 1988; and in the category Best Play, "A Walk in the Woods" in 1988. Her production of "A Walk in the Woods" went to London's West End as well as to Moscow and Lithuanian theaters. According to the "New York Times," her production of the adaption of the novel "Threepenny Opera" had a seven-year run and received the 1956 Obie Award, the highest award to an off-Broadway production. She was the artistic director of "Threepenny Opera" as well as numerous other plays. In 1958 she received a special Obie Award. Part of the White Barn Theatre is dedicated as a museum. In 1955, her husband gave her the off-Broadway Theatre de Lys, and it was renamed the Lucille Lortel Theatre on November 16, 1981. At the Lucille Lortel Theatre during the 1983 to 1984 season, she co-produced "The Lady," which received an Obie Award. Since 1986 the Lucille Lortel Awards are given to recognize excellence in New York Off-Broadway theatre. On October 26, 1998 she unveiled the Playwrights' Sidewalk at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, to honor outstanding playwrights, and this award is presented during the Lucille Lortel Awards. She received an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from the University of Bridgeport. A title first given to her by the "Washington Post" in 1962, the "Queen of Off-Broadway" was inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame in 1990, and received the first Annual Lee Strasberg Lifetime Achievement in 1985. Before her death, she received numerous awards and honors besides the ones mentioned.