Born in 1921 in Footscray, Victoria, Raymond Lawler left school at the age of 13. He worked in a factory while taking evening acting classes and wrote his first play when he was 19.
Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, affectionately known as ‘The Doll’, was first performed in Australia in 1955, before being performed on stages around the world and translated into multiple languages.
John Sumner directed the first production of The Summer of the Seventeenth Doll in Melbourne in 1955, and toured with the play throughout Australia, the United Kingdom and in the United States between 1955 and 1958. Lawler, whose first work in the theatre was as an actor, played the part of Barney in ‘The Doll’ in all those early productions, and toured with the play.
It was the basis for the 1956 film of the same name (released as ‘Season of Passion’ in America), directed by Leslie Norman and starring Ernest Borgnine as Roo, and in 1996 it was turned into a successful opera by composer Richard Mills, with libretto by Peter Goldsworthy.
To this day, ‘The Doll’ is considered a work unparalleled in significance.
Between 1949 and 1971 Lawler’s other stage works included Cradle of Thunder (1949), The Piccadilly Bushman (1959), The Unshaven Creek (1963), A Breach in the Wall (1967), and The Man Who Shot the Albatross (1971).
Raymond Lawler lived in England and Ireland between 1958 and 1975, becoming the first Australian playwright to perform their works internationally in the process. On his return to Australia he wrote the plays The Kid Stakes and Other Times which, along with The Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, came to be known as ‘The Doll Trilogy’.
Lawler’s sad passing is a milestone moment in the history of Government support for writers. Lawler was the last remaining recipient of the Emeritus Fellowship (Literary) Pension, started by the Commonwealth Literary Fund in 1908 and later transferred to the Australia Council for the Arts in 1973. From 1995 the Australia Council (now Creative Australia) changed its model to the awarding of Emeritus Fellowship Awards.
The Emeritus Fellowship Pension greatly improved the lives of many notable men and women of literature and represented a compassionate response to the timeless problem of successful artists being compelled to live in poverty.
Mr Lawler was awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1980 and the Order of Australia (OA) in 2023 for services to the performing arts.
Creative Australia CEO Adrian Collette AM said:
“Since coming to prominence in the early 1950s, Raymond Lawler’s work has had a profound influence on contemporary Australian theatre. His legacy will live on, for the benefit of future generations.”
We send our deepest sympathies to Raymond Lawler’s friends, family, and the theatre community.
Vale
Raymond Lawler AO OBE
1921 – 2024