Charlotte Lawrence
Charlotte Lawrence was an actress, born in Los Angeles, California on April 22nd, 1921. She was a very successful radio actress, and starred in hundreds of radio shows - but left the industry at the peak of her career to take care of her sick mother.
For an actress who was quite lucratively successful in radio, there are very few publications written about Charlotte.
She was born Charlotte Sorkin, and she attended Fairfax High School in Los Angeles where she was involved in theatre, before she moved to New York during the 1940s to pursue a career in acting on radio.
She found success in shows such as Our Gal Sunday, where she played the role of Leona Kenmore, with Dorothy Lowell as Sunday. It was one of the five most popular soap operas created by Frank and Anne Hummert, and was also one of the most enduring - but unfortunately there are only three episodes available today.
However, her success didn't end there, with her appearing in hundreds of radio dramas, from the mid 1940s through to the 1960s, most frequently in Lux Radio Theater, and Suspense - and one of the most popular western radio shows ever broadcast, Gunsmoke, included Charlotte with a cast of notables such as William Conrad (as Matt Dillon and Georgia Ellis as Kitty Russell, the saloon lady.
Escape was also a catalyst for Lawrence’s radio career, where she was heard on the show with William Conrad and Paul Frees. Today, critics think of Escape as one of radio’s greatest series, but during the time the show was broadcast it never achieved as much popularity as some of the other shows she appeared on.
One of my favorite Escape shows, The Derelict, stars Charlotte Lawrence as Cora Moore, a dancer aboard a ship bound for Egypt. A few days into the journey, a monsoon ends their voyage, and now Cora is one of four shipwrecked survivors drifting in a life boat. They soon see a boat approaching, but when they board it, they find the ship empty except for two skeletons and a fortune in gold. The four of them agree to split the gold when they reach civilization, but will everyone want to keep that agreement?
During the 1950s, Charlotte successfully made the transition to television, appearing in several I Love Lucy episodes, and countless TV shows as a character actress.
Sh chose to leave acting in the 1960s for a corporate position at Capital Records, where she worked for over ten years before landing a key position at Lorimar Television Productions where she supervised the music and licensing for such shows as The Waltons, Full House, Perfect Strangers and Knots Landing.
After an incredibly successful career which spanned at least five decades, Charlotte retired from acting and management in Van Nuys, California, where she passed away on October 20, 1993.
Charlotte Lawrence was one of the most talented and capable actresses of the twentieth century, and it is a pleasure listening to the huge selection of shows she starred in, which you can hear on RUSC.
Happy listening my friends,
