Deaths on February 29

Jerome Lawrence, American playwright and author (b. 1915)

Jerome Lawrence (born Jerome Lawrence Schwartz; July 14, 1915 – February 29, 2004) was an American playwright and author. After graduating from Ohio State University in 1937 and the University of California, Los Angeles in 1939, Lawrence partnered with Robert Edwin Lee to help create Armed Forces Radio. The two built a partnership over their lifetimes, and continued to collaborate on screenplays and musicals until Lee's death in 1994.

Lawrence and Lee won acclaim for the 1955 play Inherit the Wind, based on the Scopes Trial. Lawrence describes the couple's plays as "shar[ing] the theme of the dignity of every individual mind, and that mind's life-long battle against limitation and censorship". The two deliberately avoided Broadway later in their careers and formed the American Playwrights Theater in 1963 to help promote their plays. After Lee's death, Lawrence continued to write plays in his Malibu, California home. He died in Malibu on February 29, 2004, from complications of a stroke.