LEST WE FORGET  KATE DRAIN LAWSON
(July 27, 1894 - November 20, 1977)

Ms. Lawson wore many hats in the industry.  She was a scenic and costume designer, technical director, actress and theater administrator.

During World War l she drove an ambulance for the American Red Cross in France, when she met another ambulance driver, the playwright
John Howard Lawson. They married in 1918 and produced a son, Alan Drain Lawson who became an artist and a motion picture technician.  Although the marriage was dissolved in 1924 she never stopped loving him.
     In 1922 her first experience on Broadway was as a design assistant and assistant stage manager for Malvaloca, the premiere show at the re-opening of the 48th St. Theatre.  The Theatre Guild offered her the position as its technical and art director which she held until 1931.  She also acted in two of the Guild's productions : The Chief Thing and The Garrick Gaieties in 1930.

Katharine Cornell hired her as a technical director for a tour of her productions of Candida,
The Barretts of Wimpole Street, and Romeo and Juliet.   She also worked for John Houseman to execute the difficult design for Virgil Thompson's Four Saints in Three Acts.  In 1936 she became the head of the Bureau of Research and Publication for the Works Progress Adiministration (WPA)
Federal Theatre Project.  She succeeded Rosamond Gilder as bureau head.    Hallie Flanagan wrote in her autobiography Arena (1940) that Kate Drain Lawson had "cool common sense" when everyone else was in a state of jitters over the production of Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here. 

In addition to her design work and her technical and administrative duties in the theatre she acted in several films, including Ladies of the Big House (Paramount, 1932); Torchy Blaine and Girls on Probation (WB, 1938); Remember the Night (Paramount, 1940); Phantom of the Opera (Universal, 1943); King of the Cowboys (Republic, 1943); Every Girl Should Be Married (RKO, 1948); Thelma Jordan and The Bride of Vengeance (Paramount, 1949); M (Columbia, 1951); and How To Marry A Millionaire (Fox, 1953).

In 1969 when the American College Theatre Festival (ACTF) was organized, she was a member of the Steering Committee for the Pacific South Region.  As a result of her involvement, she realized the importance of college and university theatre productions and decided to do what she could to encourage the student artist-designer.  She contributed cash prizes for outstanding costumes and scenic designs by students in her region.  Today, the Southern California Educational Theatre Association carries on design scholarships in her name and memory.

She was one of the outstanding women in technical theatre and theatrical design in America. She was one of the few whose hard, ceaseless, and highly creative labors broke through the tangled undergrowth that for centuries impeded or prohibited the contributions of women to the complete spectrum of theatre art.

To quote John Houseman: "She was solid, professional, devoted, bossy and harrassed but without her, Florine Stettheimer's designs might have never reached the stage." (Run Through (1972)
Referencing Virgil Thompson's Four Saints in Three Acts.

Resource:  Notable Women in American Theatre. 1989.  Jean Prinz Korf