Both writers were Ohio natives: Lawrence was born Jerome Lawrence Schwartz on 14 July 1915 in Cleveland, the son of Samuel Schwartz and Sarah (Rogen) Schwartz, while Robert Edwin Lee, born on 15 October 1918, was a native of Elyria, a Cleveland suburb, and the son of C. Melvin and Elvira (Taft) Lee. Both attended Ohio universities. Lawrence earned a B.A. from Ohio State University in Columbus in 1937, and Lee attended Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, just north of Columbus, from 1935 to 1937. Both began their professional careers as writers and directors in commercial radio and worked for KMPC in Beverly Hills, California, although at different times. Still, their paths did not cross until January 1942 in New York when, at the instigation of friends, they met and immediately formed a writing partnership. Their first collaboration was "Inside a Kid's Head," produced for the radio program
Columbia Workshop (and later widely anthologized). By the spring of 1942 the two writers were successful enough that they established an office in Los Angeles, Lee having completed assignments as a writer/director for the Young and Rubicam advertising agency while Lawrence finished his work on the CBS series
They Live Forever.
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