Rosina May Lawrence was a British-Canadian actress and singer. She had a short but memorable career in the 1920s and 1930s in Hollywood before she married in 1939 and retired from entertainment.
Early years
Born in Westboro, a suburb of Ottawa, Lawrence was the daughter of George Frederick Francis Lawrence, a carpenter, and Annie Louise Hagar, who moved from Ramsgate, England to Ottawa, Ontario, Canada in 1910. George Lawrence found work as a streetcar operator, then as a home builder. The family moved to Boston in 1922, then moved to California. In 1925, a fall on a school playground in Los Angeles resulted in paralysis on her left side. Dancing led to professional engagements. Lawrence was one of the first women to swim Lake Tahoe in Nevada.
Career
Lawrence's dancing led to work in films when she became Sally Eilers' double for a tap dance in Dance Team. Thereafter, she worked as a stand-in for Eilers in other films and gained dancing roles as well. Lawrence made her film debut in the 1924 filmA Lady of Quality. She is best known for portraying Mary Roberts in Laurel and Hardy's Way Out West ; she also provided the "high" voice when Stan Laurel sang "Trail of the Lonesome Pine". Rosina was the soprano songstress voice over for Julie Bishop in The Bohemian Girl, the song "I Dreamt I Dwelled in Marble Halls". She played schoolteacher Miss Lawrence in eight Our Gang comedies from 1936 to 1937. Lawrence also appeared as Alice Lowell in Charlie Chan's Secret and Cecilia Moore in Pick a Star. Her final performance was in the 1939 Italian comedy film In the Country Fell a Star, in which she plays an American film star who causes great excitement when she appears in a small Italian town.
Personal life
Lawrence and Judge Juvenal P. Marchisio married in June 1939, and she left acting to become a housewife. Marchisio died in 1973, and in 1987, Lawrence married John McCabe, a biographer of her onetime co-stars Laurel and Hardy. Lawrence's parents became naturalised United States citizens in 1939. Lawrence's nationality was given as British and it is unclear if she ever became a United States citizen.
Death
Lawrence died of cancer on June 23, 1997 in New York City, aged 84.
Recognition
In 1936, the Hollywood Press Photographers Association named Lawrence as one of 10 Flashlighters' Starlets — young actresses the group considered most likely to succeed in film careers. The Nepean Museum has recognized Lawrence by exhibiting publicity photographs and a variety of memorabilia related to her. It also shows a retrospective video of her career and videos of six films in which she appeared.
