Edward Lawrence; Movie Publicist

Edward Lawrence, 95, publicity executive for MGM during its heyday. Lawrence was a publicist for the legendary Culver City studio for 33 years, spearheading campaigns for such screen classics as “Pride and Prejudice,” “Waterloo Bridge,” “Butterfield 8” and “Romeo and Juliet.” A newsman before he joined the studio, Lawrence had been golf and yachting editor at the Los Angeles Times during the 1920s and ‘30s. Later he was involved in promotion of sporting events, including the city’s first professional tennis tournament. He was lured into the burgeoning motion picture business in 1935, and his first job was publicizing George Cukor’s “Romeo and Juliet,” starring Norma Shearer and Leslie Howard. Soon he was rubbing elbows with stars such as Joan Crawford, Spencer Tracy, Greta Garbo and Clark Gable. One day he was assigned to take Gable to see “Mutiny on the Bounty,” which Gable had starred in but never saw because he had been on a South American tour. Lawrence tried to sneak the dashing screen idol into a public screening at the Chinese Theatre in Hollywood through a side door, a plan that Gable immediately nixed. “Oh, no. Gable always goes in the front door,” he told the publicist. “So that’s what we did,” Lawrence told The Times many years later, “straight in, through the front, without stopping, and a girl looked up and fainted on the spot.” Lawrence retired from MGM in 1969 and spent his leisure time traveling with his wife of 65 years, Helen, with whom he had a daughter, Pam. On Tuesday at his Cheviot Hills home.