actor, producer, and playwright whose Summer of the Seventeenth Doll is credited with changing the direction of modern Australian drama.

Lawler left school at 13 and worked in a variety of jobs before joining the National Theatre Company in Melbourne as an actor, writer, and producer. In 1955 the newly formed Elizabethan Theatre Trust chose his Summer of the Seventeenth Doll for its first staging of an original Australian play. Lawler played the lead in Melbourne (1956); the play's success led to productions in London (1957; with Lawler again in the lead) and New York City (1958), and a film version was made in 1959. Its criticism of Australian cultural stereotypes—combined with a natural style and a language free of cliché—represented a major break with tradition and inspired a new phase of dramatic realism in Australia.

Lawler's other plays include Cradle of Thunder (1949), The Piccadilly Bushman (1959), The Unshaven Cheek (1963), A Breach in the Wall (1967), The Man Who Shot the Albatross (1972), and two additional plays in “The Doll Trilogy”: Kid Stakes (1975) and Other Times (1976). His play Godsend was produced in 1982.