Lauren was born in LaSalle, Illinois. She attended Catholic Boarding
schools in her youth, receiving a scholarship at Crawford Manor, an
exclusive boarding school for young ladies in Wisconsin. She won a
national poetry contest for "Genuine Pearls." After high school, she patriotically worked at
the Carnegie Illinois Steel Corporation Mill during the war years, while
attending Gary Junior College at night. The nearby Golden Nugget was a
favorite spot that served coffee, Cokes, donuts, and a dance or two with
chivalrous young service men. Much of her young life is revealed in an
interview for the National World War II Museum in New Orleans,
Louisiana:
https://www.ww2online.org/view/lauren-swinney#refl....
Lauren
started in radio on WJKS at the age of 4 in Gary, In. She went on to be
a Producer/Director/Actor/Newscaster on WIND (Gary), WLRN (Miami) and
WAVV/WCVU/WHEW & WIXI (Naples). She wrote commercials, documentary
scripts, columns for neighborhood newspapers in Alameda, Ca., Atlanta,
Ga., Kendall, Fl. and New Orleans, La.
She always longed to be an actor
and attended Northwestern School of Speech, obtaining her B.B.S. and
M.A. alongside Paul Lynde, Charlotte Raye, Charlton Heston and Lydia
Clarke. Her loving parents encouraged a non-acting career path because
of the Hollywood reputation of the 1940s.She became a speech therapist, a
Dean of Massey Jr. College in Atlanta, Ga.; a Miami Dade County School
teacher at Riverside and Shenandoah Elementary schools; taught English
(ESOL) to many Cuban exiles in the 1960s and early 1970s; produced an
Emmy Award winning weekly television show called Volunteers In-Sight for
the Dade County School System; and was a Professor at Miami
International Fine Arts Institute, and a college instructor in several Florida colleges. She loved to travel and experience
unfamiliar cultures. She retired to Naples, FL and eventually moved to
New Orleans to pursue her acting career. In 2011, her memoir,
Je Suis Une Parapluie was published. In New Orleans, she acted in a dozen or more T.V. and motion
pictures as mentioned in this article in a New Orleans local publication
“ViaNolaVie”:
https://www.vianolavie.org/2015/03/11/new-orleans-actress-lauren-swinney-still-loops-the-loop-23161/