Dorothy Rottman; Helped Expand Theater Scene in L.A.

Dorothy Vivian Rottman, a developer of live theater in Los Angeles who was known professionally as Dorothy Roth, has died. She was 80.

Rottman died Sunday in Northridge Hospital.

In the 1950s and 1960s she served as associate producer of the Players Ring Theatre in what is now West Hollywood. Under her tenure, the theater grew into a complex of three stages presenting such productions as “Inherit the Wind,” “The Diary of Anne Frank,” “Witness for the Prosecution” and “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.”

Rottman and her husband, attorney Mandel Rottman, co-produced “Nobody Loves an Albatross” at the Ivar Theater in Hollywood in 1965.

She also established a Saturday children’s theater program and created acting classes for teenagers and adults.

A native of O’Fallon, Ill., near East St. Louis, Rottman grew up in Chicago and moved to Southern California with her husband in 1947.

She is survived by their daughter, Barbara, of Los Angeles, and a sister, Sylvia Sanders, of Laguna Niguel.

Services are at 11 a.m. today at Groman’s Mortuary in Mission Hills.

The family has asked that any memorial contributions be made to the American Cancer Society.