Arthur Allan Seidelman
Encyclopedia
Arthur Allan Seidelman is an award-winning American
television
, film
, and theatre director and an occasional writer, producer and actor.
Born in New York City
, he received his BA from Whittier College and an MA in Theatre from UCLA. He subsequently studied with Sanford Meisner, who became a lifelong friend and mentor. Seidelman made his screen directorial debut with Hercules in New York
, a 1970 comedy-action film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger
. Additional credits include The Caller, Walking Across Egypt, Puerto Vallarta Squeeze
, The Sisters
, The Awakening of Spring and Children of Rage (which he also wrote). While researching the film, he lived extensively in the Middle East, including in refugee camps in Lebanon, where at one point, he was taken hostage by extremists. The film went on to be screened for major international bodies around the world, including the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the UN) . He has directed over fifty motion pictures and one hundred stage productions.
Most of Seidelman's career has been spent in television directing movies
such as Macbeth
, Like Mother Like Son: The Strange Story of Sante
and Kenny Kimes, Poker Alice, A Friendship in Vienna, Grace and Glorie, Harvest of Fire
, Kate's Secret
, The Runaway, and A Christmas Carol-The Musical
; episodes of series such as Fame
, The Paper Chase
, Knots Landing
, Hill Street Blues
, Magnum, P.I.
, Murder, She Wrote
, Trapper John, M.D.
, L.A. Law
, and A Year in the Life
, among others; and several episodes of the ABC Afterschool Special
series. The latter won him two Daytime Emmy Award
s for Outstanding Individual Direction in Children's Programming. He received additional Emmy nominations for Hill Street Blues, I Love Liberty, and as host of the PBS series Actors on Acting. He also has won the Writers Guild of America Award
for his contribution to the 1982 all-star variety special I Love Liberty, featuring Barbra Streisand
, Shirley MacLaine
, Jane Fonda
, and Dionne Warwick
, as well as two Christopher Award
s. He has also won The Peabody Award, the Humanitas Award, The Western Heritage Award and numerous awards from international film festivals, including the Milagro Award for the Best American Independent Film for The Sisters
. Seidelman most recently guest starred in the final episode of ER.
Seidelman's Broadway
career has been less successful. Billy, a 1969 musical
adaptation of Billy Budd
, closed on opening night. Vieux Carré
, a 1977 play by Tennessee Williams
, ran for six performances, and in 2003, Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks closed less than two months after it began previews. He directed a revival of The Most Happy Fella
for the New York City Opera
in 1991. He has had considerable success off-Broadway with acclaimed productions of The Ceremony of Innocence
, by Ronald Ribman, Awake and Sing by Clifford Odets and Hamp
by John Wilson, among others. He directed Madama Butterfly
for Santa Barbara Opera and The Gypsy Princess for Opera Pacific. In Los Angeles, he has directed major revivals of Hair
, Of Thee I Sing
, Mack and Mabel, The Boys From Syracuse
, Follies
and others. For regional theatre
s, he has directed Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
, The Little Foxes
, A Man for All Seasons
, The Roar of the Greasepaint - The Smell of the Crowd, Romeo and Juliet
, Stop the World - I Want to Get Off
, and The Tempest
, among others. In addition, he served as the Administrator of the Forum Theatre (now the Mitzi Newhouse) for the Repertory Theatre of Lincoln Center and as Artistic Director of Theatre Vanguard in Los Angeles.
He has directed Richard Alfieri's Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks in its Los Angeles premiere (with Uta Hagen and David Hyde Pierce) and on Broadway, the West End, the Coconut Grove and a Los Angeles revival (with Constance Towers and Jason Graae). The play has gone on to become one of the most produced plays in the world with productions in 22 countries. Seidelman recently directed Alfieri's new play, Revolutions, at the Barter Theatre.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
television
Television director
A television director directs the activities involved in making a television program and is part of a television crew.-Duties:The duties of a television director vary depending on whether the production is live or recorded to video tape or video server .In both types of productions, the...
, film
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
, and theatre director and an occasional writer, producer and actor.
Born in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, he received his BA from Whittier College and an MA in Theatre from UCLA. He subsequently studied with Sanford Meisner, who became a lifelong friend and mentor. Seidelman made his screen directorial debut with Hercules in New York
Hercules in New York
Hercules in New York is a 1969 fantasy adventure film. It is known for being the first feature film to star Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was about 22 years old when the film was produced...
, a 1970 comedy-action film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger is an Austrian-American former professional bodybuilder, actor, businessman, investor, and politician. Schwarzenegger served as the 38th Governor of California from 2003 until 2011....
. Additional credits include The Caller, Walking Across Egypt, Puerto Vallarta Squeeze
Puerto Vallarta Squeeze
Puerto Vallarta Squeeze is a novel by Robert James Waller, which was made into a film in 2004. Originally published in 1995 and subtitled The Run for el Norte, this unlikely romance follows an American expatriate and his Mexican girlfriend on a road trip with a former Marine...
, The Sisters
The Sisters (2005 film)
The Sisters is a 2005 film starring Maria Bello, Mary Stuart Masterson, and Erika Christensen as the title characters; it also stars Alessandro Nivola, Rip Torn, Eric McCormack, Steven Culp, Tony Goldwyn and Chris O'Donnell...
, The Awakening of Spring and Children of Rage (which he also wrote). While researching the film, he lived extensively in the Middle East, including in refugee camps in Lebanon, where at one point, he was taken hostage by extremists. The film went on to be screened for major international bodies around the world, including the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the UN) . He has directed over fifty motion pictures and one hundred stage productions.
Most of Seidelman's career has been spent in television directing movies
Television movie
A television film is a feature film that is a television program produced for and originally distributed by a television network, in contrast to...
such as Macbeth
Macbeth
The Tragedy of Macbeth is a play by William Shakespeare about a regicide and its aftermath. It is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy and is believed to have been written sometime between 1603 and 1607...
, Like Mother Like Son: The Strange Story of Sante
Sante Kimes
Sante Kimes is an American felon who has been convicted of two murders, along with robbery, violation of anti-slavery laws, forgery and numerous other crimes. Many of these crimes were committed with assistance from her children, especially her son Kenneth...
and Kenny Kimes, Poker Alice, A Friendship in Vienna, Grace and Glorie, Harvest of Fire
Harvest of Fire
Harvest of Fire is an American television movie that aired on CBS on April 21, 1996. Directed by Arthur Allan Seidelman, the film stars stars Lolita Davidovich, J.A...
, Kate's Secret
Kate's Secret
Kate's Secret is a 1986 television movie starring Meredith Baxter Birney, Ben Masters, Tracy Nelson, and Edward Asner, about a seemingly "perfect" suburban housewife and mother who is secretly suffering from bulimia nervosa...
, The Runaway, and A Christmas Carol-The Musical
A Christmas Carol (2004 film)
A Christmas Carol, also known as A Christmas Carol: The Musical, is a 2004 television film based on a 1994 stage musical of the same name, with songs written by Alan Menken and Lynn Ahrens . The musical is based on Charles Dickens' famous 1843 novella of the same name, produced by Hallmark...
; episodes of series such as Fame
Fame (1982 TV series)
Fame is an American television series originally produced between 1982 and 1987. The show was based on the 1980 motion picture of the same name. Using a mixture of drama and music, it followed the lives of the students and faculty at the New York City High School for the Performing Arts. Although...
, The Paper Chase
The Paper Chase (TV series)
The Paper Chase is a television series based on a 1970 novel by John Jay Osborn, Jr., as well as a 1973 film based on the novel. It follows the lives of law student James T. Hart and his classmates at Harvard Law School.-Production:...
, Knots Landing
Knots Landing
Knots Landing is an American primetime television soap opera that aired from December 27, 1979 to May 13, 1993 on CBS. Set in a fictitious coastal suburb of Los Angeles in California, the show centered on the lives of four married couples living in a cul-de-sac, Seaview Circle...
, Hill Street Blues
Hill Street Blues
Hill Street Blues is an American serial police drama that was first aired on NBC in 1981 and ran for 146 episodes on primetime into 1987. Chronicling the lives of the staff of a single police precinct in an unnamed American city, the show received critical acclaim and its production innovations ...
, Magnum, P.I.
Magnum, P.I.
Magnum, P.I. is an American television series starring Tom Selleck as Thomas Magnum, a private investigator living on Oahu, Hawaii. The series ran from 1980 to 1988 in first-run broadcast on the American CBS television network....
, Murder, She Wrote
Murder, She Wrote
Murder, She Wrote is an American television mystery series starring Angela Lansbury as mystery writer and amateur detective Jessica Fletcher. The series aired for 12 seasons from 1984 to 1996 on the CBS network, with 264 episodes transmitted. It was followed by four TV films and a spin-off series,...
, Trapper John, M.D.
Trapper John, M.D.
Trapper John, M.D. is an American television medical drama and spin-off of the film MASH, concerning a lovable surgeon who became a mentor and father figure in San Francisco, California. The show ran on CBS from September 23, 1979, to September 4, 1986....
, L.A. Law
L.A. Law
L.A. Law is a US television legal drama that ran on NBC from September 15, 1986 to May 19, 1994. L.A. Law reflected the social and cultural ideologies of the 1980s and early 1990s and many of the cases featured on the show dealt with hot topic issues such as abortion, racism, gay rights,...
, and A Year in the Life
A Year in the Life
A Year in the Life was a 1986 Emmy Award–winning miniseries and a one hour dramatic series which ran on NBC during the 1987–1988 television season, created by Joshua Brand and John Falsey A Year in the Life was a 1986 Emmy Award–winning miniseries and a one hour dramatic series which ran on NBC...
, among others; and several episodes of the ABC Afterschool Special
ABC Afterschool Special
The ABC Afterschool Special is an American television anthology series that aired on ABC from 1972 to 1996, usually in the late afternoon on week days. Most of the episodes were dramatic presentations of situations, often controversial, of interest to children and teenagers. Several episodes were...
series. The latter won him two Daytime Emmy Award
Daytime Emmy Award
The Daytime Emmy Awards are awards presented by the New York-based National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and the Los Angeles-based Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in recognition of excellence in American daytime television programming...
s for Outstanding Individual Direction in Children's Programming. He received additional Emmy nominations for Hill Street Blues, I Love Liberty, and as host of the PBS series Actors on Acting. He also has won the Writers Guild of America Award
Writers Guild of America Award
The Writers Guild of America Award for outstanding achievements in film, television, and radio has been presented annually by the Writers Guild of America, East and Writers Guild of America, West since 1949...
for his contribution to the 1982 all-star variety special I Love Liberty, featuring Barbra Streisand
Barbra Streisand
Barbra Joan Streisand is an American singer, actress, film producer and director. She has won two Academy Awards, eight Grammy Awards, four Emmy Awards, a Special Tony Award, an American Film Institute award, a Peabody Award, and is one of the few entertainers who have won an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy,...
, Shirley MacLaine
Shirley MacLaine
Shirley MacLaine is an American film and theater actress, singer, dancer, activist and author, well-known for her beliefs in new age spirituality and reincarnation. She has written a large number of autobiographical works, many dealing with her spiritual beliefs as well as her Hollywood career...
, Jane Fonda
Jane Fonda
Jane Fonda is an American actress, writer, political activist, former fashion model, and fitness guru. She rose to fame in the 1960s with films such as Barbarella and Cat Ballou. She has won two Academy Awards and received several other movie awards and nominations during more than 50 years as an...
, and Dionne Warwick
Dionne Warwick
Dionne Warwick is an American singer, actress and TV show host, who became a United Nations Global Ambassador for the Food and Agriculture Organization, and a United States Ambassador of Health....
, as well as two Christopher Award
Christopher Award
The Christopher Award is presented to the producers, directors, and writers of books, motion pictures and television specials that "affirm the highest values of the human spirit"...
s. He has also won The Peabody Award, the Humanitas Award, The Western Heritage Award and numerous awards from international film festivals, including the Milagro Award for the Best American Independent Film for The Sisters
The Sisters (2005 film)
The Sisters is a 2005 film starring Maria Bello, Mary Stuart Masterson, and Erika Christensen as the title characters; it also stars Alessandro Nivola, Rip Torn, Eric McCormack, Steven Culp, Tony Goldwyn and Chris O'Donnell...
. Seidelman most recently guest starred in the final episode of ER.
Seidelman's Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
career has been less successful. Billy, a 1969 musical
Musical theatre
Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...
adaptation of Billy Budd
Billy Budd
Billy Budd is a short novel by Herman Melville.Billy Budd can also refer to:*Billy Budd , a 1962 film produced, directed, and co-written by Peter Ustinov, based on Melville's novel...
, closed on opening night. Vieux Carré
Vieux Carré (play)
Vieux Carré is a play by Tennessee Williams. It is an autobiographical play set in New Orleans. Although he began writing it shortly after moving to New Orleans in 1938, it wasn't completed until nearly forty years later.- Plot synopsis :...
, a 1977 play by Tennessee Williams
Tennessee Williams
Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III was an American writer who worked principally as a playwright in the American theater. He also wrote short stories, novels, poetry, essays, screenplays and a volume of memoirs...
, ran for six performances, and in 2003, Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks closed less than two months after it began previews. He directed a revival of The Most Happy Fella
The Most Happy Fella
The Most Happy Fella is a 1956 musical with a book, music, and lyrics by Frank Loesser. The story, about a romance between an older man and younger woman, is based on the play They Knew What They Wanted by Sidney Howard...
for the New York City Opera
New York City Opera
The New York City Opera is an American opera company located in New York City.The company, called "the people's opera" by New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, was founded in 1943 with the aim of making opera financially accessible to a wide audience, producing an innovative choice of repertory, and...
in 1991. He has had considerable success off-Broadway with acclaimed productions of The Ceremony of Innocence
The Ceremony of Innocence (film)
The Ceremony of Innocence is a 1970 television movie adaptation of the play by the same name which depicts a highly fictionalized account of the events leading up to Sweyn Forkbeard's invasion of England in AD 1013....
, by Ronald Ribman, Awake and Sing by Clifford Odets and Hamp
HAMP
Hepcidin is a protein that in humans is encoded by the HAMP gene.The product encoded by this gene is involved in the maintenance of iron homeostasis, and it is necessary for the regulation of iron storage in macrophages, and for intestinal iron absorption...
by John Wilson, among others. He directed Madama Butterfly
Madama Butterfly
Madama Butterfly is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, with an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. Puccini based his opera in part on the short story "Madame Butterfly" by John Luther Long, which was dramatized by David Belasco...
for Santa Barbara Opera and The Gypsy Princess for Opera Pacific. In Los Angeles, he has directed major revivals of Hair
Hair
Hair is a filamentous biomaterial, that grows from follicles found in the dermis. Found exclusively in mammals, hair is one of the defining characteristics of the mammalian class....
, Of Thee I Sing
Of Thee I Sing
Of Thee I Sing is a musical with a score by George Gershwin, lyrics by Ira Gershwin and a book by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind. The musical lampoons American politics; the story concerns John P. Wintergreen, who runs for President of the United States on the "love" platform...
, Mack and Mabel, The Boys From Syracuse
The Boys from Syracuse
The Boys from Syracuse is a musical with music by Richard Rodgers and lyrics by Lorenz Hart, based on William Shakespeare's play, The Comedy of Errors, as adapted by librettist George Abbott. The score includes swing and other contemporary rhythms of the 1930s. The show was the first musical...
, Follies
Follies
Follies is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by James Goldman. The story concerns a reunion in a crumbling Broadway theatre, scheduled for demolition, of the past performers of the "Weismann's Follies," a musical revue , that played in that theatre between the World Wars...
and others. For regional theatre
Regional theatre in the United States
Regional theaters, or resident theaters, in the United States are professional or semi-professional, theater companies that produce their own seasons. The term regional theatre most often refers to professional theatres outside of New York City...
s, he has directed Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a play by Tennessee Williams. One of Williams's best-known works and his personal favorite, the play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1955...
, The Little Foxes
The Little Foxes
The Little Foxes is a 1939 play by Lillian Hellman. Its title comes from Chapter 2, Verse 15 in the Song of Solomon in the King James version of the Bible, which reads, "Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes." Set in a small town in Alabama in...
, A Man for All Seasons
A Man for All Seasons
A Man for All Seasons is a play by Robert Bolt. An early form of the play had been written for BBC Radio in 1954, and a one-hour live television version starring Bernard Hepton was produced in 1957 by the BBC, but after Bolt's success with The Flowering Cherry, he reworked it for the stage.It was...
, The Roar of the Greasepaint - The Smell of the Crowd, Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written early in the career of playwright William Shakespeare about two young star-crossed lovers whose deaths ultimately unite their feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular archetypal stories of young, teenage lovers.Romeo and Juliet belongs to a...
, Stop the World - I Want to Get Off
Stop the World - I Want to Get Off
Stop the World – I Want to Get Off is a musical with a book, music, and lyrics by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley.Set against the backdrop of a circus, it focuses on Littlechap, whose first major step towards improving his lot is to marry Evie, his boss's daughter...
, and The Tempest
The Tempest
The Tempest is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1610–11, and thought by many critics to be the last play that Shakespeare wrote alone. It is set on a remote island, where Prospero, the exiled Duke of Milan, plots to restore his daughter Miranda to her rightful place,...
, among others. In addition, he served as the Administrator of the Forum Theatre (now the Mitzi Newhouse) for the Repertory Theatre of Lincoln Center and as Artistic Director of Theatre Vanguard in Los Angeles.
He has directed Richard Alfieri's Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks in its Los Angeles premiere (with Uta Hagen and David Hyde Pierce) and on Broadway, the West End, the Coconut Grove and a Los Angeles revival (with Constance Towers and Jason Graae). The play has gone on to become one of the most produced plays in the world with productions in 22 countries. Seidelman recently directed Alfieri's new play, Revolutions, at the Barter Theatre.