Arthur Allan Seidelman
2021Arthur 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 life-long 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 Awards 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 Awards. 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 theatres, 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.
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By Dawn's Early Light
Arthur Allan Seidelman
Richard Crenna, David Carradine
When Mike Lewis leaves L.A. to stay with his grandfather in Colorado for the summer, he hates the old man's cowboy ways. When Mike demands to go home, the old man agrees and saddles up a couple of horses for a six week trip toward California, home, the Pacific and redemption.
By Dawn's Early Light
Miracle in the Woods
Arthur Allan Seidelman
Meredith Baxter, Della Reese
Quarreled sisters; Sarah and Wanda inherit property from their mother. It has always belonged to the family. Sarah insists on selling it as soon as possible because she has many difficulties. She goes there with her daughter; Gina. Wanda, on the other hand, wants to keep the property in family. They soon discover that it's not abandoned. Old lady, Lilly Cooper has been living there for many years and doesn't want to leave the house, at least, not as long as she can meet her son.
Miracle in the Woods
A Friendship in Vienna
Arthur Allan Seidelman
Jane Alexander, Edward Asner
Inge Dournenvald and Lise Mueller are best friends in pre-WW2 Austria, despite the fact that Inge is Jewish and Lise is the daughter of a Nazi sympathizer. When they are forbidden to see each other, they meet secretly. After the Germans invade Austria in 1938, Inge and her family escape to America with the help of Lise
A Friendship in Vienna
Grace & Glorie
Arthur Allan Seidelman
Gena Rowlands, Diane Lane
When a lonely ex-New Yorker moves into the home of a rural senior to act as a hospice worker, the two initially couldn't seem to be less alike. However, as time passes, the two find much kinship including a lost child. Slowly the two build a bond and learn about life.
Grace & Glorie
The Summer of Ben Tyler
Arthur Allan Seidelman
James Woods, Elizabeth McGovern
Set early during World War II, the film has a lot to say about love, honor, relationships, commitment and power. Keeping their promise to their dying black housekeeper, a white family takes in her teenage mentally-slow son. The movie details the joys and conflicts the family faces as a result of their decision.
The Summer of Ben Tyler
Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks
Arthur Allan Seidelman
Gena Rowlands, Cheyenne Jackson
A retired woman hires a dance instructor to give her private dance lessons at her home -- one per week for six weeks. What begins as an antagonistic relationship turns into a close friendship as they dance together.
Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks
Harvest of Fire
Arthur Allan Seidelman
Lolita Davidovich, Patty Duke
In a small Amish community, three barns are burnt down almost simultaneously. FBI agent Sally Russwell is sent in to investigate this possible hate crime. What she finds however is a community that little trust for outsiders or "The English" as they call them. However, in her investigations, Agent Russell makes friends with one entrepreneurial widow, Annie Beiler who has her own curiosity about this stranger. Together, Annie introduces Russell in-depth to this close knit community bearing many appealing attributes. However, as Sally's investigations continue, she discovers secrets that reveal uncomfortable truths about the religious community that are linked to the arson attacks.
Harvest of Fire
Like Mother Like Son: The Strange Story of Sante and Kenny Kimes
Arthur Allan Seidelman
Mary Tyler Moore, Robert Forster
The real-life case based on the horrific crimes of Sante and Kenny Kimes, the mother and son duo who specialized in theft, fraud and murder.
Like Mother Like Son: The Strange Story of Sante and Kenny Kimes
The Runaway
Arthur Allan Seidelman
Dean Cain, Debbi Morgan
At the birth of two boys, one white and one black, a mysterious and powerful Conjure Woman (Maya Angelou) prophesies that they will start the change. Growing up as best friends in rural Georgia in the 1940s, the boys make a discovery that leads the town's new sheriff, Frank Richards (Dean Cain), to reopen the investigation of the unsolved murders of three black men. While the town would prefer that the truth remain hidden, the sheriff pursues the case, determined to see justice prevail. The Runaway is a stirring story of how friendship, determination and conviction can generate racial change in one heart or an entire town.
The Runaway
A Christmas Carol
Arthur Allan Seidelman
Kelsey Grammer, Jesse L. Martin
Miser Ebenezer Scrooge is awakened on Christmas Eve by spirits who reveal to him his own miserable existence, what opportunities he wasted in his youth, his current cruelties, and the dire fate that awaits him if he does not change his ways. Scrooge is faced with his own story of growing bitterness and meanness, and must decide what his own future will hold: death or redemption.
A Christmas Carol