Franklyn seales biography
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Franklyn Seales was a stage and television actor best remembered for playing the finicky business manager Dexter Stuffins on the NBC sit-com "Silver Spoons." He also appeared in films, most notably as the real-life cop killer in "The Onion Field."
One of eight children, Seales was born in on the Caribbean island of St. Vincent. In , Seales' family emigrated to the United States, where they settled in New York City.
A painter since age six, Seales planned to study art at Pratt Institute. But then John Houseman noticed Seales when he was helping a friend to audition by performing the balcony scene from "Romeo and Juliet." Signed on the spot to a full scholarship at Juilliard, Seales studied acting as a member of Houseman's Acting Company, during the early s.
Seales' first big break was the PBS broadcast of the television drama The Trial of the Moke (). He portrayed Lt. Henry O. Flipper, the first black graduate of West Point.
Seales'
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Franklyn Seales
American actor (–)
Franklyn Vincent Ellison Seales (July 15, – May 14, ) was an American spelfilm, television and stage actor. He was known for his portrayals of business manager Dexter Stuffins in the s sitcom Silver Spoons, and real-life convicted cop killer Jimmy Lee (Youngblood) Smith in the film The Onion Field.[1][3][4][6][7][8]
Early life and education
[edit]Seales was born on July 15, , the fifth of eight siblings, in Calliaqua to Francis Seales, a merchant seaman and government employee, and Olive Seales (née Allen), a homemaker. Seales was of English, Scottish, African, Portuguese and Native Caribbean descent. He and his family left the West Indies in and settled in New York City. He attended Lincoln High School in Brooklyn.[3][4][5]
Seales originally intended to study at the Pratt Institute to pursue a career in art. However, in the early s, Seales agreed t
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Stage Actor Seales Dies of AIDS at 37
Franklyn Seales, a stage actor acclaimed for his forceful versatility in productions that ranged from Shakespeare to the theater of the absurd, died Monday in Brooklyn.
Seales, who came to playhouses from John Houseman’s Acting Company at Juilliard in the early s, was 37 and died at the family home of the complications of AIDS.
A sister, Deborah Richardson, said by telephone from New York that he had been unable to work regularly for the last several months. His last major triumph was at the Mark Taper Forum in October, , in “Nothing Sacred,” an adaptation of Ivan Turgenev’s “Fathers and Sons.”
Born on the Caribbean island nation of St. Vincent, one of eight children, Seales as an actor came to be seen as a link between the tradition of black Africa and the sophistication of classical Anglo drama.
He grew up among a colonial gathering of British officers--men “with their little sticks and stiff mustaches,” he would say.
His family left the