Donald Seawell, a confidant of presidents’ and Broadway stars’ whose greatest legacy is the Denver Performing Arts Complex that he envisioned and shepherded into being, died Wednesday. He was 103.
A theater impresario in New York City who served with distinction in World War II before moving to Denver in 1966, Seawell never forgot his deep North Carolina roots and retained a mellifluous Tar Heel accent.
That his tenure at The Denver Post from 1966 to 1981, including the role of publisher, was only one of a dozen hats he wore over the decades speaks to the breadth of his life and times.
“As far as I’m concerned, I’m just getting started,” Seawell said in a 2002 interview. “The day I retire is the day they take me out of here in a box.”
Seawell, a dapper figure who lived in a LoDo condominium in recent years, had been in declining health. His wife, the late actress, playwright and poet Eugenia Rawls, died in 2000.
They were married 59 years. Seawell often said he considered that his greatest accomplishment.
Seawell would be the first to admit he acquired and outlived a number of enemies during his colorful and controversial life in the Colorado and international spotlight.
“I think when any new history of Denver is written, it’s going to say that the formation of the (then-named) Denver Center for the Performing Arts in the 1970s by Don Seawell was the catalyst that revived the entire downtown area,” said Lester Ward, Denver Center president from 1989 to 2005. “There was no demand for this, but Don said, ‘Denver will never be a great city unless you have a great performing arts complex.’ And so he saw to it that Denver got one.”
Then-Mayor Bill McNichols at first doubted the notion but, with Seawell heading the newspaper at the time, saw the writing on the political wall and got on board.
“The whole Curtis Street area where the complex now stands was really a disaster,” Ward said. “You had the Auditorium Theatre, but the rest of it was a pretty grim place.”
He credits Seawell and Dana Crawford, the developer who pioneered Larimer Square in the 1960s, as “rescuing downtown Denver.”
Daniel Ritchie, former chancellor of the University of Denver, and a friend and colleague of Seawell’s through DPAC, called him an “agent of major change and a class act, … a very determined gentleman.”
Seawell was beloved, criticized, respected and feared.
Despite the praise generated by how he spearheaded DPAC into existence, he endured lingering resentment over his handling of the fortune of Helen Bonfils, his client and one-time owner of The Post, and the eventual sale of the newspaper.
Stories from theater
Seawell counted among his friends Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Joseph Kennedy, Prince Charles, Noel Coward and a playbill of star actors, including Tallulah Bankhead, Alfred Lunt, Lynn Fontanne and Howard Lindsay.
He loved regaling people with stories from the theater world, including his first encounter with Bankhead, an Alabama-born firecracker whose pansexual appetites and carousing was the stuff of Broadway and Hollywood lore.
“Here’s how I met Tallulah,” Seawell said with a grin during a 2012 interview with The Post on the occasion of his 100th birthday. “Tallulah was in the same play as my wife, although we weren’t married then, just courting. I went backstage to see Eugenia, and she said Tallulah wanted to meet me.
“So I went to her dressing room, and she was stark naked,” he said. “She said, ‘Don’t you look away — look at me!’ So I did. Happily.”
Bankhead would serve as maid of honor at the Seawells’ 1941 wedding and become godmother to their children: daughter Brook and son Brockman, who survive them.
“He lived a pretty amazing life,” said Ward, who knew Seawell for more than a half-century. “By the time he was in his 50s, he had already had a career that most people could only dream about.”
Seawell was born Aug. 1, 1912, in Jonesboro, N.C., and raised in Raleigh, the state capital. His father, Aaron A.F. Seawell, was a North Carolina attorney general and later a state Supreme Court justice. He grew up in a family of monied, landed gentry and was an Eagle Scout.
Then it was off to the University of North Carolina, where he met Eugenia in 1932. Upon seeing her on campus, he promptly walked over and informed the young woman that he planned to marry her.
Fresh from college and a national forensics championship, he went to Oxford, England, and debated Winston Churchill after the two had enjoyed a round or two of beverages. (Churchill was out of government at the time and would not become prime minister until 1940.)
Seawell, who had earned a law degree, joined the fledgling Securities and Exchange Commission in 1941. He was hired by Joseph Kennedy, in spite of — or, arguably, because — the multimillionaire patriarch knew that Seawell had publicly criticized him as a “rapscallion.”
After the U.S. entered World War II, Seawell was assigned to the Allied High Command and served as a liaison between Britain’s MI5 and MI6 intelligence service and the Office of Strategic Services, run by William “Wild Bill” Donovan and a precursor to the CIA. He worked with the French Resistance.
Post-war, the Seawells returned to New York. Donald’s law practice saw an increasing number of theatrical clients, including Ruth Draper, Bankhead, Coward and the married couple of Lunt and Fontanne, who often referred to Seawell as “the son they never had.” Upon their deaths, they left their memorabilia to Seawell, who eventually turned it over to the DCPA.
Seawell became enamored of the theater, eventually producing 65 Broadway and London plays, including productions of “Showboat,” “Our Town” and “Harvey.” (The bug bit him in high school, and he donned a bedsheet toga in a production of “Julius Caesar.”)
But he was no actor. “I proved for all time that I should stick to debating or producing,” Seawell said. “Producing, I found, is something you can do in the theater when you cannot act, sing or dance.”
He also represented Helen Bonfils, a prominent figure in the theater world and an heiress to The Post through her father, Frederick Bonfils, who co-founded the paper. Among other things, in 1953 “Miss Helen” had reopened the Civic Theatre at East Colfax Avenue and Elizabeth Street as the Bonfils Theatre.
President of The Post
Seawell moved to Colorado in 1966, when Bonfils called her producing partner in New York and asked him to help her withstand an ongoing hostile takeover attempt of The Post by the Newhouse newspaper chain, which owned 15 percent of Post stock. It was a 12-year battle that started in 1960 and did not end until just after her death in 1972.
During that span, Bonfils appointed Seawell as The Post’s president and CEO. He soon became chairman and publisher.
After Bonfils died, her will and the ownership of The Post were in litigation that resulted in Seawell’s control.
Seawell said the idea for creating a performing arts complex for Denver came in 1974, when he stopped at the intersection of 14th and Curtis streets, looking at the Auditorium Theatre, an aging eyesore from 1908, surrounded by what Seawell called “a mass of urban decay.”
He pulled an envelope from his coat and sketched out a blueprint covering four city blocks and 12 acres. Before the day was out, he had secured the approval of not only Mayor Bill McNichols but of the Bonfils Foundation board, whose primary asset was control of The Post.
“He really changed Denver’s idea of what theater could be,” Ritchie said. “Today we sell more tickets annually than the Denver Broncos.”
Denverites were in no way clamoring for such a facility in 1974; it truly was one man’s vision. And Seawell oversaw every aspect of its growth into a world-class performing-arts center that has changed perceptions of him from the “empire maker” into an unparalleled visionary.
“When I proposed a performing-arts complex, people kept telling me of a study that said in 1974 there weren’t 3,000 people in Colorado who had ever attended a professional theater production,” Seawell said. “Well, millions of those 3,000 people have attended the theater now!”
As chairman of the DCPA’s board of trustees, Seawell’s contract called for him to make just $1 a year, even though he routinely reported to work up to seven days a week. “But somebody has been forgetting to pay me,” he joked.
But launching the DCPA required maneuvering as well as cheerleading on Seawell’s part.
Seawell created the DCPA as a public foundation and designated the Bonfils Foundation as satellite to act as a permanent endowment for the DCPA.
Seawell opened the DCPA in 1978 with money from the Bonfils Foundation, which for years had gone to operating The Post and funding Bonfils’ cultural philanthropic projects. Many groused when he built the complex that Seawell was dipping into Bonfils’ money to build what some called a monument to himself.
The DCPA grew in increments.
The 2,700-seat Boettcher Concert Hall opened first, in 1978. By 1979, the Auditorium Theatre was renovated, and six new theaters were built within the DCPA that made up the Helen G. Bonfils Theatre Complex. The 2,880-seat Buell Theatre opened in 1991, and the Seawell Ballroom followed in 1998. The complex also includes the Wilbur James Gould Voice Research Center, Denver Center Media and the renovated Tramway Building, home to the National Theatre Conservatory’s master’s of fine arts program.
The complex played a driving role in a January survey by the National Endowment for the Arts that said Colorado led the nation in residents’ visits to theaters, concert halls and museums.
But in the early going of launching the DCPA, Seawell also was occupied with running The Post.
“Nothing that I have done in my entire life was more fun than running a newspaper,” Seawell said. “I took a great deal of pride in keeping The Denver Post alive as an independent, objective voice — while still making money.”
But by 1981, The Post was not making money. The economy was sputtering; the paper teetered on the brink of collapse. Critics accused Seawell of abandoning the paper while he was preoccupied with building up the DCPA. With the paper ripe for a takeover, Seawell sold The Post to Times-Mirror of California for the fire-sale price of $95 million. Proceeds went to the Bonfils Foundation, securing the financial future of the DCPA.
Times-Mirror, the first out-of-state ownership in the then-88-year history of The Post, changed the paper from afternoon to morning delivery. Circulation soon plunged by 200,000.
Although The Post survived, many blamed Seawell for disposing of Bonfils’ journalistic crown, as he later would with her beloved Bonfils Theater.
That latter move came to a head in 1986, when Seawell changed the name of the Bonfils to the Lowenstein then shut it down six months later.
Opening the DCPA put Denver on the national cultural map, but the Lowenstein was losing $500,000 a year. Despite the red ink, some in the theater community thought the closing was a show of disrespect to the woman whose money built it and the DCPA. And there were mutterings that the only reason Seawell shut it down was because he came to see Bonfils’ eastside jewel as a competitor drawing theatergoers out of downtown and away from the DCPA.
“I only sold The Post to Times-Mirror on the condition that they take it to morning delivery. I knew that was unpopular, but I knew that otherwise it was going to die,” he said.
Mile High titan
William Dean Singleton, who was to buy The Post eventually, considered Seawell a dear friend and a Mile High titan.
“Don was one of the handful of great people who built Denver,” Singleton said. “He came here from New York and saved The Denver Post from family friction and vultures trying to take it over. And he used The Post’s resources and those of Helen Bonfils and created a performing arts facility no one believed could happen.
“He traveled the world to look at other cities to make sure it could be the best it could be. It’s perhaps the crown jewel of Denver.”
Singleton noted that Seawell was proud of saying that The Post and the Bonfils Foundation had poured more than $500 million into the complex.
“Don was legendary in his ability to convince people to do things,” he said.
Seawell professed to having “absolutely no fear” of the hereafter.
His Bible Belt roots notwithstanding, Seawell had no religion to speak of, because “organized religion has been a barrier to progress from the word go. But as long as I’m here. I’ve got to keep going.”
For all his success, Seawell’s blue eyes did not look through rose-tinted glasses. Asked the stock centenarian question — “What is the key to happiness?” — he offered a blunt assessment.
“There is no secret to happiness,” he said. “Some are born into happiness. Some, perhaps a majority, are not. It takes prosperity and lack of accidents to create real happiness.
“One can, however, try to make happiness spread.”
Seawell remained a refined figure until the end. He spent weekends and holidays at the Cherry Hills home of his friends Marvin and Judi Wolf, who kept a suite for him.
“Every morning he spent with us, he came to the breakfast table dressed to the nines,” Judi Wolf said. “He would be in a business suit, with a tie that matched his pocket square, and a French cuff shirt with elegant cufflinks. It reflected the formality of the man.”
When he lunched at the Brown Palace, a favored dish was the lobster bisque. He liked its splash of sherry.
That Seawell lived as long as he did apparently did not surprise him. He came from a family of long-lived men.
In 2006, he did what many once thought unthinkable: He resigned as chairman and CEO of the DCPA in favor of former University of Denver chancellor Daniel L. Ritchie. Seawell remained active in an emeritus position, retaining a large, memorabilia-filled office at the complex.
Seawell spent a lifetime promoting the cross-pollination of British and American theater. In 1962, he became the first producer to bring the Royal Shakespeare Company to America.
He directed the RSC’s “The Hollow Crown on Broadway,” and two years later, he brought “King Lear” and “The Comedy of Errors” to New York to mark the 400th birthday of Shakespeare. He was the first American named to the RSC’s board of governors.
Queen Elizabeth II marked Seawell’s 90th birthday by conferring upon him the Honorary Award of Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.
In 2000, Seawell brought the 10-play epic Trojan War cycle, “Tantalus,” to Denver as a co-production of the Denver Center for the Performing Arts and the Royal Shakespeare Company. “Nothing in the theater has come along like this in 2,500 years, and it probably won’t ever happen again,” he said.
RSC artistic director Adrian Noble once called the epic “an extraordinary, landmark event in world culture that would never have happened without Donald Seawell.”
Three years ago, Seawell was asked how he would like to be remembered.
“Oh, I don’t care if I am or not,” he said. “I’d like to be remembered for what I’ve done.”
William Porter: 303-954-1877, wporter@denverpost.com or @williamporterdp
Reaction
“Farewell, Donald Seawell. You were one of a kind. Thank you for all you did for the Denver community. Consider this a standing ovation.” — Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, via Twitter
“Donald Seawell is one of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s greatest friends, serving as a Governor since 1980, and as an Honorary Governor since 2001. He was the first to bring the RSC in its current form to the USA, directing and presenting our production of The Hollow Crown on Broadway and on tour in 1962. Just over 50 years ago, he helped mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth, taking our productions of King Lear and The Comedy of Errors to the New York State Theatre. As Chairman of the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, he collaborated with us to stage a landmark production of Tantalus, John Barton’s 10 play retelling of the Greek Epic Cycle, which opened in Denver in 2000 and toured the UK, including the Barbican Theatre, to great acclaim. This heroic project, which brought together international artists from the US, UK, Japan, Greece and Ireland, reflects the scale of Donald’s vision and his extraordinary passion for theatre and the RSC.” — Gregory Doran, Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company
“Denver has lost a giant with the passing of Donald Seawell. He was an inspiration and a great motivator whose passion for the arts influenced so many, including myself. He instilled in all of us the belief that our city could achieve greatness if we were willing to take risks. Donald was a rare and outstanding civic champion who helped set Denver on the path we currently walk today, and we owe him a debt of gratitude for that bold vision. There is no question that his legacy and impact on our city will be felt for decades to come.” — Michael Hancock, Mayor of Denver, in a statement
