George Seaton enjoyed a lengthy and unusually varied career that included successful stints as actor, producer, writer and director. He won Oscars® for his adapted screenplays for Miracle on 34th Street (1947) and The Country Girl (1954), and was nominated for his screenplays for The Song of Bernadette (1943) and Airport (1970). He was nominated as Best Director for The Country Girl and directed three performers to Oscars®: Edmund Gwenn (Miracle on 34th Street), Grace Kelly (The Country Girl) and Helen Hayes (Airport). At the 1962 Oscar® ceremonies Seaton was presented with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.

Seaton (1911-1979) was born in South Bend, Ind. and settled in Detroit after college to work as a radio and stock-company actor. Under the name George Stenius, he was the second actor to play the Lone Ranger on Detroit radio station WXYZ. Legend has it that he came up with the cry "Hi-yo, Silver!" because he couldn't whistle for the horse as was indicated in the script. He signed with MGM as a writer in 1933 and enjoyed his first success writing comedy for the Marx Brothers. Emerging as a leading scenarist, he moved on to Columbia, 20th Century-Fox (where he worked for a decade) and Paramount, where he formed a prolific and successful team with producer William Perlberg.

In the 1940s Seaton wrote a play called But Not Goodbye, which failed on Broadway but did well as an MGM film called The Cockeyed Miracle (1946). It starred Frank Morgan as a man who dies of a heart attack but remains on earth to look after the interests of his widow (Gladys Cooper). Seaton made his debut as a director at Fox with Diamond Horseshoe (1945) and went on to direct more than 20 films including Apartment for Peggy (1948), The Big Lift (1950) and Teacher's Pet (1958). At various times he was president of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Screen Writers Guild, and vice president of the Screen Directors Guild. He also served as vice president of the Motion Picture Relief Fund.

The films in TCM's salute to George Seaton are Airport (1970), The Country Girl (1954) and The Cockeyed Miracle (1946).

by Roger Fristoe