David Seidler
Seidler in 1957
Born	(1937-08-04)4 August 1937 London, England
Died	16 March 2024(2024-03-16) (aged 86) New Zealand
Occupation(s)	Playwright, screenwriter
Notable work	The King's Speech
Spouses	Mary Ann Tharaldsen ​ ​ (m. 1961, divorced)​ Huia Newton ​ (divorced)​ Jacqueline Feather ​ (div. 2008)​

David Seidler (4 August 1937 – 16 March 2024) was a British-American playwright and film and television writer.^[1]

Seidler is most known for writing the scripts for thestage version andscreen version for the storyThe King's Speech. For the film, he won theAcademy Award and aBAFTA for Best Original Screenplay.

Seidler was born in London, where he spent his early childhood.^[2] He grew up in anupper-middle classJewish family.^[3][4] His motherDoris was a print-maker andgraphic artist.^[5] His father Bernard was a fur broker who bought bales of pelts on commission. He had an office in New York City. Seidler immigrated to the United States with his family in the early part ofWorld War II during theLondon Blitz.^[6] The ship they sailed on was a member of a convoy of three ships; on the way one of these, carrying Italian prisoners-of-war from North Africa, was sunk by GermanU-boats. It was on the voyage to the US that Seidler developed astammer, before he celebrated his third birthday.^[7]

Seidler subsequently grew up onLong Island, New York.^[8] Seidler believed that his stutter might have been a response to the emotional trauma of the war. Thinking it would make others feel uncomfortable, as a teenager he often chose to keep quiet.

Numerous forms of speech therapy failed him, until, at 16, he had a breakthrough. "I resolved that if I was going to stutter for the rest of my life, people were going to be stuck listening to me. I had been depressed, but now I was angry – I decided I deserved to be heard."^[3] That is when, in rage he spokethe 'F' word, or "naughty word" as he recalled decades later. Two weeks later he auditioned for his school play, Shaw'sAndrocles and the Lion and even got a small role, of a Christian getting eaten by a lion. In 2005, he used it in a scene in his stage play about George VI. Seidler later attendedCornell University, where he graduated with a degree in English in 1959.^[9][10]

As he grew older he decided to write and his first work wasThe Adventures of a Penny about a penny's travel from hand to hand.^[11] In an interview Seidler recalledGeorge VI as a childhood hero, who gave him hope as he listened to his wartime speeches as a child, encouraged by his parents, "David, he was a much worse stutterer than you, and listen to him now. He's not perfect. But he can give these magnificent, stirring addresses that rallied the free world." they would say.^[7]

Seidler arrived in Hollywood at the age of 40, and his first job there was writingTucker: The Man and His Dream forFrancis Ford Coppola.^[6] For some years he was a member of the Feather & Seidler writing team withJacqueline Feather.

Always wanting to write about George VI, and being a stutterer himself, Seidler started researching in the 1970s. After finding the surviving son ofLionel Logue,Valentine Logue, a brain surgeon, he wrote him in 1981. In turn, Logue was keen to talk with Seidler and even share the notebooks his father kept while treating the King, but on the condition that he received "written permission from theQueen Mother" first. Upon writing to her, Seidler received a reply from her private secretary, asking him not to pursue the project during her lifetime. Consequently, Seidler abandoned the project in 1982.^[12]

The Queen Mother died in 2002, but Seidler didn't start the work until 2005, when he suffered from throat cancer, and returned to the story during a bout of creative work it inspired. Eventually, he wrote the first draft of his screenplay, and his then-wife and writing partner suggested that he rewrite it as a stage play, as an exercise. She felt that the "physical confines of the stage would force him to focus on the key relationships in the story, without the distractions imposed by concern for cinematic technique."^[7] In 2011 Seidler won aBAFTA award for Best Original Screenplay, and later anAcademy Award forBest Original Screenplay for the filmThe King's Speech.^[13]

When writing the script, Seidler discovered that his own uncle, also named David and also a stutterer, had been sent to see Lionel Logue by his father (Seidler's grandfather).^[9]

Seidler died in New Zealand on 16 March 2024, at the age of 86.^[14][6][12] He was married to Mary Ann Tharaldsen, Huia Newton andJacqueline Feather.^[15]

• David Seidler atIMDb
• "Confessions of David Seidler, a 73-year-old Oscars virgin".Los Angeles Times. 20 February 2011. Archived fromthe original on 26 February 2011.
• "Finding words for 'The King's Speech' took decades". CNN. 25 February 2011. Archived fromthe original on 28 June 2011.
• "Screenwriter David Seidler: 'Being a stutterer puts a cloud over childhood'".National Post. 17 February 2011. Archived fromthe original on 29 January 2013.
• Meng-Yee, Carolyne (20 February 2011)."Proud of his Dad's work (but tried to talk his father out of writing TKS)".The New Zealand Herald.

• 1937 births
• 2024 deaths
• British male screenwriters
• British television writers
• Jewish English writers
• Cornell University alumni
• American male dramatists and playwrights
• American male screenwriters
• Best Original Screenplay Academy Award winners
• Best Original Screenplay BAFTA Award winners
• Jewish American dramatists and playwrights
• Jewish American screenwriters
• Jewish American television writers
• American television writers
• Writers from London
• People from Long Island
• Warner Bros. Animation people
• American male television writers
• 21st-century American Jews

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