A Supportive Mother and Unpredictable Father Led Him To Theater
Christian Seaborn leans back with a contemplative smile on his face. His winter overcoat is draped over the back of his chair while an Irish cap rests gently atop his head. A man of short stature, he never let that stop him from becoming a Hollywood actor, writer, and producer.
But that’s not to say his life hasn’t come without hardship. In fact, Seaborn understands all too well the struggles of those that find themselves in a financial crisis, compounded by the lack of affordable housing in many cities across the country. He has felt first-hand the meaning of the word “betrayal,” particularly when it comes from the ones you love most.
Yet with a twinkle in his eye, he reminisces about how his love for acting got started when he was young.
Like many mothers, his was supportive of his passion for theater and the arts. Growing up in a house of looming conflict due to what he describes as his father’s unpredictable and violent mental illness, psychomotor epilepsy, Nora Seaborn recognized theater not only as Seaborn’s coping mechanism, but his escape as well.
“I started doing theater for a couple of reasons,” Seaborn said. “Looking back on it now, it was a way to be out of the house and away from that situation.”
One song in particular, Seaborn recalls, was his absolute favorite to sing and dance around the house as a child. “Hello, Dolly,” by Louis Armstrong, with its cheerful melody, rhythmic string sound, and its brass chorus never failed to lift his spirits. That goes without mentioning the distinct and authoritative voice of Louis Armstrong himself. Even today, Seaborn’s love for that song permeates with nothing but fond memories.
Growing up in Portland and Singing with Louis Armstrong
Growing up in Portland, Oregon, his family didn’t necessarily have much. Yet, that didn’t stop his mother from orchestrating opportunities for Seaborn to feed his budding passion for the arts. When Seaborn was eight years old in July of 1965, Louis Armstrong came to Portland for a free concert. Recognizing an opportunity, Nora took the young Seaborn to see Armstrong perform.
As any eight year old confronted by their idol would, Seaborn was bubbling with excitement at the opportunity to witness Armstrong play. The day of the show was a blistering 98 degrees and despite the heat at this point in Armstrong’s aging life, the famed musician played all of his popular hits throughout the show. When his performance concluded the crowd erupted in approval; that is, everyone except the eight year old Seaborn. Armstrong had teased “Hello, Dolly” at the start of the performance, but never played the song in its entirety.
Seaborn’s disappointment, however, was short-lived as Armstrong soon came back on stage to perform “Hello, Dolly” as his encore. Seaborn was ecstatic.
Satisfied with the encore performance, the young Seaborn and his mother prepared to leave. But suddenly, Nora stopped and beckoned him to wait. She walked over and spoke to a young security guard near the backstage curtain, who then disappeared backstage.
“I have no idea what cockamamie story she told him,” Seaborn laughs. “But [the security guard] comes back out two minutes later and motions me to come in. So pulling those curtains aside, there were these stairs in the back of the stage and here's Louis Armstrong sitting on the steps, still holding his trumpet from the show.”
Louis Armstrong offered to play “Hello, Dolly” for the starstruck young Seaborn, but only on one condition: if Seaborn would sing the lyrics himself. Despite singing and dancing to the song for months at a time, Seaborn became tongue-tied and was unable to sing for Armstrong as he played the song for him. Even Armstrong’s banjo player soon joined in, playing his part to prod young Seaborn to sing. Yet, it wasn’t until about a third of the way through the song that Seaborn finally mustered his strength and started singing with his idol, forever solidifying his love for “Hello, Dolly.”
Another Hello Dolly Encounter
Although that wasn’t the end of the story for Seaborn and “Hello, Dolly.”
Two years later at ten years old, Seaborn learned of a Broadway Musical called Hello, Dolly, starring Ginger Rogers. It was coming to Portland and like any wishful young child, Seaborn begged his mother to take him. But due to their financial circumstances, his mother simply couldn’t afford tickets, leaving Seaborn dejected.
“So about a week passes and I get home from school and [my mother] goes, ‘There's something on your bed,’” Seaborn explained. “There was an envelope with a single ticket for the matinee performance.”
Once again, his mother had taken matters into her own hands to feed her son’s growing passions. The ticket didn’t come without stipulations, however, as Nora was still cautious of her son being downtown by himself at such a young age. So she gave Seaborn his ticket with explicit instructions: under no circumstances is he to talk to or follow any strangers anywhere, whatsoever. Seaborn agreed, not wanting to disappoint his mother.
On the day of the show, he was giddy with excitement as he took his seat beside the aisle. Before the performance started, however, something unusual happened. An usher approached Seaborn and invited him backstage to meet Ginger Rogers at the intermission, per Rogers’ request. Not intending to disobey his mother’s strict instructions not to talk to or follow any strangers, Seaborn declined. The same usher then returned at the intermission, giving Seaborn a handwritten from Rogers wishing him well.
“Now obviously my mother has set all this up,” Seaborn reflected, a lighthearted smile on his face. “So when I got home after the show she goes, ‘Well, how was the show? Anything special happen?’”
“I told her, ‘No, not really.’” Seaborn said. “‘But an usher asked me to go back and meet Ginger Rogers. But I told him my mother said don't go anywhere with any strangers.’ She was like, ‘Oh God, I'm never telling you anything again for the rest of your life!’”
Seaborn soon got involved in theater himself, acting and performing in professional plays in Portland. Acting had not only become his passion, but continued to foster his escape from a troubled life at home. By the time he graduated high school, he had a resume of nearly 25 productions. Then after a brief stint at the University of Portland, he decided it was time to move to Los Angeles to try and make a name for himself there.
Getting a Shot with Rhoda
Yet soon after arriving, he realized that any young actor trying to make it in Hollywood needs two things: a Screen Actors Guild Membership and an agent. Seaborn consequently found himself in the office of Freida Granite, who at that point had been an agent in Hollywood for nearly 50 years. Upon entering the room, however, Granite immediately dismissed Seaborn as unsuitable for an acting career.
“And I said ‘Excuse me,’” Seaborn explained. “‘You don’t even know anything about me or anything I've ever done.’ She listened to my spiel for about two minutes and then goes, ‘Damn, you've got gumption. Okay, I'll sign you.’”
Just like that, Seaborn had an agent in Hollywood. Granite got him a job delivering resumes and casting submissions to all the directors in town. It was a way for him to meet all the prominent directors without being too forward. The first delivery he made was to Lori Openden, who at the time was a casting director with Mary Tyler Moore Entertainment’s (MTM), show Rhoda.
“[Openden] tells me, “You have a really unique look about you,’” Seaborn said. “A lot of people have told me because of my size I’m very unique or memorable. But I never considered myself [unique] in that way.”
So Seaborn sought additional means to ensure all the casting directors he was meeting would remember him. As an avid Charlie Brown fan, he started sending Peanuts-themed Hallmark cards to casting directors at every holiday. Then in early January of 1977, he received a call from Openden, the first casting director he had met.
“She called me and goes, ‘Are you interested in being on an episode of Rhoda? It's what we call a featured part so there's no dialogue, but it will get you a Screen Actors Guild Card.’” Seaborn explained. “I agreed and then she says, ‘There is a hitch: Do not ever send me any more Peanuts cards for any more holidays.’”
The Peanuts holiday card strategy had finally served its purpose, so Seaborn scratched Openden’s name off his card list.
The scene Seaborn was to be featured for was as the main character Rhoda’s prom date. Valerie Harper, the actress who played the role of Rhoda, was significantly taller than Seaborn dressed in his 1950s-era cumberbun and tuxedo costume. Yet, they filmed a dancing scene together, the contrast in height providing a moment of comic relief for everyone at the shoot. A technician at the scene was particularly amused, grabbing a Polaroid camera to document the two of them in-costume together after the shoot. When Seaborn finished his scene, he simply got out of costume and returned home. The scene aired in an episode a month later and that was it for Seaborn, or so he thought.
Getting a Break with WKRP Show but Setbacks Begin
By now Openden had taken a particular interest in finding Seaborn work as an actor, forming a professional relationship that isn’t necessarily commonplace in Hollywood. She offered him a role as a rehearsal “stand-in” for a ten-year-old character on the show WKRP, a popular sit-com on CBS from 1978-82. Initially Seaborn was reluctant to take it, recognizing that people of his short stature can get pigeon-hold solely into stand-in roles. But Openden encouraged him to take the role seriously, as the stand-in role was an opportunity for him to showcase to the directors his ability to act.
So that’s what he did. As Seaborn performed his stand-in role throughout the rehearsals, it didn’t take long for people to take notice. Fellow actors on the show began approaching him, telling him that Hugh Wilson, creator and executive producer of the WKRP series, had even taken notice of Seaborn’s ability. As the shoot for the final episodes of the 1978 season wrapped, Wilson himself finally approached Seaborn, offering to write-in a full-time role for him as a character in the series. Seaborn agreed immediately.
A few months later when it was announced that WKRP was picked up for another season on CBS, Seaborn sent a note to Wilson both congratulating him. The note also, however, was meant to serve as a subtle reminder of Wilson’s offer at the end of the last season. Three weeks later Seaborn was called in to provide input for the character they were writing into the show for him, a rare opportunity in Hollywood.
Then at the script-reading a few weeks later, something unusual happened. In the middle of the script-reading, a technician called out from the rafters of the studio, interrupting the reading when he saw Seaborn. Rushing down the rafters to the table, he presented Seaborn the Polaroid picture of him and Valerie Harper from the set on Rhoda a few years prior.
Looking back now, Seaborn isn’t surprised something like that would happen at Mary Tyler Moore Entertainment.
“Pretty much anybody who was on MTM shows or was connected with that company was really special,” Seaborn said. “Because Mary Tyler Moore and her then-husband Grant Tinker set that bar of hiring people they wanted around. They wanted it to be a family atmosphere and they strove to make that happen.”
Things were going well for Seaborn up until that point when in 1981, disaster first struck. His paternal grandmother had passed away. Seaborn wasn’t necessarily close with his grandmother, but in passing she had left an estate and trust fund designated in name to Seaborn’s mother, Nora, due to the unpredictable nature of his father’s illness. As part of the trust bestowed to his family were four valuable rings, three of which that had been appraised at $1500. Yet the bank was reluctant to give up the rings despite his family’s entitlement to it.
Coincidentally, at the same time the Screen Actors’ Guild strike and Emmy-award boycott started. When the strike first started, executive producer of WKRP Hugh Wilson had contacted Seaborn (despite union strike restrictions) to tell him that once the strike was over, they would be continuing his character’s role in the series.
But finding himself unemployed in the meantime, Seaborn was in desperate need of money. So he threatened the bank with a lawsuit to exercise his right to entitlement of the rings.
Family Inheritance Problems and Going MIA
It was also at this time Seaborn was first confronted with the publicity of being a Hollywood actor. Before the beginning of the trial, the judge addressed Seaborn directly, “Before we get started, I just want to make it clear that I thought you were very good on television last night.”
Eventually, the bank finally conceded at the trial, requesting that all the beneficiaries of the trust to come to Seattle where the rings were being held so they could close the trust and receive the rings. So Seaborn, his brother Charles, his mother, and father went to Seattle to finalize the deal. But due to his father’s psychomotor epilepsy, it was understood within the Seaborn family that his mother Nora would speak for his father on official matters, particularly given her additional background as a lawyer.
Seaborn had spent the last of his money getting up to Seattle from LA for the deal. Before arriving, he had come to a mutual agreement with his mother and brother that they would divide the rings evenly among themselves. Seaborn intended to appraise and sell his ring to a dealer in Seattle, so he could have enough money to get back to LA and survive until the end of the strike until WKRP could start up again. But after the trust was closed and his brother Charles took possession of the rings, the family deal was suddenly off. Unbeknownst to Seaborn, his mother had instructed Charles not to give Seaborn his ring to ensure that under no circumstances the rings would be sold.
“I had a nervous breakdown,” Seaborn said of the betrayal. “I just never saw that coming from these two people that I survived my dad's illness and attacks with. I trusted them.”
Consequently, Seaborn returned to Portland with his family and became stuck there, unable to get back to LA. He got a job working for a local cable company, writing and producing commercials for them. It wasn’t until three years later, in 1984, that he had finally saved up enough money to make it back to LA. When he arrived, he found out that his apartment and everything in it had been sold at a Sheriff’s auction in the years he had been away.
Luckily, though, he still had a phone book with the names and numbers of the people he had worked with at WKRP, even though the show had by then gone off the air. So he called up one of the show’s writers, Dan Guntzelman, to meet him for a cup of coffee.
“[Guntzelman] goes to me, ‘Where the hell have you been?’” Seaborn explained. “‘In October and November of 1981 we spent weeks looking for you. We had six more episodes written for [your] character and nobody had any idea where you were.”
Having a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity squandered, Seaborn became further devastated by his family’s betrayal over the rings. For while he was stranded in Portland for all those years, he missed WKRP’s return to production after the strike ended.
To make matters worse, by then Mary Tyler Moore Entertainment shut down and shuttered its doors, coinciding with the divorce of Mary Tyler Moore and Grant Tinker. Tinker went on to become Chairman and CEO of NBC Entertainment, taking Seaborn’s agent Lori Openden with him as the Senior Vice President of Talent, a position she would hold for the next 17 years.
“I think it's a good prospect that based on the personal interest [Openden] had taken in my career, that I probably would have had some work on a few NBC shows during that period,” Seaborn reflected.
Moving to Reno in the Late 1980s
By Thanksgiving week in 1987, Seaborn had moved to Reno, Nevada. He was working as a banquet set person at The Nugget and battling bouts of depression, stemming from his family’s betrayal and the subsequent missed opportunities in Hollywood. Eventually, his fight with depression ended him up in Nevada Mental Health Institute.
“Are you familiar with the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest?” Seaborn asked. “This facility looked very much like something right out of that. I had never been around a mental health facility before, but this was not a good introduction to those.”
In order to get released from Nevada Mental Health, however, a patient must receive clearance from the facility’s only doctor. But to exacerbate the situation, when Seaborn went to the doctor’s office, he found half-filled cardboard boxes stacked and scattered across the floor. The facility’s only doctor had just resigned; and Seaborn was told it may take well into the following year before they get another one.
“I'm not crazy, I was just depressed,” Seaborn explained. “So I got on the phone with my mother and said, ‘You caused this problem in 1981, you’re a lawyer so figure a way to get me out of here.’”
When Nora utilized her law connections, Seaborn’s circumstances made it all the way to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Nevada, who in turn contacted the director of Nevada Mental Health. They agreed to release Seaborn, but only if a family member would pick him up. His brother Charles, in New Mexico for the holiday, then came to pick him up on Thanksgiving Day, a holiday that Seaborn consequently has never enjoyed since.
It was at this point, however, that Seaborn’s relationship with the city of Reno really began. In particular, a local psychologist named Martha Nims took a measured interest in Seaborn’s well-being. Although she was in her seventies and semi-retired at the time, she agreed to continue meeting with Seaborn even after his medical insurance no longer covered it. She became someone Seaborn could rely on when he needed her, no matter the time of day or night.
Back to Acting in the Theater and Commercials
Throughout the 1990s, Seaborn began his return to theater. The Reno Little Theater at the time was putting on a production called Wild Oats. Although he was initially seeking only to volunteer with the production staff, Seaborn ended up having a part in the performance itself. Nims also made a particular effort to support Seaborn’s return to acting, encouraging him to apply for paid positions. Encouraged, Seaborn landed a job with Channel Two’s morning show, a job he held for the next six months.
“In Martha's head, all of it was [about] rebuilding my confidence,” Seaborn said. “I didn't really see it [that way] at the time, but I can see it now looking back because I then decided I was going to go back to LA.”
When he eventually moved back to LA in the early 2000s, Seaborn came in contact with an agent that found a potential acting gig for him in a commercial series. Recognizing the financial benefits of a commercial series, Seaborn jumped at the opportunity. The audition for the role came with one stipulation, however, in that Seaborn needed to have a passport. Although he didn’t one at the time, he knew that when an opportunity in this industry presents itself you must do whatever you can to make it happen. So when he received a call-back days after the audition, he found out he was selected for the part and was needed in London, England by the following week to shoot.
“When they say series of commercials, that immediately means lots of money because it's paid on residuals of how many times [the commercial] airs,” Seaborn explained. “But the timing of all this was like right after 9-11, so I had to go down to the federal building [to get a passport] where they were on a high state of alert for everybody.”
Despite the challenges, Seaborn managed to get a passport and made it to London in time to shoot four commercials selling a frozen pizza product as a waiter. The directors were pleased with how it went and wanted Seaborn to return a few months later to be photographed for billboard advertisements for the product, as well as shoot thirteen additional commercials that had already been written. Unfortunately for Seaborn, however, politics soon got in the way.
“[The directors] told me that America was not very popular in Britain at that point because President Bush was trying to wrap Britain up into sending troops to the Middle East,” Seaborn said. “And they said, ‘We just don't want an American promoting a product right now.’”
Since then, Seaborn has continued his involvement with acting, even being featured in a Super Bowl commercial for Subway a couple of years ago. Every few months, he has served as a writer for the United States Bowling Congress, a job that recently sent him to Wichita, Kansas and may send him to Las Vegas sometime this year. Currently, Seaborn is contemplating a return to Hollywood after he completes a novel he is working on. But he’s not in a particular rush to get there, understanding the difficulty of making it big in Hollywood.
“Forty percent of being a successful actor is based on talent,” Seaborn said. “Another forty percent is based on who you know and the final twenty percent is just based on dumb luck of being in the right place at the right time. So if one really wants to go [to Hollywood] for the big time, then one should have no delusions about how it works.”
So what ever happened to the rings his mother kept from him?
In 1982, Nora Seaborn fell ill with emphysema and meningitis, an illness she battled for the next ten years. When she checked into the hospital for what would be the final time, in 1992, she had made clear to everyone on the hospital staff that she wanted to see Seaborn. After some prodding from his father and brother, Seaborn decided to visit her on her 76th birthday. While on her deathbed, she apologized for not giving Seaborn his ring like they had originally agreed, confessing she didn’t know what made her do it. At the time, Seaborn didn’t have any ideas either why she would’ve kept a ring from him. But looking back now, the best he can do is speculate.
“My mother was a teenager during the Great Depression,” Seaborn explained. “There was a Recession going on in 1981 [at the same time they closed the trust and received the rings], so I think she was afraid that having experienced the Great Depression that when we have things of value we need to hold on to them.”
Seaborn knew, however, that his mother’s death would not mend the broken relationship between him and his brother, Charles. In his mind, there was no way that he was going to put himself in a situation where he has to deal with his brother over the ownership of the four rings.
“So I stormed into [my mother’s] house and went up the stairs with one mission: find the rings and take all four of them,” Seaborn said. “She would not tell me [where the rings were]. So I literally tore the room apart, pulling out drawers and dumping contents on the floor. Finally, I found them in a little brown jewelry bag, scotch-taped to the back of the drawer.”
Seaborn then sold all four rings for a fraction of what they were worth. The way he saw it, it was too late to save his life with the money to be made from them, so his only real goal was that his brother would never have any of them.
https://www.montereyherald.com/2013/05/07/convicted-felon-charles-seaborn-now-a-fugitive-reportedly-seen-in-monterey/
A Brother’s Downfall and Dealing with his own Housing Problems
A successful marine biologist and underwater photographer in his own right, Charles had felt that since their mother protected him and Seaborn from their father’s violence all those years they were growing up, that if Nora wanted to keep the rings, she deserved to. So at the time of the initial jewelry exchange, he had defended his mother’s decision to withhold a ring from Seaborn.
Yet as time went on and despite all his career success, Charles became a closet alcoholic. In 2007, he was convicted and imprisoned for vehicular manslaughter after striking and killing a bicyclist while driving drunk. Sentenced to five years, he served 27 months before being released on parole in 2011. Then on New Years Eve of 2012, he was pulled over on suspicion of drunk-driving and since he violated his parole, was charged with felonious drunk-driving. When he failed to appear at court, a search warrant went out for his arrest.
Around this time Seaborn, after a brief stint of homelessness, had found a place living at Carvel Park Apartments in Reno. When the Reno Police came knocking on his door, guns drawn searching for his fugitive brother, Seaborn didn’t appreciate the intrusion. A few weeks later, he received a call from the California bondsman working on his brother’s case. They had found Charles’s cell phone next to body parts in the water in San Francisco and asked if Seaborn was willing to do a DNA test to confirm the body was Charles’s.
“I said ‘No,’” Seaborn said. “Because my brother died for me in 1981.”
It was assumed and thus declared that the body parts found with the cell phone were Charles’s, but to this day no one knows for sure.
Sitting where he is in Reno today, despite the difficulties and struggles his own life has brought him, Seaborn understands the plight of the area’s homeless. Growing up in a household with a violent father, young Seaborn would escape his father’s violent episodes with his mother and brother by staying in area motels. When he struggled to find housing in Reno ten years ago, he used to be able to find a hotel for $80-$90 a night. Today, to exacerbate the fact that many of Reno’s motels are being knocked down, many of the same ones he used to stay at are now going for at least $300 a night. If his family had to escape his father’s violence today, staying at motels likely would not have been a possibility.
“This is what really saddens me because I know firsthand that when my brother and I were children, we spent time living out of motels while we ran away from him to survive,” Seaborn said. “So I understand the mother who's trying to make ends meet, living in a motel with her two kids or whatever, but there's got to be a way to make situations better for those people because kids should not be brought up living in and out of motels.”
Seaborn is confident, however, that Reno Mayor Hillary Schieve has the city’s best intentions at heart.
Working on His Novel Believe
In the meantime, he’s focusing on his current goal of writing his fiction novel, Believe. The story is about a boy’s internal struggles with survivor’s guilt after he and his father are involved in a car accident, during which the father is killed saving his son’s life. The story is set in Reno, Nevada, a city that now holds a special place in Seaborn’s heart.
“I appreciate Reno because it turned out to be a really good, supportive community for me,” Seaborn said. “So that’s why I decided to set this story in Reno. I know it well.”
So today you may find Seaborn in the Downtown Reno Public Library working on his novel. It’s a story he hopes will inspire others going through difficult times, much like the ones he had to endure himself.
“[It might] sound really egotistical that I'm hoping to inspire somebody else, but that’s the goal,” Seaborn said. “Theoretically, it's supposed to be inspiring that this kid figures out a way to survive after this tragedy that he blames himself for. So I hope it will be an inspiring story.”
Seaborn’s inspiration for the novel was to find a way to give back to the city that has given him so much, particularly at some of the most difficult times of his life. The way he sees it, it’s the least he can do.
He hopes to have the novel finished by the end of this year.