Seldes died peacefully at her home Oct. 6 after an extended illness. She was 86. Read Playbill.com's obituary here.
"I first worked with Marian in a 2007 Terrence McNally play called Deuce, in which we played former tennis partners reunited at the U.S. Open," wrote Lansbury in the Oct. 20 issue of Time — also stating Seldes' obsession with the color mauve. "Whatever eccentricities she had for color preference, she was an extraordinary tour de force onstage."
She continued, "I remember on the first night of Deuce, I gave her a mauve necklace that was amethyst. She loved it. And she wore it, and wore it, and wore it."
Read the full piece by Lansbury here.
Spacey writes about the days preceding his start at Juilliard, where Seldes taught Shakespeare. "Upon hearing that I was to be one of her new students, her reaction, as I later learned, was typically theatrical and very memorable: She grabbed my face with both hands, squeezed my cheeks like a peach and, in the most dramatic tone, said, 'My little bird,'" Spacey writes in the NY Post.
"She then turned and flitted across the street, without ever looking for oncoming traffic.
"Val [Kilmer] turned to me and said, 'God has his finger on her head and just guides her through life. A cab'll never hit her. She's a force of nature.'"
Spacey talks of Seldes' dedication to her students and the encouragement she gave him when he started out in theatre.
He said, "This is the work of a true teacher, one who knows that a young person needs encouragement when times are tough."
Read the full piece by Spacey here.
"I knew Marian especially well after she married, late in life, one of my favorite writers, the famous Garson Kanin," writes columnist Smith in the Huffington Post.
"I find I depended a lot on merely running into her, because she almost always showed up where anything to do with the theater was going on. This was delightful. When meeting, she would invariably try to bow as if you were the one person she wanted to see."
Read the full piece by Smith here.
For more on the life and career of Seldes, visit her page in the Playbill Vault.
