George B. Seitz

Who was George B. Seitz?

George Brackett Seitz was an American playwright, screenwriter, film actor and director. He was known for his screenplays for action serials, including:

The Perils of Pauline

The Exploits of Elaine

The Shielding Shadow

The Black Secret

The Iron Claw

The Phantom Foe

The Last of the Mohicans

Seitz was born in Boston, Massachusetts, started his career as a playwright, and also wrote some fiction for "up-market" pulp magazines such as Adventure and People's Magazine.

Seitz did much of his early work in Fort Lee, New Jersey when many other early film studios in America's first motion picture industry were based there. He was the director of 107 films, the writer of 31 screenplays, and an actor in 7 films. He worked at Columbia Pictures and at MGM where he directed 11 of the Andy Hardy series of films of the 1930s & 1940s. He died in Hollywood, California. Although an acquaintance of the cinematographer John F. Seitz, they were not related. He was the father of George B. Seitz Jr., who was a writer/director active in the 1940s and 1950s in films and television.