Franklyn Seales

Franklyn Seales was an American actor of film, television and the stage. Born in Saint Vincent, he left the West Indies in 1960 and settled in New York City, attending Lincoln High School in Brooklyn. A Juilliard scholarship followed after John Houseman noticed him at an audition, and he trained with Houseman's Acting Company. His breakthrough came in the 1978 PBS production Trial of the Moke, as Lt. Henry O. Flipper. He appeared in The Onion Field (1979) as Jimmy Lee Smith, had a small part in Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), and played Rifleman Cleotis Simms in Southern Comfort (1981). On television, he was a regular on Silver Spoons from 1983 to 1987 as Dexter Stuffins, and he appeared on Hill Street Blues and Amen. In Los Angeles he joined L.A. Theatre Works, performed in Bertolt Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle, and appeared in Nothing Sacred at the Mark Taper Forum in 1988. He died in 1990.