Edwin Sherin

Edwin Sherin (January 15, 1930 – May 4, 2017) was an American-Canadian actor, director, and producer born in Danville, Pennsylvania, to Ruth (née Berger), a homemaker, and Joseph Sherin, a textile worker. He grew up in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and Inwood, Manhattan, and had a sister, Edith Sherin Markson, who was among the founders of the Milwaukee Repertory Theater. At sixteen, Sherin left DeWitt Clinton High School and spent time working on a cattle ranch in West Texas before resuming his education at the Fountain Valley School in Colorado Springs, where he graduated in 1948. He went on to earn a degree in international relations from Brown University in 1952, after which he enlisted in the Navy and served in the Korean War.

Sherin began his professional life as an actor, receiving training at Paul Mann's Actors Workshop and studying with John Houseman at the American Shakespeare Theatre. His Broadway acting career spanned from 1957 to 1962 and included appearances in Romulus, Face of a Hero, King Henry IV Part II, Peer Gynt, and Lysistrata. He subsequently transitioned to directing, training that would define the remainder of his career.

His directorial work took shape during his tenure as resident director at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., where he helmed six consecutive seasonal productions: The Wall (1963–64), Galileo (1964–65), St. Joan (1965–66), Macbeth (1966–67), The Iceman Cometh (1967–68), and King Lear (1968–69). It was at Arena Stage that Sherin cast Jane Alexander and James Earl Jones in The Great White Hope, a production he then brought to Broadway in 1968. That staging earned him the 1969 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Director and launched both his Broadway directorial career and a lasting professional relationship with Alexander.

Sherin's Broadway directing credits include 6 Rms Riv Vu (1972), An Evening With Richard Nixon and... by Gore Vidal (1972), Of Mice and Men (1974 revival), Sweet Bird of Youth (1975 revival), The Eccentricities of a Nightingale (1976), Rex (1976), Do You Turn Somersaults? (1978), First Monday in October (1978), Goodbye Fidel (1980), The Visit (1992 revival), and Prymate (2004). He received a 1974 Tony Award nomination for Best Direction of a Play for Find Your Way Home. In 1974, he also directed a West End revival of A Streetcar Named Desire at London's Piccadilly Theatre, with a cast that included Claire Bloom, Martin Shaw, Joss Ackland, and Morag Hood. His off-Broadway credits include The White Rose and the Red (1964).

Sherin directed Alexander repeatedly across multiple productions and venues. He directed her in First Monday in October on Broadway in 1978, in Hedda Gabler at the Hartman Theatre in Connecticut in 1981, in the Broadway revival of The Visit, and in Thom Thomas's A Moon to Dance By at The Pittsburgh Playhouse and the George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick, New Jersey, in 2009. In August 1973, he cast James Earl Jones as King Lear for a production at The Public Theater's Shakespeare in the Park. In 1972, he directed a revival of The Time of Your Life at the Huntington Hartford Theater in Los Angeles, with a cast that included Henry Fonda, Richard Dreyfuss, and Jane Alexander.

In film, Sherin directed two theatrical features released in 1971: Valdez Is Coming, starring Burt Lancaster and Susan Clark, and My Old Man's Place, with William Devane and Michael Moriarty. His television directing credits encompass Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law, Doogie Howser M.D., Homicide: Life on the Street, Medium, and all three editions of the Law & Order franchise. He directed the television films Lena: My 100 Children (1987), The Father Clements Story (1987), Settle the Score (1989), Daughter of the Streets (1990), and A Marriage: Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz (1991). As executive producer, Sherin oversaw 163 episodes of the NBC drama Law & Order between 1993 and 2000, and is credited as director and executive producer of the series from 1991 to 2005.

In his personal life, Sherin was first married to actress Pamela Vevers, with whom he had three sons; that marriage ended in divorce. In 1975, he married Jane Alexander. The couple maintained a home in Lockeport, Nova Scotia beginning in 1998 and both became Canadian citizens. Sherin died on May 4, 2017, in Nova Scotia at the age of 87.