Impresario. It’s an old Italian word you don’t hear very often, designating someone who made sure the public had entrée to the arts.

Donald Seawell may be gone, but generations of Coloradans to continue to benefit from Denver’s premier impresario.

The founder of the Denver Center for the Performing Arts died Sept. 30 at the age of 103. Seawell, a native of North Carolina, had a storied career as an impresario in New York, producing dozens of plays on Broadway before coming to Denver almost 50 years ago.

Hundreds of friends, family and admirers turned out to celebrate Seawell’s legacy Monday in a way befitting a legend, with tributes and live performances of songs and Broadway show tunes that Seawell loved. The memorial was held in his namesake Donald R. Seawell Grand Ballroom at the DCPA.

Leading the evening’s celebration was fellow Denver arts legend Judi Wolf.

The two met in the most entertaining way. Seawell was coming out the Brown Palace Hotel with some New York theater VIPs. Wolf got out of her limo, walked up the steps and gave Seawell a “great big kiss on the cheek,” she told The Colorado Statesman in an interview this week. The people with him asked, “‘Who in the world was that gorgeous redhead?’ Seawell replied, ‘I’m accustomed to this. Women do that to me!’”

So began a 20-year friendship that ended the day Seawell died, in a suite in Marvin and Judi Wolf’s home, where Seawell spent many years. From the beginning, when Judi Wolf was named a trustee of the DCPA, the Wolfs and Seawell were like family, she said. He became something of an adopted grandfather to the Wolf family, spending every holiday and most weekends with the Wolfs, and the trio traveled the world together for many years.

Seawell was extraordinarily formal, both privately and publicly, Wolf recalled. Even in 95-degree heat — and even while lounging around the pool — he was always in a full suit with a tie and French cuffs. And then there was the ever-present flute of champagne. Seawell would say, “Gin is for business, champagne is for fun.”

They traveled at least twice a year. Once, while deciding where to go next, she asked Seawell if he wanted to go to Disneyland. “That’s for kids,” he said. “That’s the best reason to take you,” she replied. And off they went. Wolf asked for a VIP tour, which was readily offered because Disneyland officials knew quite well who Seawell was. Snow White and Mickey Mouse met them at the gate. They went on the riverboat tour, personally welcomed by the ship’s captain, who dubbed Seawell “Captain Seawell” and gave him the wheel. “All of a sudden, Don was 8 years old,” Wolf said.

At the end of the day, Seawell said “Judi, you never told me Disneyland is about show business!”

Seawell was all about show business. But the memorial was also about all the other roles he played in his storied life.

That included publisher of The Denver Post, a job he took at the request of its owner, Helen Bonfils, while she was fighting off a hostile takeover. That’s how he got to Denver, in 1966, with wife, the actress Eugenia Rawls. (Their 59-year marriage ended in 2000, when she passed away after a long illness).

He was also a behind-the-scenes power broker, like when he and Post publisher Dean Singleton tag-teamed pub owner John Hickenlooper on the Post’s Cheyenne Frontier Days trip and helped talk Hickenlooper into running for mayor of Denver.

During the memorial service, Hickenlooper, ever the beer man, pointed to the Dos Equis beer commercials featuring “The Most Interesting Man in the World.” The governor said the title really belongs to Seawell, “the most alive person I can think of.”

Seawell was also the military intelligence man, who helped plan the D-Day invasion and worked with British intelligence on the scheme that led to victory on Normandy Beach.

But it was Seawell’s love of the theater that is his legacy in Denver. That love brought him to Broadway, first as an attorney and then as a producer.

It was his relationship with Bonfils that set him on the path to founding the DCPA. The pair had dreams of turning Denver into a cultural Mecca, said Singleton.

Seawell was an insatiable fan, said Kent Thompson, the producing artistic director of the DCPA Theater Company. “He dined out on live theater.” Thompson called Seawell a “force of nature — woe to anyone who got in his way!”

“We were all in awe of him,” said Singleton. Seawell, he noted, was still going strong only two weeks before he died, participating in a five-hour meeting of the DCPA board from his bed via conference call.

Seawell set the theatrical world abuzz when he decided the Denver theater should perform Tantalus, the 12-hour, 10-play cycle on the Trojan War, staged in partnership with the Royal Shakespeare Company of London. The DCPA Theater Company was by then already on the road to worldwide recognition, with a 1998 Tony Award for the nation’s Outstanding Regional Theater Company.

Seawell’s love of show business was on full display throughout the memorial. It started with Irving Berlin’s “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” and the Gershwin brothers’ “They Can’t Take That Away from Me.” Denver first lady Mary Louise Lee, representing the city, paid tribute with a soulful performance of the Whitney Houston classic “I Will Always Love You.”

But it was the song “I’ll be Seeing You” that brought tears to the eyes in the audience, as Wolf quietly sang along on stage.

That love of the show stayed with Seawell to his final moments, Wolf recalled. “Remember, Judi,” he told her, “we are about show business.”

Bravo, Mr. Seawell.

— marianne@coloradostatesman.com