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The Real Knockout: Anna Nicole’s Judge

The Florida judge who decided the fate of Anna Nicole Smith’s body seems to be trying to make as much of a splash with his dramatic courtroom decorum as the fallen playmate made in her colorful life.

Judge Larry Seidlin, a Jewish boy from the Bronx who once worked as a cabbie before being elected to the bench in 1978, has made headlines with his lugubrious, often nonsensical soliloquies on the tragic nature of Smith’s passing. According to a letter of interest from CBS, obtained by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, the 56-year-old Broward County Circuit Court judge’s blubbering antics may have paid off: The network is apparently interested in giving him a gig on its “Saturday Early Show.”

But even before his tear-filled outbursts became national media fodder, Seidlin was prone to wacky behavior, says Palm Beach Post society columnist Jose Lambiet. Lambiet told The Shmooze that in the early 1990s, Seidlin sued a sliding glass door manufacturer for damages after he was knocked unconscious by his condo building’s garage door while riding his bicycle.

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