John Frankenheimer

John Michael Frankenheimer (February 19, 1930 – July 6, 2002) was an American film and television director, known both for his social dramas and his action/suspense pictures. Among his best-known theatrical film credits are Birdman of Alcatraz, The Manchurian Candidate (both 1962), Seven Days in May, The Train (both 1964), Seconds, Grand Prix (both 1966), The Fixer (1968), The Iceman Cometh (1973), French Connection II (1975), Black Sunday (1977), 52 Pick-Up (1986), and Ronin (1998).

His nearly 40 feature films and over 50 plays for television were notable for their influence on contemporary thought. He became a pioneer of the "modern-day political thriller", having begun his career at the height of the Cold War. He won four Emmy Awards – three consecutive – in the 1990s for directing the television movies Against the Wall, The Burning Season, Andersonville, and George Wallace, the last of which also received a Golden Globe Award for Best Miniseries or Television Film. He was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 2002.

Frankenheimer was technically highly accomplished from his days in live television; many of his films were noted for creating "psychological dilemmas" for his male protagonists along with having a strong "sense of environment",

Early years

Frankenheimer was born in Queens, New York City, the son of Helen Mary (née Sheedy) and Walter Martin Frankenheimer, a stockbroker. His father was of German Jewish descent, his mother was Irish Catholic, and Frankenheimer was raised in his mother's religion. As a youth Frankenheimer, the eldest of three siblings, struggled to assert himself with his domineering father.

Growing up in New York City he became fascinated with cinema at an early age, and recalls avidly attending movies every weekend. Frankenheimer reports that in 1938, at the age of seven or eight, he attended a 25-episode, 7 hour marathon of The Lone Ranger accompanied by his aunt.

Air Force Film Squadron: 1951–1953

After graduating from Williams College, Frankenheimer was drafted into the Air Force and assigned to the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC), serving in the Pentagon mailroom at Washington, D.C. He quickly applied for and was transferred, without any formal qualifications, to an Air Force film squadron in Burbank, California. It was there that Lieutenant Frankenheimer "really started to think seriously about directing".

Frankenheimer recollects his early apprenticeship with the Air Force photography unit as one of almost unlimited freedom. When he was a junior officer, Frankenheimer claimed, his superiors "couldn't have cared less" what he did in terms of utilizing the filmmaking equipment. Frankenheimer reports that he was free to set up the lighting, operate the camera and perform the editing on projects he personally conceived. His first film was a documentary about an asphalt manufacturing plant in Sherman Oaks, California. Lieutenant Frankenheimer recalls moonlighting, at $40-a-week, as writer, producer and cameraman making television infomercials for a local cattle breeder in Northridge, California, in which livestock were presented on the interior stage sets. (The Federal Communications Commission terminated the programming after 15 weeks.) In addition to mastering the basic elements of filmmaking, he began reading widely on film technique, including the writings of Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein.

Frankenheimer was discharged from the military in 1953.

Television's "Golden Age": 1953–1960

thumb|left|Frankenheimer at [[CBS|Columbia Broadcasting Studios (CBS), 1952]]

During his years in military service, Frankenheimer strenuously sought a film career in Southern California. Failing this, at the age of 23, he returned to New York upon his military discharge to seek work in the emerging television industry. His earnestness impressed Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) television executives, landing him a job in the summer of 1953 to serve as a director of photography on The Garry Moore Show. Frankenheimer recalls his apprenticeship at CBS:

Frankenheimer was picked up as assistant to director Sidney Lumet's for CBS's historical dramatization series You Are There, and further on Charles Russell's Danger and Edward R. Murrow's Person to Person. In late 1954 Frankenheimer replaced Lumet as director on You Are There and Danger under a five-year contract (with a studio standard option to terminate a director with a two-week notice). Frankenheimer's directorial début was The Plot Against King Solomon (1954), a critical success.

Throughout the 1950s he directed over 140 episodes of shows like Playhouse 90 and Climax! under the auspices of CBS executive Hubbell Robinson and producer Martin Manulis. These included well-regarded adaptations of works by Shakespeare, Eugene O'Neill, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Arthur Miller. Leading actors and actresses from film and stage starred in these live productions, among them Ingrid Bergman, John Gielgud, Mickey Rooney, Geraldine Page and Jack Lemmon. Frankenheimer is widely considered a preeminent figure in the so-called "Golden Age of Television".

Film historian Stephen Bowie offers this appraisal of Frankenheimer's legacy from the "Golden Age" of television:

Film career

Frankenheimer's earliest films addressed contemporary issues such as "juvenile delinquency, criminality and the social environment" and are represented by The Young Stranger (1957), The Young Savages (1961) and All Fall Down (1962).

The Young Stranger (1957)

Frankenheimer's first foray into filmmaking occurred while he was still under contract to CBS television. The head of CBS in California, William Dozier, became the CEO of RKO movie studios. Frankenheimer was assigned to direct a film version of his television Climax! production titled "Deal a Blow", written by William Dozier's son, Robert. The 1956 movie version, The Young Stranger, stars James MacArthur as the rebellious teenage son of a powerful Hollywood movie producer (James Daly). Frankenheimer recalled that he found his first film experience unsatisfactory:

Frankenheimer adds that in the late 1950s, television was transitioning from live productions to taped shows: "... a live television director was like being a village blacksmith after the advent of the automobile ... I knew I had to get out..." In 1961 Frankenheimer abandoned television and returned to filmmaking after a four-year hiatus, continuing his examination of the social themes that informed his 1957 The Young Stranger. Film historian Gordon Gow distinguishes Frankenheimer's handling of themes addressing individualism and "misfits" during the Fifties' obsession with disaffected teenagers:

The Young Savages (1961)

Frankenheimer's second cinematic effort is based on novelist Evan Hunter's A Matter of Conviction (1959). United Artists publicity executives changed the box-office title to the vaguely lurid The Young Savages, to which Frankenheimer objected. The story involves the attempted political exploitation of a brazen murder involving Puerto Rican and Italian youth gangs set in New York City's Spanish Harlem. District Attorney, Dan Cole (Edward Andrews), who is seeking the state governorship, sends assistant D. A. Hank Bell (Burt Lancaster) to gather evidence to secure a conviction. Bell, who grew up in the tenement district, has escaped from his impoverished origins to achieve social and economic success. He initially adopts a cynical hostility towards the youths he investigates, which serves his own career aims. The narrative explores the human and legal complexities of the case and Bell's struggle to confront his personal and social prejudices and commitments. The film's arresting opening sequence depicting a killing, which is key to the plot, reveals Frankenheimer's origins in television. The action, "brilliantly filmed and edited", occurs preliminary to the credits, and is accompanied by an impelling soundtrack by composer David Amram, serving to quickly rivet audience interest.

The Young Savages, though focusing on juvenile delinquency, is cinematically a significant advance over Frankenheimer's similarly themed first film effort The Young Stranger (1957). Film historian Gerald Pratley attributes this to Frankenheimer's insistence on hand-picking his leading technical support for the project, including set designer Bert Smidt, cinematographer Lionel Lindon and scenarist JP Miller. Pratley observed:

Adler concludes: "it is not enough to put [Bok-Bates] in a few cliché predicaments...[the dialogue] becomes demeaning and vulgar when drawn out with hack-plot fiction approximations of eloquence." Biographer Charles Higham dismisses the film, writing that "since the commercial failure of Seconds (1966), Frankenheimer's films have been mediocre, ranging from The Fixer (1968) to The Horsemen (1971)."

Frankenheimer became a close friend of Senator Robert F. Kennedy during the making of The Manchurian Candidate in 1962. In 1968, Kennedy, who hoped to become the Democratic presidential candidate that year, asked him to make some commercials for use in the presidential campaign. On the night the Senator was assassinated in June 1968, Frankenheimer had driven him from Los Angeles Airport to the Ambassador Hotel for his acceptance speech.

The Gypsy Moths was a romantic drama about a troupe of barnstorming skydivers and their impact on a small midwestern town. The celebration of Americana starred Frankenheimer regular Lancaster, reuniting him with From Here to Eternity co-star Deborah Kerr, and it also featured Gene Hackman. The film failed to find an audience, but Frankenheimer claimed it was one of his favorites.

1970s

Frankenheimer followed this with I Walk the Line in 1970. The film, starring Gregory Peck and Tuesday Weld, about a Tennessee sheriff who falls in love with a moonshiner's daughter, was set to songs by Johnny Cash. Frankenheimer's next project took him to Afghanistan. The Horsemen focused on the relationship between a father and son, played by Jack Palance and Omar Sharif. Sharif's character, an expert horseman, played the Afghan national sport of buzkashi.

Impossible Object, also known as Story of a Love Story, suffered distribution difficulties and was not widely released. Next came a four-hour film of O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh, in 1973, starring Lee Marvin, and the decidedly offbeat 99 and 44/100% Dead, a crime black comedy starring Richard Harris.

With his fluent French and knowledge of French culture, Frankenheimer was asked to direct French Connection II, set entirely in Marseille. With Hackman reprising his role as New York cop Popeye Doyle, the film was a success and got Frankenheimer his next job. Black Sunday, based on author Thomas Harris's only non-Hannibal Lecter novel up to that point, involves an Israeli Mossad agent (Robert Shaw) chasing a pro-Palestinian terrorist (Marthe Keller) and a PTSD-afflicted Vietnam vet (Bruce Dern), who plan a spectacular mass murder involving the Goodyear Blimp which flies over the Super Bowl. It was shot on location at the actual Super Bowl X in January 1976 in Miami, with the use of a real Goodyear Blimp.

Frankenheimer is quoted in Champlin's biography as saying that his alcohol problem caused him to do work that was below his own standards on Prophecy (1979), an ecological monster movie about a mutant grizzly bear terrorizing a forest in Maine.

1980s

In 1981, Frankenheimer travelled to Japan to shoot the cult martial-arts action film The Challenge, with Scott Glenn and Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune. He told Champlin that his drinking became so severe while shooting in Japan that he actually drank on set, which he had never done before, and as a result he entered rehab on returning to America. The film was released in 1982, along with his HBO television adaptation of the acclaimed play The Rainmaker.

In 1985, Frankenheimer directed an adaptation of the Robert Ludlum bestseller The Holcroft Covenant, starring Michael Caine. That was followed the next year with another adaptation, 52 Pick-Up, from the novel by Elmore Leonard. Dead Bang (1989) followed Don Johnson as he infiltrated a group of white supremacists. In 1990, he returned to the Cold War political thriller genre with The Fourth War with Roy Scheider (with whom Frankenheimer had worked previously on 52 Pick-Up) as a loose cannon Army colonel drawn into a dangerous personal war with a Soviet officer. It was not a commercial success.

1990s

thumbnail|Frankenheimer on the set of the television film [[Andersonville (film)|Andersonville in 1994]]

Most of his 1980s films were less than successful, both critically and financially, but Frankenheimer was able to make a comeback in the 1990s by returning to his roots in television. He directed two films for HBO in 1994: Against the Wall and The Burning Season that won him several awards and renewed acclaim. The director also helmed two films for Turner Network Television, Andersonville (1996) and George Wallace (1997), that were highly praised.

Frankenheimer's 1996 film The Island of Doctor Moreau, which he took over after the firing of original director Richard Stanley, was the cause of countless stories of production woes and personality clashes and received scathing reviews. Frankenheimer was said to be unable to stand Val Kilmer, the young co-star of the film and whose disruption had reportedly led to the removal of Stanley half a week into production. When Kilmer's last scene was completed, Frankenheimer reportedly said, "Now get that bastard off my set." He also stated, "There are two things I will never ever do in my whole life: I will never climb Mt. Everest and I will never work with Val Kilmer ever again." The veteran director also professed that "Will Rogers never met Val Kilmer". In an interview, Frankenheimer refused to discuss the film, saying only that he had a miserable time making it.

However, his next film, 1998's Ronin, starring Robert De Niro, was a return to form, featuring Frankenheimer's now trademark elaborate car chases woven into a labyrinthine espionage plot. Co-starring an international cast including Jean Reno and Jonathan Pryce, it was a critical and box-office success. As the 1990s drew to a close, he even had a rare acting role, appearing in a cameo as a U.S. general in The General's Daughter (1999). He earlier had an uncredited cameo as a TV director in his 1977 film Black Sunday.

Last years and death

Frankenheimer's last theatrical film, 2000's Reindeer Games, starring Ben Affleck, underperformed. In 2001, he worked on the BMW action short-film Ambush for the promotional series The Hire, starring Clive Owen. Frankenheimer's final film, Path to War (2002) for HBO was nominated for numerous awards. A look back at the Vietnam War, it starred Michael Gambon as President Lyndon Johnson along with Alec Baldwin and Donald Sutherland.

Frankenheimer was scheduled to direct Exorcist: The Beginning, but it was announced before filming started that he was withdrawing, citing health concerns. Paul Schrader replaced him. About a month later he died suddenly in Los Angeles, California, from a stroke due to complications following spinal surgery at the age of 72.

Politics

Frankenheimer was born into a politically conservative family and attended a Catholic military academy. He served as a junior officer in the US Air Force during the Korean War. In his youth, he briefly considered entering the priesthood.

He came of age during the height of the Red Scare and the Anti-Communist House Un-American Activities Committee investigations during the early 1950s, a period that saw the blacklisting of left-wing filmmakers and screenwriters by the Hollywood studios. Frankenheimer's early liberal political sensibilities first manifested themselves in disputes with his conservative father, a stockbroker:

Frankenheimer's “liberal sensibility” emerged professionally when he began his apprenticeship in the early TV industry:

Film critic David Walsh notes that “any medium which emerged as the profit-driven property of large American corporations and under the close scrutiny of the US authorities in the midst of the Cold War, with its anticommunism, conformism and generally stagnant intellectual climate, would inevitably be deformed by those processes...Frankenheimer worked and apparently thrived within this overall artistic and ideological framework.”

When Frankenheimer began pre-production on his political thriller Seven Days in May (1964) in the summer of 1963, he approached Kennedy's press secretary, Pierre Salinger, to arrange to film a segment on location in vicinity of the White House. The story concerns a political coup organized by a fascistic Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (played by Burt Lancaster) to depose the liberal president (played by Fredric March) and install a military dictatorship. Kennedy approved the picture and accommodated Frankenheimer by withdrawing to his home in Hyannisport for the weekend during the White House shoot.

As to whether Frankenheimer ever met Kennedy, the director offered contradictory versions. To biographer Gerald Pratley in 1968, Frankenheimer said, "I never had the pleasure of meeting [JFK] personally" but noted that Kennedy had fully supported the production of Seven Days in May. In 1998, during an interview with film critic Alex Simon, Frankenheimer recalled that Kennedy purportedly said to Salinger, "if it's John Frankenheimer [directing Seven Days in May] I want to meet him." Frankenheimer adds, “So I met him, went to a press conference with him. He was wonderful to me.”

Frankenheimer regarded Kennedy's assassination as a profound calamity for America: “I think we lost our innocence as a country with John F. Kennedy's death.”

Film critics Joanne Laurier and David Walsh observe that “The Kennedy assassination marked a historical turning point. One of its aims, in which it ultimately succeeded, was to shift US government policies to the right and intimidate political opposition.”

Frankenheimer reports that he filmed Robert Kennedy's campaign appearances and coached the senator on improving his political persona, providing this support for Kennedy over three months in the spring of 1968.

Frankenheimer was devastated by RFK's assassination in June 1968, due in part to his proximity to the event. Kennedy spent the night before the California primary in Frankenheimer's Malibu home. He had first been scheduled to accompany Kennedy through the Ambassador Hotel after the candidate's victory speech in the California primaries. Early news reports listed Frankenheimer as one of the wounded in Kennedy's entourage. Frankenheimer and spouse Evans Evans were waiting at a side entrance of the Ambassador Hotel to pick up Kennedy when he emerged from the press conference and drive him to their home. According to Frankenheimer, they witnessed police removing Sirhan Sirhan, later convicted of the shooting, from the premises, then discovered Kennedy had been mortally wounded.

Traumatized by the event, Frankenheimer withdrew from politics, and after completing The Gypsy Moths (1969) moved to France to study the culinary arts. He recalled in 1998: “Yeah. I managed to finish one film, The Gypsy Moths, but I just felt like 'What's the point? What does any of this really matter?' I mean, when you're a part of something like that and then all of the sudden it's taken away with just one bullet [snaps fingers]. It really makes you take stock in what's important...That's when I went to France, and that's when I went to Le Cordon Bleu, because I just had to do something else with my life, and I really couldn't go near politics for a long time after that.” Walsh comments:

Personal life

He was married to Carolyn Miller from 1954 to 1962, and they had two daughters, Elise and Kristi. He then married actress Evans Evans in 1963, and they remained married until his death.

Death

Frankenheimer died in Los Angeles on July 6, 2002, aged 72, from a stroke due to complications following spinal surgery.

The films Exorcist: The Beginning (which he'd been scheduled to direct before dropping out) and The Butterfly Effect 2 were dedicated to his memory.

Filmography

Film

{| class="wikitable"

! Year

! Title

!Director

!Producer

! Notes

|1957

|The Young Stranger

|1961

|The Young Savages

| rowspan="3" |1962

|All Fall Down

|Birdman of Alcatraz

|The Manchurian Candidate

| rowspan="2" |1964

|Seven Days in May

|The Train

|Replaced Arthur Penn

| rowspan="2" |1966

|Seconds

|Grand Prix

|1968

|The Fixer

| rowspan="2" |1969

|The Extraordinary Seaman

|The Gypsy Moths

|1970

|I Walk the Line

|1971

|The Horsemen

| rowspan="2" |1973

|The Iceman Cometh

|Impossible Object

|1974

|99 and 44/100% Dead

|1975

|French Connection II

|1977

|Black Sunday

|1979

|Prophecy

|1982

|The Challenge

|1985

|The Holcroft Covenant

|1986

|52 Pick-Up

|1989

|Dead Bang

|1990

|The Fourth War

|1991

|Year of the Gun

|1996

|The Island of Dr. Moreau

|Replaced Richard Stanley

|1998

|Ronin

|2000

|Reindeer Games

|2001

|The Hire: Ambush

|Promotional short film for BMW

Television

{| class="wikitable"

! Year

! Title

!Director

!Producer

! Notes

|1954

|You Are There

|Episode: "The Plot Against King Solomon"

|1954–55

|Danger

|6 episodes

|1955–56

|Climax!

|26 episodes

|1956–60

|Playhouse 90

|27 episodes

|1958

|Studio One in Hollywood

|Episode: "The Last Summer"

| rowspan="2" |1959

|DuPont Show of the Month

|Episode: "The Browning Vision"

|Startime

|Episode: "The Turn of the Screw"

|1959–60

|NBC Sunday Showcase

|2 episodes

|1960

|Buick-Electra Playhouse

|3 episodes

|1964

|Selena

|Presentation pilot

|1992

|Tales from the Crypt

|Episode: "Maniac at Large"

TV movies

{| class="wikitable"

! Year

! Title

!Director

!Producer

|1982

|The Rainmaker

| rowspan="2" |1994

|Against the Wall

|The Burning Season

|1996

|Andersonville

|1997

|George Wallace

|2002

|Path to War

Awards and honors

{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders sticky-header" width="100%" style="font-size: 90%;"

!Institution

!Year

!Category

!Work

!Result

| rowspan="6" |CableACE Awards

|1983

|Directing a Theatrical-Non-Musical Program

|The Rainmaker

| rowspan="2" |1995

|Movie or Miniseries

| rowspan="2" |The Burning Season

| rowspan="2" |Directing a Movie or Miniseries

|1995

|Against the Wall

| rowspan="2" |1997

|Movie or Miniseries

| rowspan="2" |George Wallace

|Directing a Movie or Miniseries

| rowspan="2" |Cannes Film Festival

|1962

| rowspan="2" |Palme d'Or

|All Fall Down

|1966

|Seconds

|Deauville American Film Festival

|1991

|Critics Award

|Year of the Gun

| rowspan="7" |Directors Guild of America

| rowspan="2" |1963

| rowspan="3" |Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Theatrical Feature Film

|The Manchurian Candidate

|Birdman of Alcatraz

|1967

|Grand Prix

|1995

| rowspan="4" |Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Movies for Television and Limited Series

|Against the Wall

|1997

|Andersonville

|1998

|George Wallace

|2003

|Path to War

| rowspan="14" |Primetime Emmy Awards

|1956

| rowspan="5" |Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series

|Climax!

|1957

|Playhouse 90

|1958

|Playhouse 90

|1959

|Playhouse 90

|1960

|Startime

|1994