John Frankenheimer

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John Michael Frankenheimer (February 19, 1930 – July 6, 2002) was an American film director.

Life

He was born in New York City, New York, son of a German-born Jewish father and an Irish-American Roman Catholic mother. He was raised in the Catholic faith, which he abandoned as an adult.

He graduated from Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts in 1951. While serving as an Air Force Lieutenant during the Korean War, Frankenheimer became interested in directing. He directed service films for the Air Force and after being discharged, went onto an interview for a TV station. According to Frankenheimer on a profile from The Directors Series, the interviewer said that they weren't hiring at the moment, but if needed, Frankenheimer would be the first one they called. Frankenheimer said that he spent two weeks locked up inside his hotel room, only going out for food and unable to rely on the hotel's messaging service that he received a call. It was then that Frankenheimer began directing live television productions.

Career

Frankenheimer directed his first theatrical film, The Young Stranger, in 1957, but did not direct another until 1961. 1962 was a pivotal year for the young director, he directed three films All Fall Down, Birdman of Alcatraz and The Manchurian Candidate that were all box office hits. The Manchurian Candidate (based on the 1959 novel of the same title by Richard Condon) is probably his best known work and was recently named as one of the top 100 films of all time. It was pulled from circulation due to the death of President Kennedy, but was re-released to great acclaim in 1988.

Frankenheimer directed Seven Days in May in 1964 and The Train in 1965 that were also well received along with Grand Prix, and Seconds, both in 1966, and The Fixer in 1968.

Frankenheimer was a close friend of Senator Robert Kennedy and in fact drove him to the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles the night he was assassinated in June 1968.

Immediately after this, he filmed The Gypsy Moths, a romantic drama about a troupe of barnstorming skydivers and the impact they have on a small midwestern town. The celebration of Americana starred Frankenheimer regular Burt Lancaster. reuniting him with From Here to Eternity co-star Deborah Kerr, and also featured Gene Hackman. The film failed to find an audience, but Frankenheimer always stated that it was one of his personal favorites.

He followed this film 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.

His next film The Impossible Object, also known as The Story of a Love Story, suffered distribution difficulties, and was not widely released.

He followed this in 1973 with a four-hour film of O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh, starring Lee Marvin and the San Francisco-set 99 and 44/100 Per Cent Dead a crime black comedy starring Richard Harris.

With his fluent French and knowledge of the culture, Frankenheimer was next asked to direct French Connection II, set entirely in Marseille. Starring Gene Hackman, the film was a major success and got Frankenheimer his next job, Black Sunday in 1976.

Black Sunday, author Thomas Harris's only non-Hannibal Lecter novel, involves an Israeli Mossad agent (Robert Shaw), chasing a Palestinian terrorist (Marthe Keller) and a disgruntled Vietnam vet (Bruce Dern) who plan to blow up the Goodyear blimp 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. The film tested very highly, and Paramount and Frankenheimer had high expectations for it. When it failed to become the hit that was expected, Frankenheimer has admitted he developed a serious problem with alcohol.

He says in Charles Champlin's biography that his alcohol problem caused him to do work that was below his own standards on his next film, 1979's Prophecy, an ecological monster movie about a mutant grizzly bear terrorizing a forest in Maine.

He followed this up with a series of lower-profile action films in the 1980s and early 1990s, including The Challenge, The Holcroft Covenant, 52 Pick-Up, Dead-Bang, The Fourth War and Year of the Gun.

Frankenheimer was able to make a comeback in the 1990s by returning to 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 in 1996 and 1997, Andersonville and George Wallace that were highly praised. He even acted for the first time, playing a desperate U.S. General in The General's Daughter (1999) in a crucial cameo appearance.

His 1996 film The Island of Dr. Moreau, which he took over a few weeks into production from another director, was the cause of countless stories of production woes and personality clashes, and received scathing reviews. However, his next film, 1998's Ronin, starring Robert de Niro, was a return to form, featuring Frankenheier's now trademark elaborate car chases woven into a labyrinthine espionage plot.

His last theatrical film, 2000's Reindeer Games, starring Ben Affleck, underperformed, but his final film, Path to War for HBO in 2002, brought him back to his strengths - political machinations, 60's America and character-based drama, and was nominated for numerous awards.

He was scheduled to direct a prequel to The Exorcist but died suddenly in Los Angeles, California, from a stroke due to complications following spinal surgery at the age of 72, shortly before filming started.

Filmography

External links

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