Background
John Frankenheimer was born on February 19, 1930 in New York, United States. Son of Walter Martin and Helen Mary (Sheedy) Frankenheimer.
John Frankenheimer was born on February 19, 1930 in New York, United States. Son of Walter Martin and Helen Mary (Sheedy) Frankenheimer.
Studied at LaSalle Mil. Academy, Williams College.
All Fall Down was his most accomplished film, with good performances from Warren Beattv, Eva Marie Saint, and Angela Lansbury, and some deliberate Wellesian deep-focus interiors. The Manchurian Candidate's stunning set pieces (mostly coming from Richard Condon) do not disguise its real neglect of Americana. And the performances now seem good despite Frankenheimer’s busy interest in visual hysteria. At about this time, Frankenheimer became a little over-shadowed by Burt Lancaster. That actor had been good in The Young Savages and Birdman of Alcatraz, even il the latter is too solemn a vehicle for his icy domination. But Seven Days in May only furthered Frankenheimers craze for TV screens within his frame, while The Train was a silliness from which Arthur Penn was lucky to escape. The division in Frankenheimers identity was clearly shown in 1966 with the arty pretentiousness of Seconds and the schoolboy thrills of Grand Prix. After that, he became hopelessly lost in adaptations of novels—The Fixer and The Horsemen— and twice attempted to recapture his sense of provincial America: The Gypsy Moths and I Walk, the Line.
Frankenheimers films of the eighties were not an improvement, even il they were always quick and accomplished, lie no longer had good material, and so it was hard to recollect his startling debut in the early sixties. However, when The Manchurian Candidate was rereleased, it had hardly dated. Also, on re-viewing Seven Days in May and I Walk the Line that these two films are a lot better than originally indi-cated—the first is a clockwork plot such as brings out Frankenheimers precision, yet it has time for several fine studies in loyalty and betrayal. As for I Walk the Line, it is a gradual rural tragedy, founded in hopeless infatuation, and inspired by one of Tuesday Welds best performances.
By 1994, Frankenheimer was back in TV with a story about the Attica riots. He was also frank about how far alcoholism had set him back in the late seventies and eighties.
Frankenheimer was emphatically back in the nineties, on the big and the small screens. But it's instructive that The Island of Dr Moreau. Ronin and Reindeer Games were worth so much less than his brilliant George Wallace, well written by Paul Monash, and starring Gary Sinise, Mare Winningham and Angelina Jolie. Anyone with Frankenheimer’s experience and talent will be better received nowadays by TV than by big- picture making.
In his first few years as a director there was a modish aura about Frankenheimer. He came from television and seemed sensitive to the problems of the young. The Young Stranger was a good debut, with a troubled puppy performance from fames MacArtlmr and excellent small-town atmosphere. But Frankenheimer gradually abandoned intimacy for glossy production values, a speculative eye on subject matter, and a flashy, insecure style.
Married 1st Carolyn Diane Miller in 1954 (divorced in 1961), two daughter. Married 2nd Evan Evans in 1964.