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", similar in style to films by director Sidney Lumet, for whom he had earlier worked as assistant director. He developed a "tremendous propensity for exploring political situations" which would ensnare his characters. Critic Leonard Maltin writes that "in his time [1960s] ... Frankenheimer worked with the top writers, producers and actors in a series of films that dealt with issues that were just on top of the moment – things that were facing us all."
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 1⁄2 hour marathon of The Lone Ranger accompanied by his aunt.
In 1947, he graduated from La Salle Military Academy in Oakdale, Long Island, New York, and in 1951 he earned a baccalaureate in English from Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. As captain of the tennis team at Williams, Frankenheimer briefly considered a professional career in tennis, but reconsidered:
I gave that up when I really started acting at eighteen or nineteen, because there wasn't any time to do both ... my interest was more toward acting in those days and an actor is what I wanted to be. I did act at college and summer stock for a year. But I was really not a very good actor. I was quite shy and quite stiff...
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
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:
When I stop and look back on [The Garry Moore Show] ... I was particularly well-suited for that job ... what you would do is prepare a shot for the director. He would tell you what he wanted and you would get it from the cameraman ... You'd also be responsible for the timing of the show. But I think – well, I know – I was born with a good eye for the camera and so the job really was playing right into what I would call my own strength.
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:
Along with Sidney Lumet, John Frankenheimer was the major director to emerge from and be influenced by the aesthetics of live television drama, which flourished briefly in the US ... Frankenheimer's later fame, and his oft-repeated nostalgia for live television, have designated him as the quintessential exponent of the form: this is a crucial misconception. The aesthetics of live television were defined by their temporal and spatial limitations: all that could be shown was what could be physically created within an hour or half-hour and photographed within the confines of a small space [emphasizing] cramped blue-collar settings ("kitchen drama") because these were the most easily staged for live broadcast ... [though] perfectly suited to this world of emotional intimacy and physical claustrophobia, Frankenheimer reacted instinctively against it. He sought material and visual strategies that expanded the boundaries of what could be done in live television ... As the live TV director who took the medium in an explicitly cinematic direction, Frankenheimer was actually the least typical.