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The year 1964 in film involved some significant events.

Events[link]

• March 6 - Elvis Presley's 14th motion picture, Kissin' Cousins is released to theaters.
• July 6 - A Hard Day's Night, the first Beatles film, premieres.

Top grossing films (U.S.)[link]

Awards[link]

Academy Awards:

Best Picture: My Fair Lady - Warner Bros.

Best Director: George Cukor - My Fair Lady

Best Actor: Rex Harrison - My Fair Lady

Best Actress: Julie Andrews - Mary Poppins

Best Supporting Actor: Peter Ustinov - Topkapi

Best Supporting Actress: Lila Kedrova - Zorba the Greek

Best Foreign Language Film: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow (Ieri, oggi, domani), directed by Vittorio De Sica, Italy

Golden Globe Awards:

Drama:

Best Picture: Becket

Best Actor: Peter O'Toole - Becket

Best Actress: Anne Bancroft - The Pumpkin Eater

Best Supporting Actress: Agnes Moorehead - Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte

Musical or comedy:

Best Picture: My Fair Lady

Best Actor: Rex Harrison - My Fair Lady

Best Actress: Julie Andrews - Mary Poppins

Other

Best Director: George Cukor - My Fair Lady

Palme d'Or (Cannes Film Festival):

Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg), directed by Jacques Demy, France

Golden Lion (Venice Film Festival):

Il deserto rosso (The Red Desert), directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, Italy

Golden Bear (Berlin Film Festival):

Susuz Yaz (Dry Summer), directed by Ismail Metin, Turkey

Films released in 1964[link]

U.S.A. unless stated

#

• 3 Nuts in Search of a Bolt, starring Mamie Van Doren and Tommy Noonan
• 7 Faces of Dr. Lao, starring Tony Randall
• 633 Squadron - (U.K.)

A

• Advance to the Rear
• The Americanization of Emily, starring James Garner, Julie Andrews, Melvyn Douglas, James Coburn
• At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul - (Brazil)
• Ayee Milan Ki Bela - (India)

B

• Band of Outsiders (Bande à part), directed by Jean-Luc Godard - (France)
• The Bargee, starring Harry H. Corbett and Eric Sykes - (U.K.)
• The Beauty Jungle - (U.K.)
• Becket, directed by Peter Glenville, starring Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton - (U.K./U.S.)
• Bedtime Story, starring Marlon Brando, David Niven, Shirley Jones
• Before the Revolution (Prima della rivoluzione), directed by Bernardo Bertolucci - (Italy)
• Behold a Pale Horse, directed by Fred Zinnemann
• The Best Man, directed by Franklin J. Schaffner, starring Henry Fonda, Cliff Robertson, Edie Adams, Ann Sothern, Lee Tracy
• Black God, White Devil (Deus e o Diabo na terra do sol) - (Brazil)
• Black Like Me
• Blood and Black Lace, directed by Mario Bava - (Italy)
• The Brass Bottle, starring Tony Randall, Burl Ives, Barbara Eden

C

• Carol for Another Christmas, starring Peter Sellers and Britt Ekland
• The Carpetbaggers, starring George Peppard, Carroll Baker, Elizabeth Ashley, Martha Hyer, Alan Ladd
• Carry On Cleo - (U.K.)
• Carry On Spying - (U.K.)
• The Chalk Garden - (U.K.)
• Cheyenne Autumn, starring Carroll Baker, Richard Widmark, Edward G. Robinson, James Stewart
• Circus World, starring John Wayne, Claudia Cardinale, Rita Hayworth
• Crack in the World, starring Dana Andrews
• Crooks in Cloisters, starring Ronald Fraser and Barbara Windsor - (U.K.)

D

• Dead Ringer, starring Bette Davis
• Diary of a Chambermaid (Le journal d'une femme de chambre), directed by Luis Buñuel, starring Jeanne Moreau and Michel Piccoli - (France)
• The Disorderly Orderly, starring Jerry Lewis
• Dog Eat Dog, starring Jayne Mansfield
• Dogora - (Japan)
• Dosti - (India)
• Dr. Crippen, starring Donald Pleasence - (U.K.)
• Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring Peter Sellers - (U.K.)

E

• Ensign Pulver, starring Robert Walker, Jr. and Burl Ives
• El extraño viaje (The Strange Voyage) - (Spain)

F

• Face of the Screaming Werewolf - (Mexico/U.S.A.)
• Fail-Safe, directed by Sidney Lumet, starring Henry Fonda, Walter Matthau, Fritz Weaver, Larry Hagman
• The Fall of the Roman Empire
• Fate Is the Hunter, starring Glenn Ford, Rod Taylor, Suzanne Pleshette
• Father Goose, starring Cary Grant
• The Fifth Horseman is Fear (A Paty Jezdec je Strach), directed by Zbynek Brynych - (Czechoslovakia)
• First Men in the Moon
• A Fistful of Dollars, directed by Sergio Leone, starring Clint Eastwood - (Italy)
• The Flesh Eaters
• For Those Who Think Young, starring Pamela Tiffin, James Darren, Ellen Burstyn, Nancy Sinatra
• From Russia with Love (U.S. release)

G

• Gertrude, directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer - (Denmark)
• Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster - (Japan)
• Girl with Green Eyes, starring Peter Finch and Rita Tushingham - (U.K.)
• Goldfinger, starring Sean Connery with Honor Blackman and Gert Frobe - (U.K.)
• Good Neighbor Sam, starring Jack Lemmon
• The Gospel According to St. Matthew (Il Vangelo secondo Matteo), directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini - (Italy)
• Guns at Batasi - (U.K.)

H

• Hamlet (aka Richard Burton's Hamlet)
• Hamlet - (U.S.S.R.)
• Haqeeqat (Reality) - (India)
• A Hard Day's Night, directed by Richard Lester, starring The Beatles - (U.K.)
• Hey There It's Yogi Bear
• Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte, directed by Robert Aldrich, starring Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland

I

• I Am Cuba (Soy Cuba) - (Cuba/U.S.S.R.)
• The Incredible Mr. Limpet, starring Don Knotts
• Invitation to a Gunfighter, starring Yul Brynner

J K

• The Killers. A remake of the 1946 film; directed by Don Seigel, starring Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson, John Cassavetes and, in his final film, Ronald Reagan
• King and Country, directed by Joseph Losey, starring Dirk Bogarde and Tom Courtenay - (U.K.)
• Kiss Me, Stupid, directed by Billy Wilder, starring Dean Martin and Kim Novak
• Kissin' Cousins, starring Elvis Presley
• Kitten with a Whip, starring Ann-Margret and John Forsythe
• Kwaidan - (Japan)

L

• Leader, starring Dilip Kumar and Vyjayanthimala - (India)
• The Leather Boys, directed by Sidney J. Furie, starring Rita Tushingham - (U.K.)
• Lemonade Joe (Limonádový Joe aneb Koňská opera) - (Czechoslovakia)
• Lilith, starring Warren Beatty
• The Lonely Wife (চারুলতা), directed by Satyajit Ray - (India)

M

• Man's Favourite Sport, starring Rock Hudson and Paula Prentiss
• Marnie, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Tippi Hedren and Sean Connery
• Marriage Italian Style (Matrimonio all'italiana), directed by Vittorio De Sica, starring Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni - (Italy)
• A Married Woman (Une femme mariée), directed by Jean-Luc Godard - (France)
• Mary Poppins, starring Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke -- winner of 5 Academy Awards
• The Masque of the Red Death - (U.K.)
• The Moon-Spinners, starring Hayley Mills
• Mothra vs. Godzilla, directed by Ishirō Honda - (Japan)
• My Fair Lady, directed by George Cukor, starring Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison - winner of 8 Oscars, 3 Golden Globes and BAFTA for best film

N

• The Naked Kiss, directed by Samuel Fuller, starring Constance Towers
• The New Interns, starring Dean Jones, Michael Callan, Stefanie Powers, Barbara Eden
• The Night of the Iguana, directed by John Huston, starring Richard Burton, Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr, Sue Lyon
• Nothing But a Man
• Nothing But the Best - (U.K.)

O

• One Potato, Two Potato
• Onibaba (Demon Woman) - (Japan)
• The Outrage, directed by Martin Ritt, starring Paul Newman, Laurence Harvey, Claire Bloom

P

• Paris When It Sizzles, starring William Holden and Audrey Hepburn with cameos by Tony Curtis and Marlene Dietrich
• The Patsy, directed by and starring Jerry Lewis
• The Pawnbroker, directed by Sidney Lumet, starring Rod Steiger
• The Pleasure Seekers, starring Pamela Tiffin, Carol Lynley, Ann-Margret
• The Pumpkin Eater, starring Anne Bancroft and Peter Finch - (U.K.)

R

• Rattle of a Simple Man directed by Muriel Box (U.K.)
• The Ravishing Idiot (Une ravissante idiote), starring Brigitte Bardot and Anthony Perkins
• Red Desert (Il deserto rosso), directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, starring Monica Vitti and Richard Harris - (Italy)
• Ring of Spies - (U.K.)
• Robin and the 7 Hoods, starring Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Bing Crosby
• Robinson Crusoe on Mars
• Roustabout, starring Elvis Presley and Barbara Stanwyck
• Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer - (TV film)

S

• Sallah Shabati, starring Chaim Topol - (Israel)
• Sangam, starring Vyjayanthimala, Raj Kapoor and Rajendra Kumar - (India)
• Séance on a Wet Afternoon, starring Kim Stanley and Richard Attenborough - (U.K.)
• Seduced and Abandoned (Sedotta e abbandonata) - (Italy)
• Send Me No Flowers, starring Doris Day and Rock Hudson
• Seven Days in May, directed by John Frankenheimer, starring Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Fredric March, Martin Balsam, Ava Gardner
• Seven Up! - documentary - (U.K.)
• Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (Tini zabutykh predkiv) - (U.S.S.R.)
• Shehar Aur Sapna (India)
• A Shot in the Dark, starring Peter Sellers and Elke Sommer
• The Soft Skin (La Peau Douce), directed by François Truffaut, starring Françoise Dorléac - (France)
• Strait-Jacket, starring Joan Crawford and Diane Baker

T

• That Man from Rio (L'Homme de Rio) - (France)
• The Thin Red Line
• The Three Lives of Thomasina, starring Patrick McGoohan, Susan Hampshire, Karen Dotrice, Matthew Garber - (U.K./U.S.A.)
• La Tía Tula (Aunt Tula) - (Spain)
• Topkapi, starring Melina Mercouri, Maximilian Schell, Peter Ustinov
• The Train, starring Burt Lancaster - (U.S./France/Italy)

U

• The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Les Parapluies de Cherbourg), directed by Jacques Demy, starring Catherine Deneuve and Nino Castelnuovo - winner of Palme d'Or - (France)
• The Unsinkable Molly Brown, starring Debbie Reynolds

V

• The Visit, directed by Bernhard Wicki - (West Germany/U.S./France/Italy)
• Viva Las Vegas, starring Elvis Presley and Ann-Margret

W

• Welcome, or No Trespassing, starring Yevgeniy Yevstigneyev - (U.S.S.R.)
• What a Way to Go!, starring Shirley MacLaine, Dean Martin, Gene Kelly, Paul Newman, Robert Mitchum, Dick Van Dyke
• Woh Kaun Thi? (Who Was She?) - (India)
• Woman in the Dunes (Suna no onna) - (Japan)
• Woman of Straw - (U.K.)
• Wonderful Life, starring Cliff Richard and The Shadows (US title: Swingers' Paradise^[7]) - (U.K.)

Y

• The Yellow Rolls-Royce, starring Ingrid Bergman, Alain Delon, Rex Harrison, Shirley MacLaine, Jeanne Moreau, George C. Scott, Omar Sharif - (U.K.)
• Youngblood Hawke, starring James Franciscus, Suzanne Pleshette, Eva Gabor, Mary Astor
• Your Cheatin' Heart, a biopic of Hank Williams, starring George Hamilton

Z

• Zindagi, starring Vyjayanthimala, Rajendra Kumar, Raaj Kumar and Prithviraj Kapoor -(India)
• Zorba the Greek, directed by Michael Cacoyannis, starring Anthony Quinn and Alan Bates - (Greece/U.K.)
• Zulu, directed by Cy Endfield, starring Stanley Baker, Michael Caine, Jack Hawkins - (U.K.)

Short Film Series[link]

• Looney Tunes (1930–1969)
• Terrytoons (1930-1964)
• Merrie Melodies (1931–1969)
• Speedy Gonzales (1953–1968)
• Bugs Bunny (1940-1964)

Births[link]

• January 7 - Nicolas Cage, actor/producer/director
• January 13 - Penelope Ann Miller, actress
• January 18 - Jane Horrocks, actress
• January 27 - Bridget Fonda, actress
• February 5 - Laura Linney, actress
• February 15 - Chris Farley, actor (d. 1997)
• February 18 - Matt Dillon, actor
• February 24 - Todd Field, director/actor
• March 9 - Juliette Binoche, actress
• March 17 - Rob Lowe, actor
• March 24 - Jason Cavanagh, actor/screenwriter
• April 7 - Russell Crowe, actor
• April 20 - Crispin Glover, actor
• May 12 - Pierre Morel, French film director
• June 15 - Courteney Cox, actress
• July 26 - Sandra Bullock, actress
• August 2 - Mary-Louise Parker, actress
• September 2 - Keanu Reeves, actor
• December 4 - Marisa Tomei, actress
• December 8 - Teri Hatcher, actress

Deaths[link]

• January 29 - Alan Ladd, 50, American actor
• February 27 - Orry-Kelly, 66, Australian-born costume designer for American films
• March 23 - Peter Lorre, 59, Hungarian actor, later career in American films
• April 18 - Ben Hecht, 70, American playwright and screenwriter
• May 10 - Carol Haney, 39, American dancer, actress
• May 13 - Diana Wynyard, 58, British actress
• August 6
  • Cedric Hardwicke, 71, British actor
  • Reed Howes, 64, American model and actor
• August 12 - Ian Fleming, 56, British author of James Bond novels
• August 28 - Gracie Allen, 69 American actress, comedian
• September 28 - Harpo Marx, 75, American comedy actor (The Marx Brothers)
• September 28 - Nacio Herb Brown, 68, American songwriter and composer
• October 10 - Eddie Cantor, 72, American actor, singer, comedian
• October 15 - Cole Porter, 73, American composer and songwriter
• October 23 - Jo Swerling, 71, American screenwriter
• December 9 - Edith Sitwell, 77, British actress
• December 11 - Percy Kilbride, 76, American actor
• December 14 - William Bendix, 58, American actor

Film Debuts[link]

• Julie Andrews
• The Beatles
• Judi Dench
• Karen Dotrice
• James Earl Jones
• Donald Sutherland
• Jenny Agutter

References[link]

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (October 2011)

A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject. It may require cleanup to comply with Wikipedia's content policies, particularly neutral point of view. Please discuss further on the talk page. (October 2011)

Liviu Ciulei (Romanian pronunciation: [ˈlivju t͡ʃjuˈlej]; July 7, 1923 – October 24, 2011^[1]) was a Romanian theater and film director, film writer, actor, architect, educator, costume and set designer. During a career spanning over 50 years, he was described by Newsweek as "one of the boldest and most challenging figures on the international scene".^[2]

Biography[link]

Born in Bucharest to Liviu Ciulley, a lawyer and constructor, Ciulei studied architecture and theater at the Royal Conservatory of Music and Theatre. He made his theater debut in 1946, as Puck in an Odeon Theatre production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Soon after, he joined the theater company known as Teatrul Municipal din Bucureşti, later renamed Teatrul Bulandra, and directed his first stage production in 1957 — The Rainmaker. Between 1956-57, his theatre directing work was also reinforced by a series of consistent essays on directing and stage designing, in the context of a national media debate around the modernisation of the theatrical aesthetics.^{[citation needed]}

In 1961, Ciulei gained an overall recognition for his version of Shakespeare's As You Like It. He was the recipient of the Directors' Award at the 1965 Cannes Film Festival for The Forest of the Hanged,^[3] the film version of the Liviu Rebreanu's eponymous novel (where he also starred in the role of Klapka). In the 1980s, he was marginalized by the regime and transferred to work at Sahia film studio, as documentary filmmaker. He left in 1980 Romania with the motor vessel "Polar V" during the conduct of a documentary film about the life of Romanian sailors.^{[citation needed]}

Ciulei was the artistic director of Teatrul Bulandra for more than a decade. During his tenure at the Bulandra he staged a wide range of classics. His Shakespeare productions include "As You Like it" "Macbeth" and "The Tempest", which was awarded Romania's Critics' Prize for Best Production of 1979. Also at the Bulandra, he staged such European classics as Gorki's "The Lower Depths and "The Children of the Sun", Buchner's "Danton's Death" and "Leonce and Lena", and Brecht's "Threepenny Opera". His productions of American classics include Williams' "A Street Named Desire", Saroyan's "The Time of Your Life", and O'Neill's "Long Day Journey into Night". Ciulei has been guest director in many theaters around the world: in West Berlin, Paris, Göttingen, Düsseldorf, Munich and Vancouver. In Sydney, he won the 1977 Australian Critics'Award for his production of "The Lower Depths". In 1974 he made his American debut at the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., as director and designer with "Leonce and Lena". In 1980 he directed and created sets for the Shostakovitch opera "The Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk" at the Spoleto Festival in Italy: and in May 1982, he redirected the same opera for the Lyric Opera in Chicago. Between 1980-85, he was the artistic director of Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota. At the Guthrie he has directed "The Tempest", "Eve of Retirement", "As You Like it", "Requiem for a Nun", "Peer Gynt", "The Threepenny Opera", "Three Sisters", "Twelfth Night", "A Midsummer Night's Dream". After 1986 he taught at Columbia University and at New York University.^{[citation needed]}

After the Romanian Revolution of 1989, back in his native Romania, Ciulei has directed a series of stage productions that have been both publicly and critically acclaimed. He was named Honorary Director of the theater he has always loved the most, Bulandra. Besides being the costume and set designer of the majority of his own productions, Ciulei, as an architect, contributed to the rebuilding of the auditorium of Bulandra Theatre. In 1996, UNITER (Uniunea Teatrală din România) awarded its annual prize to Ciulei.^{[citation needed]}

Family[link]

He was first married to actress Clody Bertola.^[4] He remarried, to journalist Helga Reiter-Ciulei. His son by the second marriage is film director Thomas Ciulei.

Death[link]

Ciulei died on October 24, 2011, in a hospital in Munich, aged 88; he had been suffering from multiple illnesses.

Filmography[link]

• În sat la noi (1951), actor
• Mitrea Cocor (1951), writer
• Nepoţii gornistului (1953), actor/writer
• Răsare soarele (1954), writer
• Alarmă în munţi (1955), actor
• Pasărea furtunii (1957), writer
• Erupţia (1957), director
• Valurile Dunării (1959), director and actor
• Soldaţi fără uniformă (1960), actor
• Cerul n-are gratii (1962), actor
• Pădurea spânzuraţilor (1964), actor/director
• Facerea lumii (1971), writer/actor
• Decolarea (1971), actor
• Dragostea începe vineri (1972), actor
• Dimitrie Cantemir (1973), actor
• Ceaţa (1973), actor
• Mastodontul (1975), actor
• O scrisoare pierdută (1977), writer/director
• Falansterul (1979), actor

References[link]

Sources[link]

• Miruna Runcan, Teatralizarea si reteatralizarea teatrului in Romania. 1920-1960, Cluj, Editura Eik0n, seria Bibilioteca teatrul Imposibil, 2003

External links[link]

• Liviu Ciulei at the Internet Movie Database
• Liviu Ciulei at the Internet Broadway Database

John Michael Frankenheimer (February 19, 1930 – July 6, 2002) was an American film and television director known for social dramas and action/suspense films. Among his credits were Birdman of Alcatraz (1962), The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Seven Days in May (1964), The Train, (1964), Grand Prix (1966), Black Sunday (1977) and Ronin (1998).

He won four consecutive Emmy Awards in the 1990s for the television movies Against the Wall, The Burning Season, Andersonville, and George Wallace, which also received a Golden Globe award. He was considered one of the last remaining directors who insisted on having complete control over all elements of production, making his style unique in Hollywood.

His 30 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 peak of the Cold War.^[1] Many of his films were noted for creating "psychological dilemmas" for his male protagonists along with having a strong "sense of environment,"^[1] 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.^[1]

Movie 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."^[2]

Early life[link]

Frankenheimer was born in Queens, New York, the son of Helen Mary (née Sheedy) and Walter Martin Frankenheimer, a stockbroker.^[2][3] Frankenheimer once speculated that he might be related to actress Ally Sheedy.^[4] His father was of German Jewish descent and his mother was Irish Catholic, and Frankenheimer was raised Catholic.^[5][6]

He grew up in New York City and became interested in movies at an early age; he recalled going to the cinema every weekend. In 1947, he graduated from La Salle Military Academy in Oakdale, Long Island, New York. In 1951, he graduated from Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, where he studied English. He also developed an interest in acting as a career while in college but began thinking seriously about directing when he was in the Air Force. This led him to join a film squadron based in Burbank, California, where he shot his first documentary. He also began studying film theory by reading books about other famous directors, such as Sergei Eisenstein along with how-to books about the craft of film making.^[1]

In May 2001, amid rumors that he was the biological father of film director Michael Bay, Frankenheimer stated he had a brief relationship with Bay's birth mother. After the rumors surfaced that Bay's natural father was a filmmaker, there was much speculation about Frankenheimer, who continued to deny the story and told the Los Angeles Times that there had once been "tests" to determine paternity (long before DNA testing).

Career[link]

Frankenheimer began his directing career in live television at CBS. Throughout the 1950s he directed over 140 episodes of shows like Playhouse 90, Climax!, and Danger, including The Comedian, written by Rod Serling and starring Mickey Rooney as a ragingly vicious television comedian.

His first theatrical film was The Young Stranger (1957), starring James MacArthur as the rebellious teenage son of a powerful Hollywood movie producer. Frankenheimer directed the production, based on a Climax! episode, "Deal a Blow", which he directed when he was 26.

He returned to television during the late 1950s, moving to film permanently in 1961 with The Young Savages, in which he worked for the first time with Burt Lancaster in a story of a young boy murdered by a New York gang.

[edit] Birdman of Alcatraz

Production of Birdman of Alcatraz began under director Charles Crichton. Burt Lancaster, who was producing as well as starring, asked Frankenheimer to take over the film. As Frankenheimer describes in Charles Champlin's interview book, he advised Lancaster that the script was too long but was told he had to shoot all that was written.

The first cut of the film was four-and-a-half hours long, the length Frankenheimer had predicted. Moreover, the film was constructed so that it could not be cut and still be coherent. Frankenheimer said the film would have to be rewritten and partly reshot. Lancaster was committed to star in Judgment at Nuremberg, so he made that film while Frankenheimer prepared the reshoots. The finished film, released in 1962, was a huge success and was nominated for four Oscars, including one for Lancaster's performance.

Frankenheimer was next hired by producer John Houseman to direct All Fall Down, a family drama starring Eva Marie Saint and Warren Beatty. Because of the production difficulties with Birdman of Alcatraz, All Fall Down was actually released first.

[edit] The Manchurian Candidate

He followed this with his most iconic film, The Manchurian Candidate. Frankenheimer and producer George Axelrod bought Richard Condon's 1959 novel after it had already been turned down by many Hollywood studios. After Frank Sinatra committed to the film, they secured backing from United Artists.

The story of a Korean War veteran, brainwashed by the Communist Chinese to assassinate the candidate for President, co-starred Laurence Harvey and Janet Leigh and Angela Lansbury as Harvey's evil mother. Frankenheimer had to fight to cast Lansbury, who had worked with him on All Fall Down, and was just two years older than Harvey. Sinatra's preference had been for Lucille Ball. The film was nominated for two Oscars, including one for Lansbury.

The film was unseen for many years. Urban legend has it that the film was pulled from circulation due to the similarity of its plot to the death of President Kennedy the following year, but Frankenheimer states in the Champlin book that it was pulled because of a legal battle between producer Sinatra and the studio over Sinatra's share of the profits. In any event, it was re-released to great acclaim in 1988.

[edit] Seven Days in May

He followed with another successful political thriller, Seven Days in May (1964). He again bought the rights to a bestselling book, this time by Charles Bailey II and Fletcher Knebel, and again produced the film with his star, this time Kirk Douglas.

Douglas intended to play the role of the General who attempts to lead a coup against the President, who is about to sign a disarmament treaty with the Soviets. Douglas then decided he wanted to work with Burt Lancaster, with whom he had just costarred in another film. To entice Lancaster, Douglas agreed to let him play the General, while Douglas took the less showy lead role of the General's aide, who turns against him and helps the President.

The film, written by Rod Serling, costarred Fredric March as the President and Ava Gardner as a former flame of Lancaster's, was nominated for two Oscars.

[edit] The Train

This film was again taken over from another director, this time Arthur Penn. The Train had already begun shooting in France when star Lancaster had the original director fired and called in Frankenheimer to save the film. As he recounts in the Champlin book, Frankenheimer used the production's desperation to his advantage in negotiations. He demanded and got the following: his name was made part of the title, "John Frankenheimer's The Train"; the French co-director, demanded by French tax laws, was not allowed to ever set foot on set; he was given total final cut; and a Ferrari.

Again saddled with an unfilmably long script, Frankenheimer threw it out and took the locations and actors left from the previous film and began filming, with writers working in Paris as the production shot in Normandy. The poorly chosen locations caused endless weather delays. The film contains multiple real train wrecks. The Allied bombing of a rail yard was accomplished with real dynamite, as the French rail authority needed to enlarge the track gauge. This can be observed by the shockwaves traveling through the ground during the action sequence. Producers realized after filming that the story needed another action scene, and reassembled some of the cast for a Spitfire attack scene that was inserted into the first third of the film. The finished movie was successful, and the script was nominated for an Oscar.

[edit] Seconds

Seconds (1966) tells of an elderly man John Randolph given the body of a young man Rock Hudson through experimental surgery. It was poorly received on its release but has come to be one of the director's most respected and popular films subsequently. The film is an expressionistic, part-horror, part-thriller, part-science fiction film about the obsession with eternal youth and misplaced faith in the ability of medical science to achieve it.

[edit] Grand Prix

He followed Seconds with his most spectacular production, 1966's Grand Prix. Shot on location at the Grand Prix races throughout Europe, using 65mm Cinerama cameras, the film starred James Garner and Eva Marie Saint. The making was a race itself, as John Sturges and Steve McQueen planned to make a similar movie titled Day of the Champion.^[7] Due to their contract with the German Nürburgring, Frankenheimer had to turn over 27 reels shot there to Sturges. Frankenheimer was ahead in schedule anyway, and the McQueen/Sturges project was called off, while the German race track was only mentioned briefly in Grand Prix. Introducing methods of photographing high-speed auto racing that had never been seen before, mounting cameras on the cars, at full speed and putting the stars in the actual cars, instead of against rear-projections, the film was an international success and won three Oscars, for editing, sound and sound effects.

Late 1960s[link]

His next film, 1967's all-star anti-war comedy The Extraordinary Seaman, starred David Niven, Faye Dunaway, Alan Alda and Mickey Rooney. The film was a failure at the box office and critically. Frankenheimer calls it in the Champlin book "the only movie I've made which I would say was a total disaster."

Then came 1968's The Fixer, about a Jew in Tsarist Russia and based on the novel by Bernard Malamud. The film was shot in Communist Hungary. It starred Alan Bates and was not a major success, but Bates was nominated for an Oscar. Frankenheimer was a friend of Senator Robert Kennedy and drove him to the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles the night Kennedy was assassinated in June 1968.

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 always called it one of his personal favorites.

1970s[link]

He 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 Horseman 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 the 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 in 1976.

Black Sunday, based on 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 admitted he developed a serious problem with alcohol. In later years, Frankenheimer theorized that the audience may have developed an affinity over the course of the movie for the character played by Bruce Dern and thus felt conflicted when he was defeated at the end.

He 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[link]

In 1981, Frankenheimer travelled to Japan to shoot the cult martial-arts action film The Challenge, with Scott Glenn and legendary Japanese star, Toshiro Mifune. He tells 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 television adaptation of the acclaimed play The Rainmaker.

In 1985, he 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, Frankenheimer 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 Russian officer. It was not a commercial success.

1990s[link]

Most of these 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 in 1996 and 1997, Andersonville and George Wallace, that were highly praised.

His 1996 film The Island of Doctor Moreau, which he took over a few weeks into production from Richard Stanley, was the cause of countless stories of production woes and personality clashes and received scathing reviews. It was said that the veteran director could not stand Val Kilmer, the young star of the film. When Kilmer's last scene was completed it was reported that Frankenheimer said, "Now get that bastard off my set." 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 acted for the first time, appearing in a cameo as a U.S. General in The General's Daughter (1999).

2000s[link]

His last theatrical film, 2000's Reindeer Games, starring Ben Affleck, underperformed. But then came his final film, Path to War for HBO in 2002, which brought him back to his strengths – political machinations, 1960s America and character-based drama, and 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.

One of Frankenheimer's last projects was the 2001 BMW action short-film Ambush for the promotional series The Hire, starring Clive Owen.

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.

Despite the many celebrated films he directed, many of which won Academy Awards in various categories, Frankenheimer was never nominated for a Best Director Oscar.

Filmography[link]

Awards[link]

British Academy Film Awards

• 1964 Train nominated for Best Film - Any Source
• 1962 Manchurian Candidate nominated for Best Film - Both Any Source and British

Cannes Film Festival

• 1966 Seconds nominated for Competing Film
• 1962 All Fall Down nominated for Competing Film

New York Film Critics Circle Award

• 1968 Fixer nominated for Best Direction
• 1968 Fixer nominated for Best Film

Venice Film Festival

• 1962 Birdman of Alcatraz nominated for Competing Film
• 1962 Birdman of Alcatraz won for San Giorgio Prize

Further reading[link]

• Mitchell, Lisa, Thiede, Karl, and Champlin, Charles (1995). John Frankenheimer: A Conversation with Charles Champlin (Riverwood Press). ISBN 978-1-880756-09-6.
• Armstrong, Stephen B. (2008). Pictures About Extremes: The Films of John Frankenheimer (McFarland). ISBN 0-7864-3145-8.

References[link]

External links[link]

• John Frankenheimer at the Internet Movie Database
• John Frankenheimer OpsRoom.org
• John Frankenheimer, Senses of Cinema, Issue 41 "Great Directors Series"
• Interview with John Frankenheimer video TV Legends, 28 minutes
• John Frankenheimer at Find a Grave
• John Frankenheimer's The Extraordinary Seaman – How Bad Could It Be? (Movie Morlocks)
• Literature on John Frankenheimer
• John Frankenheimer: The Hollywood Interview