- Born
- Died
- Birth nameJohn Michael Frankenheimer
- Height6′ 3″ (1.91 m)
- Born in New York and raised in Queens, John Frankenheimer wanted to become a professional tennis player. He loved movies and his favorite actor was Robert Mitchum. He decided he wanted to be an actor but then he applied for and was accepted in the Motion Picture Squadron of the Air Force where he realized his natural talent to handle a camera. After his military discharge he began a TV career in 1953 convincing CBS to hire him as an assistant director, which consisted mainly working as a cameraman at that time. He eventually started to direct the show he was working on as an assistant director. Frankenheimer still didn't want to direct films. He liked to direct live television, and he would have continued to do it if the profession itself hadn't cease to exist. He first turned to the big screen with The Young Stranger (1957) which he hated to do because he thought he didn't understand movies and wasn't used to work with only one camera. Disappointed his with first feature film experience he returned to his successful television career directing a total of 152 live television shows between 1954 and 1960. He took another chance to move to the cinema industry, working with Burt Lancaster in The Young Savages (1961) ending up becoming a successful filmmaker best known by expressing on films his views on important social and philosophical topics.
- IMDb mini biography by: Hugo Lopes
- SpousesEvans Evans(December 13, 1963 - July 6, 2002) (his death)Carolyn Miller(September 22, 1954 - 1962) (divorced, 2 children)
- Films set in France
- Unusual camera angles and blocking techniques
- Often worked with Burt Lancaster
- Spectacular action sequences, often done without any digital effects
- Often used counterdiving tight shots with Burt Lancaster
- When Burt Lancaster walked onto the set the first day of shooting of The Young Savages (1961), he was startled and dismayed to see the camera on the floor, aiming upward. Lancaster had never before worked with a director who used such innovative camera angles. He grew to trust Frankenhiemer, and they made four more films together.
- Frankenheimer was initially set to direct Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), but was taken off the film because star Audrey Hepburn had never heard of him. Ironically that gave him the opportunity to do The Manchurian Candidate (1962).
- The camera work of most directors in "The Golden Age" of TV drama was static, reflecting most TV directors' backgrounds in the theater, and they typically used blocking more appropriate for a stage production. Frankenhiemer was one of the first TV directors to use multiple camera angles, a moving camera, quick editing and close-ups.
- Burt Lancaster personally chose him to replace Arthur Penn as director of The Train (1964) when Lancaster did not approve of Penn's vision of the film--he wanted a more action-oriented film that would appeal to a wider audience, while Penn envisioned it as being more about the paintings that drove the film's plot.
- When Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on June 5, 1968, it was his good friend Frankenheimer who had personally driven him there that day. In the initial confusion following the shooting Frankenheimer was mistakenly identified as one of the other people shot that night.
- It's very eclectic, the way one chooses subjects in the movie business, especially in the commercial movie business. You need to develop material yourself or material is presented to you as an assignment to direct.
- I feel that my job is to create an atmosphere where creative people can do their best work. In other words, I have to create an atmosphere where these people feel safe, where they feel respected, and where they feel that they can contribute.
- There are two things I will never do in my life. I will never climb Mount Everest, and I will never work with Val Kilmer again. There isn't enough money in the world. - in Premiere magazine, April 1997. (Frankenheimer directed the 1996 film The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996), which starred Val Kilmer, with whom he reportedly had personal differences.)
- On referring to Val Kilmer and his personal feelings about him while making The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996): Will Rogers never met Val Kilmer.
- No one ever looked like Burt Lancaster in "The Crimson Pirate. [on the impressive physique of friend Lancaster]
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