John Frankenheimer: Interviews, Essays, and Profiles

In his new book John Frankenheimer: Interviews, Essays, and Profiles, editor Stephen B. Armstrong lets his subject largely speak for himself. The result is a fascinating look inside the mind of a filmmaker whose career ranged from bonafide classics--such as The Manchurian Candidate and Seven Days in May--to unmitigated disasters. Frankenheimer discusses his work in unflinching terms, defending some critical failures (e.g., Prophecy) while acknowledging that others were made to pay the bills (e.g., The Extraordinary Seaman). His realistic approach to his craft can be summarized in this marvelous quote: "Every movie you make is a compromise."

Twenty-six of the thirty-one chapters are either interviews with Frankenheimer or essays penned by the director. The remaining five chapters are written by Frankenheimer's family, colleagues, and the editor. Armstrong has done a masterful job in selecting the articles, which were originally published between 1964 and 2010. The chronology of the articles allows the reader to learn how the acclaimed director viewed his films at different points in his life.

Frankenheimer fondly discusses his early career in live television in several articles ("I look back on that as the highlight of my life"). He directed over 125 television dramas, earning Emmy nominations for five consecutive years, starting in 1956. In this "Golden Age of Television," he worked with established stars (Robert Mitchum, Claudette Colbert, James Mason, etc.) and actors destined to become stars (e.g., Paul Newman, Ben Gazzara, and Lee Marvin).

Frankenheimer was just 26 when he made his first theatrical film, The Young Stranger (1957), which he describes as "a lousy movie" and a terrible experience with the crew and studio. He credits David O. Selznick with reviving his interest in a theatrical film career. He and Selznick collaborated on the script for F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night (which Selznick abandoned). After making The Young Savages in 1961, the first of five films with Burt Lancaster, Frankenheimer directed Birdman of Alcatraz and The Manchurian Candidate (both 1962)--and sealed his place among the great directors of the 1960s.

Lansbury as one of cinema's worst mothers.

Some of Frankenheimer's best anecdotes focus on the casting choices in his films. Frank Sinatra wanted Lucille Ball to play the maternal role made famous by Angela Lansbury in The Manchurian Candidate. In Seven Days in May,  Frankenheimer originally wanted Paul Newman to play Colonel Jiggs Casey with Kirk Douglas as the scheming General James Mattoon Scott. Douglas eventually played Casey instead and Burt Lancaster gave one of his best performances as Scott. The race-car drama Grand Prix was written for Steve McQueen and James Garner was cast only because McQueen was unavailable. And in Seconds, Frankenheimer had convinced Laurence Olivier to play both the old and "young" versions of the film's protagonist. When the studio insisted on Rock Hudson as the star, the director decided to cast two actors, with John Randolph playing the middle-aged Arthur Hamilton and Hudson as the transformed Hamilton.

Burt Lancaster in Birdman of
Alcatraz.

Frankenheimer excels at capturing the frustrations and challenges of making movies. For example, his 1971 film, The Impossible Object starring Alan Bates, was never released. Even Birdman of Alcatraz proved to be a difficult shoot. Frankenheimer reveals that the first cut ran four hours and ten minutes, with the birds not appearing for the first two hours. Deciding that there was no way to cut the film, Frankenheimer convinced the producer to let him rewrite and reshoot the first half: "We put the film together and it is what it is. But we shot (it) one and a half times."

Editor Stephen B. Armstrong, a professor at Dixie State University in St. George, Utah, includes a comprehensive filmography, a bibliography, and an index. His book is a must for any library with a film reference collection and for anyone interested in what goes on behind the scenes in the making of a motion picture.


Scarecrow Press, an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield, provided the Cafe with a review copy of this book.

This Week's Poll: Who's Your Mommie Dearest?

This week we're taking a look at monstrous moms. While most of my blogs have featured good mothers - Emma Newton in Shadow of a Doubt, Anna Smith in Meet Me in St. Louis, Martha Hanson in I Remember Mama - it's time now to shine the spotlight on some of the nastier moms on film (with a nod to the great actresses who portrayed them). Which of these lethal ladies would you least like to tuck you in at night?

Mrs. Henry Vale (Gladys Cooper) in Now, Voyager (1942)

Tyrannical Mrs. Vale is matriarch of "the Boston Vales," an extremely wealthy, well-established WASP family. The granite-jawed dowager has her daughter, ugly-duckling Charlotte, firmly in her iron grip - treating her, by turns, as child or servant. Autocratic and manipulative, Mrs. Vale has all but devoured the young woman. Enter Dr. Jaquith, eminent psychiatrist, who meets with Charlotte and declares, "My dear Mrs. Vale, if you had deliberately and maliciously planned to destroy your daughter's life, you couldn't have done it more completely." Unruffled, she imperiously snaps back, "How, by having exercised a mother's rights?"

Later in the game, Mrs. Vale is not above faking a tumble down the stairs in a determined last-ditch effort to regain her hold over her daughter.

Madame Sebastian (Leopoldine Konstantin) in Notorious (1946)

Madame Sebastian and her son, Alex, are part of a post-war Nazi enclave in Brazil involved in a vague but fiendish plot. Thanks to the Madame, Alex is something of a movie anomaly - a Nazi mama's boy. Ice-cold and demeaning, Madame Sebastian verbally bludgeons Alex whenever he seems to be straying from her steely domination. When he asks that she at least smile occasionally at the woman he will marry, his mother retorts, "Wouldn't it be a little too much if we both grinned at her like idiots?"

Alex later discovers his new wife is a spy and tells his mother. She grimly lights a cigarette, inhales and takes charge: "Let me arrange this one." And she plots to slowly poison her daughter-in-law to death, something we suspect she's wanted to do all along.

Violet Venable (Katharine Hepburn) in Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)

A mother written by Tennessee Williams is bound to be a piece of work, and Mrs. Venable is surely that. A wealthy New Orleans widow, she has recently lost her son Sebastian. He met his death while abroad with his cousin Cathy. Mrs. Venable is now seeking a lobotomy for Cathy who is talking too much about Sebastian and how he died. Though it becomes clear that Sebastian was gay, his mother seems to have been oblivious...she recalls a conversation with him when she was his travelling companion: "...what a lovely summer it's been. Sebastian and Violet. Violet and Sebastian. Just the two of us. Just the way it's always going to be. Oh, we are lucky, my darling, to have one another and need no one else ever." It's not surprising that Mrs. Venable has a Venus Flytrap in her garden.

Mrs. John Iselin (Angela Lansbury) in The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

Mrs. Iselin, the brains behind her dim, rabble-rousing U.S. Senator husband, is also the mother of 'war hero'/assassin Raymond Shaw. A skilled demagogue, she easily controls others. But she inspires little love, as evidenced by her son's words: "My mother...is a terrible, terrible woman...You know... it's a terrible thing to hate your mother. But I didn't always hate her. When I was a child I only kind of disliked her." Mrs. Iselin's manipulations are part of a larger plan; she's out for world domination and has sacrificed Raymond's soul as well as the lives of his wife and others in her quest. She has stage-managed everything, from the sentence that will cue an assassination, to its desired aftermath. All she has schemed for is about to become hers...but Mrs. Iselin may have overplayed her hand at Solitaire...

Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft) in The Graduate (1967)

Mrs. Robinson suffers from a bad case of Affluenza; her life is comfortable but unsatisfying. Though she and her husband are living the good life and their daughter is away at college, the marriage is dead and she's an alcoholic who habitually seduces young men - including Benjamin, son of her husband's law partner. While Mrs. Robinson's attitude toward Benjamin and their liaison has been cavalier, she comes unhinged when he succumbs to family pressure and takes her daughter, Elaine, on a date. Mrs. R instantly transforms into a vengeful virago and, when Ben and Elaine hit it off, she begins a vicious campaign to derail their romance, bring her daughter back in line and eviscerate Ben in doing so...coo coo ca-choo, Mrs. Robinson...

Cast your vote for one of these five nefarious nominees at the sidebar to the right...