Director Frankenheimer left a rich legacy

John Frankenheimer, who was 72 when he died last weekend, made several trips to the Northwest, a couple of them to direct what may be his worst movies ("Prophecy," "99 and 44/100% Dead"), but on happier occasions to meet the press and talk about his 1990s comeback.

Anyone who interviewed him here during the past decade won't forget his vigor, his wide-ranging interests or his ability to make an interview feel like a conversation. I first met him when he was promoting one of his lesser pictures, "Year of the Gun," and he offered no excuses about difficult actors or an interfering studio.

"Like it or not, that's my movie on the screen," he said. More than most American directors, he got what he wanted when it came to picking actors, polishing scripts and establishing his own distinctively hard-edged style.

Here are 10 of his best on video:

"Birdman of Alcatraz" (1962). Frankenheimer's first important movie earned Oscar nominations for Telly Savalas, Thelma Ritter and Burt Lancaster (never better), as once-brutal convict Robert Stroud, who became an authority on birds during his decades at Alcatraz.

"All Fall Down" (1962). It's too bad Frankenheimer wasn't there for the Port Townsend Film Festival's sensational late-2001 screening of this sexy box-office flop, which was shown as part of the festival's tribute to Eva Marie Saint. She plays the tormented girlfriend of a handsome jerk (Warren Beatty) whose mother (Angela Lansbury) does more than dote on him.

"The Manchurian Candidate" (1962). Lansbury earned an Oscar nomination for playing another overpowering mother in Frankenheimer's devastating satire-thriller, in which the extremes of right-wing and left-wing U.S. politics appear to have merged.

"Seven Days in May" (1964). The satirical edge was dropped for this scary Cold War thriller about an attempted military coup in the United States, starring Burt Lancaster as a general with delusions of grandeur.

"The Train" (1964). Like "Birdman," this unusually intelligent World War II drama was rewritten and reshot after Frankenheimer came onboard. "It really had no script at all," he told me. "Burt Lancaster and I wrote it with Ned Young and Howard Dimmesdale. The guys who were credited with the final script, which we didn't use, got nominated for an Oscar."

"Seconds" (1966). A box-office disaster, this disturbing Faustian drama stars John Randolph as a middle-age burnout who tries to establish a new life via plastic surgery. But even though he's transformed into Rock Hudson, he feels just as alienated and empty as ever.

"The Iceman Cometh" (1973). Unaccountably left out of most Frankenheimer obituaries, this four-hour adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's play is the director's favorite — "the least compromised film I've ever made," he told me on more than one occasion. After an hour was cut for television broadcast, Frankenheimer tried to restore it for DVD release, but "the thing went through so many bankruptcies, the ownership was difficult to trace."

"Black Sunday" (1977). Another prescient thriller, this time about Arab terrorists who plan to blow up the Super Bowl. Just as "Manchurian Candidate" was accused of dramatizing a political assassination, this one was attacked for giving terrorists ideas.

"The Island of Dr. Moreau" (1996). Not a great film but a cult classic, famous for Marlon Brando's wonderfully crazy performance as a mad scientist. Some critics thought the humor was unintentional, but Frankenheimer, who made the movie just to work with Brando, said the actor did exactly what he wanted: "He's so bright, he's forgotten more than anyone else will ever know about the movies, and he's so easy to work with. He never insisted on doing anything I didn't agree with."

"Ronin" (1998). Frankenheimer revitalized the chase movie with this David Mamet script about post-Cold War mercenaries speeding through the streets and tunnels of Paris. "Other scripts are so derivative of other things, but this was not," Frankenheimer said. "It allowed me to really cast it well and technically do what I do well."

Frankenheimer also directed several outstanding TV shows, including a dynamic 1958 version of Henry James' "The Turn of the Screw" with Ingrid Bergman. He won Emmys for four 1990s cable productions ("Against the Wall," "The Burning Season," "Andersonville," "George Wallace") and deserves to earn a posthumous one for his potent last movie, "Path to War" (not available on video yet), which had its premiere on HBO just a few weeks ago.