[13] 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.

Leading actors and actresses from stage and film starred in these live productions, among them Ingrid Bergman, John Gielgud, Mickey Rooney, Geraldine Page and Jack Lemmon.

[27] Film historian Gordon Gow distinguishes Frankenheimer's handling of themes addressing individualism and "misfits" during the Fifties' obsession with disaffected teenagers: There was an especially true feeling to the problem of the 16-year-old boy who became "The Young Stranger" ...

In part, its genuine quality might be put down to the fact [both director and writer] were in their mid-twenties – much nearer to the age of their central character [James MacArthur], about twenty himself at the time (but looking younger) ... What made it especially distinctive amid the general sensationalism was the triviality of the boy's misdemeanor: a minor bit of roughhouse in a neighborhood cinema ...

The difference between The Young Stranger, which attained a happy ending plausibly, and the general run of delinquent-problem movies was its moderation...[28]Frankenheimer's second cinematic effort is based on novelist Evan Hunter's A Matter of Conviction (1959).

[30] District Attorney, Dan Cole (Edward Andrews), who is seeking the state governorship, sends assistant D. A. Hank Bell (Burt Lancaster) to gather evidence to secure a conviction.

The action, "brilliantly filmed and edited", occurs preliminary to the credits, and is accompanied by an impelling soundtrack by composer David Amram, serving to quickly rivet audience interest.

[33] Film historian Gerald Pratley attributes this to Frankenheimer's insistence on hand-picking his leading technical support for the project, including set designer Bert Smidt, cinematographer Lionel Lindon and scenarist JP Miller.

"[35] Frankenheimer recalled "I shot The Young Savages mainly to show people that I could make a movie, and while it was not completely successful, my point was proved...The film was made on a relatively cheap budget and shooting on location in New York for a Hollywood company is very expensive.

All Fall Down is saved by the portrayals of Eva Marie Saint, quiet and gracious, as the unfortunate Echo, and Angela Lansbury, extravagant and outlandish, as Berry-Berry's mother, within whom incestuous fires appear to blaze.

When the project was deemed too expensive for television, Frankenheimer was approached by an associate of Lewis, actor and producer Kirk Douglas, to purchase and adapt to film the novel Seven Days in May by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II.

When Scott's JCS aide Colonel Martin “Jiggs” Casey (Kirk Douglas) discovers the planned coup he is appalled, and convinces President Lyman as to the gravity of the threat.

[97] Shooting for The Train had commenced in France when filmmaker Arthur Penn, originally enlisted to direct the adaption, was dismissed by actor-producer Lancaster, allegedly over personal incompatibility and irreconcilable interpretive differences.

Frankenheimer, in collaboration with screenwriters Nedrick Young (uncredited), Franklin Coen, Frank Davis and Walter Bernstein framed an entirely new script that combined suspense, intrigue and action, reflecting Lancaster's prerequisites.

[119][118] Film historian Gerald Pratley concurs: “the weakness [in Seconds] is trying to convince audiences that the actor playing Hamilton could emerge, after plastic surgery, as Wilson in the form of Rock Hudson.

Not even a powerful climax—the hero preferring death in New York to ‘life’ in Malibu, returning to be killed in a horrifying operating room scene—alters the fact that the film has been compromised.”[130][131]By the mid-sixties, Frankenheimer had emerged as one of Hollywood's leading directors.

[134] The screenplay by Robert Alan Aurthur and an uncredited Frankenheimer, concerns the professional and personal fortunes of Formula One racer Pete Aron (James Garner) during an entire season of competitive racing.

The action climaxes at Monza, where Aron, Scott Stoddard (Brian Bedford), Jean Pierre Sarti (Yves Montand) and Nino Barlini (Antonio Sabàto Sr.) compete for the championship, with tragic results.

[137] Working closely with cinematographer Lionel Lindon, Frankenheimer mounted cameras directly onto the race cars, eliminating process shots and providing audiences with a driver's-eye view of the action.

Commander Finchhaven, R. N. (David Niven), a ghost, is condemned to a Flying Dutchman-like existence, roaming the seas in his ship Curmudgeon in search of redemption for his shameful ineptitude during a World War I combat mission.

Four castaway American sailors stumble upon the unseaworthy vessel: Lt. Morton Krim (Alan Alda), Cook 3/C W.W. J. Oglethorpe (Mickey Rooney), Gunner's Mate Orville Toole (Jack Carter) and Seaman 1/C Lightfoot Star (Manu Tupou).

The 79-minute picture depicts the crew's subsequent “hazards and misadventures.”[149][150] The Extraordinary Seaman, based on a screenplay and story by Phillip Rock, is a spoof of war-time conventions and clichés which integrates newsreel clips from the period for comic effect.

It averts its eyes at the easy, ugly consummations of violence...and gives you credit for imagining the result.”[165] This, despite Frankenheimer's admission that “there is a very violent scene in The Fixer”: “You have to show what this man [Bok] went through in five years of prison, and what his captors did to him.

This is the same critical fallacy that led to praise of Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)—a corrupt, commercial film—because we disapproved of Nazi war crimes, A movie doesn't become good simply by taking the correct ideological position.”[169]Ebert adds “What were needed were fewer self-conscious humanistic speeches... Frankenheimer should have shown us his hero's suffering, and the Kafkaesque legal tortures of the state, without commenting on them.”[169] Film critic Renata Adler singles out screenwriter and blacklist victim Dalton Trumbo for disparagement: “The triviality of the script by Dalton Trumbo, the old sentimental Hollywood formula (a few moments of mild happiness, an hour and a half of reversals and misery, with violins, a blitz happy ending with drums) applies, almost intact, to dog stories, horse stories, sports stories, love stories.”[165]Adler concludes “it is not enough to put [Bok-Bates] in a few cliché predicaments...[the dialogue] becomes demeaning and vulgar when drawn out with hack-plot fiction approximations of eloquence.”[170] Biographer Charles Higham dismisses the film, writing that “since the commercial failure of Seconds (1966), Frankenheimer's films have been mediocre, ranging from The Fixer (1968) to The Horsemen (1971).”[171] Frankenheimer became a close friend of Senator Robert F. Kennedy during the making of The Manchurian Candidate in 1962.

[174][175] Frankenheimer 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.

Frankenheimer's 1996 film The Island of Doctor Moreau, which he took over after the firing of original director Richard Stanley, was the cause of countless stories of production woes and personality clashes and received scathing reviews.

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.

[178] He came of age during the height of the Red Scare and the Anti-Communist House Un-American Activities Committee investigations during the early 1950s, a period that saw the blacklisting of left-wing filmmakers and screenwriters by the Hollywood studios.

[181]Film critic David Walsh notes that “any medium which emerged as the profit-driven property of large American corporations and under the close scrutiny of the US authorities in the midst of the Cold War, with its anticommunism, conformism and generally stagnant intellectual climate, would inevitably be deformed by those processes...Frankenheimer worked and apparently thrived within this overall artistic and ideological framework.”[24] In a 1998 interview with film critic Alex Simon, Frankenheimer recalled that his first contact with Kennedy family politics occurred during the 1960 presidential campaigns: I was probably the best-known television director around.

It really makes you take stock in what's important...That's when I went to France, and that's when I went to Le Cordon Bleu, because I just had to do something else with my life, and I really couldn't go near politics for a long time after that.”[194] Walsh comments: Frankenheimer's social concerns largely disappeared from his work for the next two decades.