Happy Birthday, James Frawley! Born today in 1936 as James Joseph Frawley, this American actor and television and film director was an Emmy-winning filmmaker who brought both The Monkees and the Muppets to screen success during a prolific television and film career spanning five decades.
Frawley was an alumnus of the College of Fine Arts (CFA) at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU); School of Drama, class of 1959.
Two years later, Frawley became a member of the Actors Studio in 1961. While there, he was trained by Polish-born American actor, director, and theatre practitioner Lee Strasberg and American actor and acting teacher Sanford Meisner.
Frawley began his career as an actor. He later made his Broadway debut in 1960 with Laurence Olivier and Anthony Quinn in the Tony-nominated "Becket".
Frawley had a short-lived acting career, appearing in supporting roles in film and television from 1963 to 1966.
In 1966 he was hired as a director for a new television show. This was NBC's American Pathécolor situation comedy series The Monkees (1966 –1968). Frawley ended up directing half of the series' fifty-eight episodes.
Also, in 1966, Frawley had a memorable appearance as the role of Hawaii District Attorney Alvarez. This was in the 1965 Perry Mason (1957–1966) episode "The Case of the Feather Cloak" (S08E19).
Contrary to some stories, Frawley was not the son of American stage entertainer and screen and television actor William Frawley, who played Fred Mertz on I Love Lucy (1951–1957).
Frawley is best known for directing the 1979 American/British adventure musical road comedy family film 'The Muppet Movie', in which he also had a cameo role as a waiter at the El Sleezo Cafe.
As a gift for his work on the film, he received his own Muppet caricature (see above). It appeared in the film's "Rainbow Connection" finale, amongst the many other Muppets.
In a 2007 interview, Frawley recalled how he got the job directing 'The Muppet Movie': "Jim Henson had seen the The Monkees and liked my work on that, and seen some other television that I had done.
He knew that I had been an actor, and thought that I was the right combination for the Muppets. He flew me to London where they made The Muppet Show. We met, and we had an immediate connection...
Up until that time they had never shot film. They had only shot tape, and they had never shot outside the studio.
So (Henson) knew that he needed somebody who was a filmmaker and knew what to do with the camera. And he felt pretty good about my sense of humor.
It seemed like a good combination of talents for his Muppets. I had a very childlike approach to my work, and the Muppets fit in well with that."
On directing the Muppets for outdoor shots, Frawley said: “We just had to approach it like an adventure, and have the confidence and humor and good will to know that you can’t make a mistake.
And there was such a sense of camaraderie and love and community that Jim Henson and his people brought to the work. I had no choice but to embrace it and let it carry me along.”
The following year, 'The Muppet Movie' received two Oscar nominations for Best Original Song and Best Original Score. However, it didn't win. This occurred at the 52nd Academy Awards in mid-April 1980.
The success of 'The Muppet Movie' led to several other feature films starring the Muppets: 'The Great Muppet Caper' (1981), 'The Muppets Take Manhattan '(1984), 'The Muppet Christmas Carol' (1992), 'Muppet Treasure Island' (1996),' Muppets from Space' (1999),'The Muppets' (2011) and 'Muppets Most Wanted' (2014).
Frawley's other credits as a film director included the 1971 American drama/comedy film 'The Christian Licorice Store'. It featured Beau Bridges and French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author Jean Renoir as himself.
This also included directing the 1976 American disaster comedy/parody film 'The Big Bus' (starring Stockard Channing, Sally Kellerman, and Richard Mulligan).
With the exception of the 1985 American sex comedy 'Fraternity Vacation', Frawley's post-Muppet Movie work has been almost exclusively in television.
It had covered a wide range, from several installments of Columbo (1968–2003) and Law & Order (1990–2010) to the Ally McBeal (1997–2002) pilot, Smallville, (2001–2011) and Grey's Anatomy (2006–present).
In 2009, 'The Muppet Movie' was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.
Frawley passed from a heart attack while at home in Indian Wells, California on January 22, 2019. He was 82.
According to Frawley's personal life, he was married to American producer Cynthia Frawley until his death.
His favorite film was Renoir's 1939 French black and white drama/romance film 'La Regle Du Jeu' ('The Rules of the Game').
If Frawley's life story was a television movie, three themes would predominate: his reputation as a director of women, his reputation as a director of “problem” actors and his reputation as a director of successful pilots.
And, like an old production by American television producer Quinn Martin, it would probably include an epilogue set in his retirement home in Indian Wells, where he could reflect on his fifty years in film and television.
Nicknamed Jim, Frawley had been active from 1960-2019.
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