Gene Frankel
Encyclopedia
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Eugene V. "Gene" Frankel (December 23, 1919 – April 20, 2005) was an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 actor, theater director, and acting teacher especially notable in the founding of the off-Broadway scene. Frankel served in the Army during WWII in entertainment and as a member of an aerial crew.

Frankel's direction of the off-Broadway production of Jean Genet
Jean Genet
Jean Genet was a prominent and controversial French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. Early in his life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but later took to writing...

's The Blacks
The Blacks (play)
The Blacks: A Clown Show is a play by the French dramatist Jean Genet. Published in 1958, it was first performed in a production directed by Roger Blin at the Théatre de Lutèce in Paris, which opened on 28 October 1959....

was regarded as a crucial production in promoting African-American theater during the civil-rights movement which opened in 1961 and ran for more than 1,400 performances at the St. Mark's Theatre.

He began his own career as an actor and was one of the earliest members of the Actors' Studio. He moved behind the scenes and became a theater director on and off Broadway. His most notable Broadway production was Arthur Kopit's Indians
Indians (play)
Indians is a play by Arthur Kopit.At its core is Buffalo Bill Cody and his Wild West Show. The play examines the contradictions of Cody's life and his work with Native Americans....

starring Stacy Keach
Stacy Keach
Stacy Keach is an American actor and narrator. He is most famous for his dramatic roles; however, he has done narration work in educational programming on PBS and the Discovery Channel, as well as some comedy and musical...

, who won the 1970 Tony Award
Tony Award
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway...

 as Best Actor for his portrayal of Buffalo Bill
Buffalo Bill
William Frederick "Buffalo Bill" Cody was a United States soldier, bison hunter and showman. He was born in the Iowa Territory , in LeClaire but lived several years in Canada before his family moved to the Kansas Territory. Buffalo Bill received the Medal of Honor in 1872 for service to the US...

. The production was also nominated for a Tony Award
Tony Award
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway...

 for best play of 1970.

His other Broadway productions included A Cry of Players (1968), Kurt Weill
Kurt Weill
Kurt Julian Weill was a German-Jewish composer, active from the 1920s, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht...

's Lost in the Stars
Lost in the Stars
Lost in the Stars is a musical with book and lyrics by Maxwell Anderson and music by Kurt Weill, based on the novel Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton...

(1972) and Harry Chapin
Harry Chapin
Harry Forster Chapin was an American singer-songwriter best known in particular for his folk rock songs including "Taxi", "W*O*L*D", and the number-one hit "Cat's in the Cradle". Chapin was also a dedicated humanitarian who fought to end world hunger; he was a key player in the creation of the...

's The Night That Made America Famous
The Night That Made America Famous
The Night That Made America Famous is a musical written by folk singer Harry Chapin. After fourteen previews, the production opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on February 26, 1975 and closed on April 6 of that year, after 75 performances. Chapin's brothers Tom and Stephen, in addition to...

(1975). His off-Broadway productions included Brecht on Brecht, (starring Viveca Lindfors
Viveca Lindfors
Elsa Viveca Torstensdotter Lindfors , better known under her professional name of Viveca Lindfors, was a Swedish stage and film actress.-Life and career:...

, Lotte Lenya
Lotte Lenya
Lotte Lenya was an Austrian singer, diseuse, and actress. In the German-speaking and classical music world she is best remembered for her performances of the songs of her husband, Kurt Weill. In English-language film she is remembered for her Academy Award-nominated role in The Roman Spring of Mrs...

, Eli Wallach
Eli Wallach
Eli Herschel Wallach is an American film, television and stage actor, who gained fame in the late 1950s. For his performance in Baby Doll he won a BAFTA Award for Best Newcomer and a Golden Globe nomination. One of his most famous roles is that of Tuco in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly...

 and Anne Jackson
Anne Jackson
Anne Jackson is an American actress of television, stage, and screen.-Life and career:Jackson, the youngest of three sisters, was born in Millvale, Pennsylvania, the daughter of Stella Germaine and John Ivan Jackson, a barber who ran a beauty parlor...

), and To Be Young, Gifted and Black
To Be Young, Gifted and Black
"To Be Young, Gifted and Black" is a song by Nina Simone with lyrics by Weldon Irvine. It was written in memory of Simone's late friend Lorraine Hansberry, author of the play Raisin in the Sun. The song was originally recorded by Simone for her 1970 album Black Gold; released as a single, it became...

starring Cicely Tyson. He directed a Arthur Miller
Arthur Miller
Arthur Asher Miller was an American playwright and essayist. He was a prominent figure in American theatre, writing dramas that include plays such as All My Sons , Death of a Salesman , The Crucible , and A View from the Bridge .Miller was often in the public eye,...

 play when he was married to Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model and showgirl who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s....

.

As well as directing over 200 shows and managing at least twelve theaters throughout his career, Frankel taught acting, writing and directing. His last stage was the Gene Frankel Theatre and Film Workshop at 24 Bond Street in Greenwich Village. Frankel said that the heart of successful acting was ""Truth. I don't let my actors tell lies. The camera doesn't lie, the stage doesn't let you lie". He was a visiting professor in theater at various institutions of higher learning including Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

, Boston College
Boston College
Boston College is a private Jesuit research university located in the village of Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, USA. The main campus is bisected by the border between the cities of Boston and Newton. It has 9,200 full-time undergraduates and 4,000 graduate students. Its name reflects its early...

, and New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...

.

On August 4, 1973, his Mercer Arts Center, a complex of seven small theaters, which had been located on the first two floors of the residential Broadway Central Hotel, physically collapsed. Frankel, who had been conducting a rehearsal at the time, noticed the ceiling and walls beginning to buckle and heroically led the actors and several residents to safety. Five people died in the collapse. Only his last theater was a financial success, serving as home to Artistic Director Christopher Groenwald's New Mercury Players and as a satellite location for Artistic Director Marilyn Majeski's Grove Street Playhouse.

Family

Frankel had two children, Laura Frankel and Ethan Frankel, from his marriage which ended in divorce. He was survived by his daughter, Laura Frankel. His son, an aspiring actor, who studied at his father's school had struggled with marijuana use and psychiatric illness which led him to leap off the top of a 17-floor-building during 1995 in Manhattan during a psychosis from which he miraculously survived. After a lengthy coma and therapy to learn to walk again Ethan was placed in a group home in the Bronx where he was murdered by a fellow resident the following year. Frankel created a scholarship at his theater in his son's name.

Awards and honors

Frankel was awarded the first Obie Award
Obie Award
The Obie Awards or Off-Broadway Theater Awards are annual awards given by The Village Voice newspaper to theatre artists and groups in New York City...

 for directing, with his production of Volpone
Volpone
Volpone is a comedy by Ben Jonson first produced in 1606, drawing on elements of city comedy, black comedy and beast fable...

(1958) and then won two more also for directing. He also received the first Lola d'Annunzi and Vernon Rice awards for outstanding achievement in theater.
  • 1956-1957 Obie Award - Best Director - Volpone
  • 1959-1960 Obie Award - Best Director - Machinal
  • 1960-1961 Obie Award - Best Play - Jean Genet's The Blacks
  • Drama Desk Award
    Drama Desk Award
    The Drama Desk Awards, which are given annually in a number of categories, are the only major New York theater honors for which productions on Broadway, Off-Broadway, Off-Off-Broadway compete against each other in the same category...

     - Vernon Rice Award - Outstanding Achievement in Theatre
  • Lola D'Annunzio Award - Lifetime Achievement In Theatre

External links

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