Unsung Auteurs: James Frawley

By Erin Free

FilmInk salutes the work of creatives who have never truly received the credit that they deserve. In this installment: director James Frawley (pictured above left, with Mel Brooks and Jim Henson), who helmed The Muppet Movie, Kid Blue and The Big Bus.

One of the greatest family films ever made is unquestionably 1979’s The Muppet Movie, the first big screen outing for Jim Henson’s hilariously self-reflexive and wonderfully endearing TV puppets. Funny, charming and keenly intelligent, it’s a joy from beginning to end. But who directed this terrific film? No, it wasn’t The Muppet Show creator Jim Henson, and nor was it voice actor, puppeteer and eventual successful director Frank Oz. It was, indeed, the far less well-known James Frawley, a man far too under-celebrated when it comes to doling out credit for the big screen cache of The Muppets. Sure, they’re Jim Henson’s characters, and The Muppet Movie script by Jerry Juhl and Jack Burns is a cracker, but the success of the film’s pacing, comic timing, tonal shifts and sense of controlled chaos should certainly be laid at the feet of James Frawley. After all, this first Muppets movie is certainly the best, which hints further at the achievements and contributions of Frawley. The Muppet Movie, however, is only the most notable of Frawley’s credits, with a number of other fascinating films and projects dotting his resume.

Born in Houston, Texas in 1936, James Frawley first gravitated towards acting. A member of the famed Actors Studio from 1961 onwards, Frawley became a prolific actor on episodic television, appearing in supporting roles in series like Gunsmoke, Perry Mason, The Outer Limits, The Man From U.N.C.L.E, McHale’s Navy and many more. Frawley was also a member of The Premise, a standup improvisational political group in New York’s Greenwich Village which also included major talents like Buck Henry, George Segal, Ted Flicker and Joan Darling. It was ironically Frawley’s involvement with this comedy troupe that prompted a major career change into directing. “The Premise came to LA and a couple of young Hollywood producers called Burt Schneider and Bob Rafelson thought I was a funny guy,” Frawley told Listen To The Band. “We met socially and they said, ‘Listen, we’re creating a show and you’ve done improvisational theatre and been an acting teacher and gone to the Actors Studio. You might be a great guy to work with these four guys.”

These “four guys” turned out to be pre-fab TV pop group The Monkees, and Frawley ended up directing about half of the episodes of the popular, groundbreaking eponymous TV series which ran from 1966-68. “Something clicked and I felt like I was home,” Frawley told Listen To The Band. “I understood the four boys, and they got me. We did an improvisational workshop to develop our banter.” Though the success of The Monkees is usually credited to the aforementioned Burt Schneider and Bob Rafelson (who would eventually become major figureheads of 1970s American cinema) or to the talented Monkees themselves – Davey Jones, Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork and Michael Nesmith – the name of James Frawley is rarely mentioned.

The quirky, comic-style, pop-art-inflected madness of TV’s blissfully bizarre The Monkees likely had a lot more to do with Frawley than he is given credit for. “Probably unbeknownst to many, Jim Frawley was profoundly instrumental in crafting The Monkees,” Monkee Micky Dolenz said of Frawley. “He not only coached us in the art of improvisation, but brought to the party a brilliant sense of humour, a dazzling intellect, and the patience of a saint when it came to dealing with the completely off the-wall-antics of the improvisational, spontaneous monster that they had created, ‘they’ being Bob Rafelson, Bert Schneider and Jim Frawley. And, believe me, at times we were, indeed, literally bouncing off the walls.”

A vintage lobby card for *The Christian Licorice Store*.

While directing The Monkees, the prolific James Frawley was also directing episodes of the hip Marlo Thomas-starrer That Girl. A couple of years later, Frawley made his big screen directorial debut in 1971 with The Christian Licorice Store, which was written by the underrated Floyd Mutrux (Aloha, Bobby And Rose), who took the curious title from a song lyric by Tim Buckley. Though now largely forgotten, this is a truly fascinating and downbeat film in the famed 1970s “bummer” mould, telling of a diffident tennis pro (excellently played by Beau Bridges) who ignores the urgings of his coach (Gilbert Roland) to stay focused on his game and instead gets caught up in the LA party scene and the financial temptations offered to professional athletes. All listless ennui, iconoclasm, and angst over “selling out”, The Christian Licorice Store marked a very interesting debut from Frawley, who was truly proving himself a man of the times.

In a great meeting of the against-the-grain minds, Frawley next teamed with counterculture hero and Easy Rider director/star Dennis Hopper on the excellent (and, like his previous film, now largely forgotten) 1973 comedy western Kid Blue. A curiously gentle and quirky delight, Hopper stars as the eponymous train robber, who is desperate to go straight and start a new life. He tries to do it in the oddball Texas town of Dime Box, where things take a strange turn when he meets up with married couple Reese and Molly Ford (Warren Oates, Lee Purcell) while also being pursued by his ex-girlfriend, Janet (Janice Rule). Performed with gusto by all, and boasting a freewheeling vibe truly distinct of the time, the wholly impressive Kid Blue (which Frawley has described as a “Marxist western”) was an excellent follow-up to The Christian Licorice Store, with Frawley quickly shaping as a singular cinematic voice.

The film, however, didn’t perform well at the box office, with backing studio 20th Century Fox largely unsupportive of the project. “I think they wanted Cat Ballou and when they got something closer to McCabe & Mrs. Miller, they were confused and a little angry,” Frawley has said of the film. The set was also something of a heady 1970s madhouse. “I can’t imagine a film set like that again,” actress Lee Purcell has said of her experiences. “People leaping out of second story windows, people with blood running down them. I don’t know how a foot of that film ever got shot. There was certainly acid, incredible amounts of drinking, incredible amounts of insanity…I doubt there has ever been a film that crazy.”

The parodic goofiness that Frawley had brought to The Monkees brushed aside the more gentle humour he’d employed on his previous two films with 1976’s wacky, broad-canvas comedy The Big Bus, a boisterous send-up of the popular disaster films of the time, like Airport and The Towering Inferno. With a huge cast of talented comic actors (Joseph Bologna, Stockard Channing, Ruth Gordon, Larry Hagman, Sally Kellerman, Ruth Gordon, Ned Beatty, Lynn Redgrave) at his disposal, Frawley again curated controlled chaos with this broad comedy which follows the maiden cross-country trip of an enormous nuclear-powered bus named Cyclops. Cutting and satirical, The Big Bus did poorly upon release, but has since developed something of a cult following. Again, Frawley displayed his mastery of unconventional and anarchic comedy, and working with large groups of actors.

After The Big Bus, Frawley moved onto the film that remains his crowning achievement. “Jim Henson had seen The Monkees and liked my work on that, and he’d seen some other television that I had done,” Frawley has explained of how he scored the directorial gig on The Muppet Movie. “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. 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 humour. 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.”

The results were pure gold. With a rivetingly self-reflexive story, wonderful songs by Paul Williams and Kenneth Ascher (including the stone-cold-classic “The Rainbow Connection”, one of the greatest movie songs in cinema history), a gag-filled script, and a winning roster of big-name guest stars (including Bob Hope, James Coburn, Steve Martin, Mel Brooks, Orson Welles and many more), The Muppet Movie is beyond reproach, with Frawley’s knack for off-the-wall comedy front and centre. “The Muppets are so innocent and positive in a world that is pretty cynical and at times pretty negative and bitter,” James Frawley told USA Today in 2014. “The Muppets bring something that audiences love and want. The Muppet Movie was about bringing a family together, creating a group expressing love and hope, and very positive values. We supported that in the making of the movie.”

Disappointingly, James Frawley only directed one more feature film after The Muppet Movie (1985’s not-bad T&A teen flick extravaganza Fraternity Vacation, which certainly isn’t up to the standard of Frawley’s other work), instead focusing on episodic television. In between instalments of everything from Mr. Merlin, Wizards And Warriors, Faerie Tale Theatre and Scarecrow And Mrs. King to Magnum PI, Cagney & Lacey, Law & Order and Melrose Place, Frawley also directed a fistful of unusual telemovies, including Sins Of The Mind and Assault And Matrimony. After an impressive, highly original career defined by idiosyncratic comedy, James Frawley retired to the Californian desert in 2010 and sadly passed away from a heart attack while at home at the age of 82. “I had forty years of intense activity,” James Frawley said after retiring. “I worked all the time on terrific projects. It was a very gratifying career.”