Play It As It Lays

Frank J. Perry, Jr. (August 21, 1930 – August 29, 1995) was an American stage and film director, producer and screenwriter. Frank was married to author and screenwriter Eleanor Perry (1960–1971), Barbara Goldsmith and Virginia Brush Ford.

Perry was born in New York City, of Portuguese and German ancestry, the son of Pauline (née Schwab), who worked at Alcoholics Anonymous, and Frank J. Perry, a stockbroker. His mother was a niece of Charles M. Schwab, who founded the Bethlehem Steel Corporation. As a teenager, Perry began pursuing his interest in the theater with a job as a parking lot attendant for the Westport Country Playhouse in nearby Westport, Connecticut. He attended the University of Miami. He produced several plays at Westport and then turned for a time to producing television documentaries.

A veteran of the Korean War, he returned to the entertainment industry after being discharged and made his directorial debut in 1962 with the low-budget drama film David and Lisa. Based on the novel by Theodore Isaac Rubin, the screenplay was written by his wife, Eleanor Perry, who received a nomination for an Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay. A character study of two emotionally disturbed teenagers, the film was successful at the box office and met with much critical acclaim, earning him a nomination for an Academy Award for Directing.

Perry went on to direct and produce a number of films, including The Swimmer (1968) based on a John Cheever story, Last Summer (1969) and Trilogy (1969), written by Truman Capote. Frank and Eleanor Perry divorced in 1971.

Perry is most regarded for his character studies involving a dysfunctional family, such as that in his wife’s script of the Sue Kaufman novel Diary of a Mad Housewife (1970). That film earned a Best Actress Oscar nomination for Carrie Snodgress, and Play It As It Lays (1972), starring Tuesday Weld, brought her a Golden Globe Best Actress nomination. Both of these films Perry produced and directed, but he is probably best remembered for directing the controversial 1981 biographical drama Mommie Dearest, an adaptation of a biography by actress Joan Crawford’s adoptive daughter, which portrayed the famous movie star as a cruel, sadistic tyrant.

Certain of his film related material and personal papers are contained in the Wesleyan University Cinema Archives to which scholars and media experts from around the world may have full access.

Diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1992, Perry made his final film, an autobiographical documentary, On the Bridge, recounting his own lengthy battle with cancer, from which he died in 1995, eight days after his 65th birthday. —Wikipedia