Frank Perry

Frank Joseph Perry Jr. was born on August 21, 1930, in New York City, the son of stockbroker Frank Joseph Perry Sr. and Pauline E. Schwab, who worked at Alcoholics Anonymous. A native New Yorker, Perry developed an early interest in theater, taking a job as a parking lot attendant at the Westport Country Playhouse in Westport, Connecticut during his teenage years. He later attended the University of Miami and studied under Lee Strasberg in New York. Before transitioning to film, Perry produced several plays at Westport Country Playhouse and worked in television documentary production. He served in the Korean War, and following his discharge he returned to the entertainment industry. His Broadway career included an appearance in 1955 in Threepenny Opera.

Perry made his feature directorial debut in 1962 with David and Lisa, a low-budget drama based on a novel by Theodore Isaac Rubin. The screenplay was written by his wife Eleanor Rosenfeld Perry, who received an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. The film, a character study of two emotionally disturbed teenagers, performed well at the box office and earned Perry a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Director. Both Frank and Eleanor Perry subsequently became members of the Actors Studio, a distinction extended to non-actors in select cases.

The couple went on to collaborate on several additional projects. Their work together included The Swimmer (1968), adapted from a short story by John Cheever; Last Summer (1969); and Trilogy (1969), written by Truman Capote. Perry also directed and produced A Christmas Memory, based on a Truman Capote short story, which received an Emmy Award nomination. Diary of a Mad Housewife (1970) earned a Best Actress Oscar nomination for Carrie Snodgress, and Play It as It Lays (1972), starring Tuesday Weld, brought Weld a Golden Globe Best Actress nomination. Frank and Eleanor Perry divorced in 1971.

Perry is perhaps most widely recognized for directing Mommie Dearest, a biographical drama adapted from a memoir by Joan Crawford's adoptive daughter. The film became a cult classic despite mixed critical reception and won the Razzie Award for worst picture; Perry himself received a Razzie nomination for worst director, and Faye Dunaway received a Razzie for her performance. Perry later founded Corsair Pictures, privately financed by United Artists Theatres, which produced Miss Firecracker and A Shock to the System before folding.

In his personal life, Perry married Eleanor in 1958; she was fifteen years his senior and had two children, William and Ann, from a previous marriage. Following their 1971 divorce, Perry married Barbara Goldsmith, founding editor of New York magazine, in 1977; they divorced in 1992. He subsequently married Virginia Brush Ford on June 15, 1992. Perry's half-sister is pastor Mary Christine Hudson, mother of singer Katy Perry and David Hudson.

Perry was diagnosed with prostate cancer, and his final film, On the Bridge (1992), is an autobiographical documentary chronicling his experience with the illness. He died on August 29, 1995, at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan, eight days after his sixty-fifth birthday. His ashes were scattered in Aspen, Colorado, where he had lived during the final three years of his life. A collection of Perry's film-related materials and personal papers is held at the Wesleyan University Cinema Archives.