January 17, 1943–August 19, 2024
Like any legal drama worth its salt, Sidney Lumet’s 1982 masterpiece “The Verdict” takes into account multiple and conflicting perspectives. The film centers on a flailing and aging Boston attorney named Frank Galvin (Paul Newman), who wrests himself from the grips of alcoholism to argue a medical malpractice case.
What follows not only takes place in a courtroom but unfolds in the manner of a court case: What happened to the now-comatose patient? What was the culpability of the physician? What was the complicity, moral or otherwise, of the Roman Catholic Church, which owns the hospital? The film provides increasingly clear answers to these questions, but only after Lumet and screenwriter David Mamet have allowed a fair hearing to all sides.
Fittingly, “The Verdict” was the debut feature film as picture editor of Peter C. Frank, ACE who, throughout his career both inside and outside the film industry, sought to balance competing viewpoints. This gift served him well as an editor and, later in his career, when he found an unexpected final act as a mediator, social worker, and psychotherapist—the final twists and turns of a life that had been full of them. Frank died at age 81 on August 19.
“He realized he had a talent for listening to people and helping to resolve conflicts,” said his son Michael Frank, who connects his father’s work as a mediator with his work in Hollywood.
“I think conflict resolution is actually a huge connection,” Michael Frank said. “He described the film business as having crazy personalities, and he sometimes made peace
between the studio and the producers, on the one hand, and the director’s vision on the other.”
Peter C. Frank was born in New York City to Chris Christensen and his wife, Margaret. When he was young, his mother remarried a man named Lloyd Frank, whose name Peter adopted. His stepfather and mother were labor organizers who worked with printers and theatrical stage workers. “His parents were Communists, and they were blacklisted,” Michael Frank said. “They fled New York and then got set up with a chicken farm in Connecticut.”
Decades later, as a post-production professional, Peter C. Frank would work on two films that reckoned with left-wing movements in America, Warren Beatty’s biographical portrait of Communist journalist John Reed, “Reds” (1981), on which Frank served as a sound editor; and Lumet’s historical drama “Daniel” (1983), whose principal characters are drawn from alleged spies for the Soviet Union (Julius and Ethel Rosenberg) and which was edited by Frank.
Frank entered the University of Connecticut but departed after a single year. He moved to New York where he found work as a messenger at CBS. “He delivered some film to a lab at one point and started working there,” Michael Frank said. “Then he ended up getting involved a little bit in sound editing and mixing.” He worked as a staff editor at Stars and Stripes Forever Productions where he cut commercials for Burger King and Virginia Slims.
But it was far from certain that Frank would pursue postproduction: In 1969, he entered the Mannes School of Music where he pursued a passion for the cello. One editor who remembers Frank from those days is Motion Picture Editors Guild president Alan Heim, ACE.
“Peter Frank and I never worked together, but in the then-small world of NYC editing, we spent some time together,” Heim said. “What I most remember about Peter is that he dropped out of editing and went to music school to learn the cello and was good enough to give a recital. He later came back to editing and became a fine editor. He was also a generous and thoughtful man, and a pleasure to be with.”
Eventually, concurrent with his education, Frank began establishing himself as a sound editor.
He belatedly received his degree from Mannes in 1977, but by then, his day job had taken off. His credits as a sound editor include Jonathan Demme’s “Melvin and Howard” (1980), Jerry Schatzberg’s “Honeysuckle Rose” (1980), and Lumet’s “Prince of the City” (1981). Then Lumet moved him up to picture editor on “The Verdict.”
“I only knew him as a picture editor,” Michael Frank said. “When I would call in sick from school, he’d take me to the cutting room and I’d play with the grease pencils and chop trims.”
Following his collaboration with Lumet, Frank made a pair of pictures with acclaimed director Frank Perr y, “Compromising Positions” (1985) and, co-editing with Trudy Ship, “Hello Again” (1987). The latter was one of several on which he worked with picture editor Farrel Levy, ACE, then an assistant editor whom Frank mentored.
“I was a single mother at the time, and in those days, there were not a lot of moms working, let alone single moms,” Levy said. “He was very principled, and he really appreciated my need for bounds between my work and my home life. That was so important, particularly because the film business is very demanding and long hours are standard.”
On the 1987 drama “Dirty Dancing,” starring Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey, Frank was the solo picture editor, but he agreed that Levy could edit scenes on the project. Those scenes made the final cut, and she was given the title of associate editor.
“It was not a job that either one of us was really thrilled about at the time,” Levy said. “But we both needed to work, so I said to him, ‘This isn’t going to go anyplace. Let me just practice—just give me an opportunity to be an editor and to get an editor credit.’ And he said, ‘That’s fine, you go ahead.’”
As it turned out, “Dirty Dancing” was a hit that took everyone by surprise. “Not many films have that kind of staying power,” said Levy, who again worked as an associate editor on “Hello Again.”
Frank was an early adopter of digital editing. “After the Steenbeck and Moviola days, he moved to the Montage system,” Michael Frank said. Then, following his work on the comedy “Joe’s Apartment” (1996), Frank purchased the Avid system on which he had cut that film. “He kept updating it and renting it out to productions that he was on,” his son said.
Among the highlights of Frank’s later career are a multi-film collaboration with director Darnell Martin, including the feature films “Prison Song” (2001) and “Cadillac Records” (2008), and the made-for-television adaptation of Zora Neale Hurston’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God” (2005). His last major assignment as a picture editor were multiple seasons of the CBS crime series “Blue Bloods,” from 2010 to 2014.
Upon Frank’s retirement, he had already been working weekends in conflict resolution and mediation. After his run on “Blue Bloods” ended in 2014, he entered Hunter College to receive a master’s degree in social work. “He got his professional licensing, got his family therapy certificate, and he worked as a psychotherapist and social worker up until the Friday before he died,” Michael Frank said, adding that his father had been suffering from cancer for about four years. “When they put him in hospice, he was so devoted to his clients that he gave them four more sessions,” he said. Levy sums up well the exceptional diversity of her mentor’s life. “As editors, we contribute that much more when we have interests outside of simply film, and Peter was always a very curious guy,” Levy said. In addition to his son, Peter C. Frank is survived by his wife, Lucy Kantrowitz Frank; his daughter-in-law, Alison Kamhi; and his grandchildren, Madeline and Jonah Frank.
— Peter Tonguette
