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Though she starred on Broadway, made appearances on television shows like "The Twilight Zone," "Gunsmoke" and "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" and acted in several feature films, Evans Evans Frankenheimer - who will be a guest at Saturday's "Wanderlust" fund-raising event for the Virginia Museum of Transportation in Roanoke - is probably best known for her brief, bittersweet role in 1967's "Bonnie and Clyde."

She was Velma, the girlfriend of a young undertaker played by Gene Wilder. In one of the movie's best scenes, the couple are amiably taken hostage by the Barrow Gang. The bank robbers take them out for burgers, tell them jokes - and, when they discover Wilder's bad-omen occupation, abruptly strand them in the middle of nowhere.

"None of us knew exactly what kind of movie [director] Arthur Penn was going to make," said Frankenheimer, a former Roanoke Valley resident who graduated from Randolph-Macon Woman's College and was a charter member of the Showtimers community theater troupe. "We were sure we were going to be cut out."

Fortunately, Frankenheimer did not wind up on the editing room floor. Most of the roles she played in later movies, however, took place behind the camera, where she worked with her husband, the late John Frankenheimer, director of films such as "The Birdman of Alcatraz," "The Manchurian Candidate," "Ronin" and "Path to War."

Excerpts of his 1967 film, the racing epic "Grand Prix," will be shown at the event Saturday.

In an interview at the Hotel Roanoke on Wednesday, Frankenheimer had happy memories of the film's production, which took place in 1966 as the actual race was under way in Monaco, Italy, Belgium, England, Holland and France.

"You couldn't do that movie today," she said. "It was a huge to-do, logistically."

The racing driver's association, she added, didn't want them there.

"They didn't care about a Hollywood movie. They were sure we were going to get in their way and get it all wrong. And we didn't."

In order to prepare for the film, Frankenheimer said, she attended driver Carol Shelby's racing school.

"I actually got my California racing license," she said.

On the set, Frankenheimer helped coordinate the pit crews, organized lap charts and worked with the non-English-speaking Japanese portion of the cast, including actor Toshiro Mifune. "We spoke this sort-of pidgin French to each other."

The shoot was hard work. Frankenheimer said the international crew lived in a tent village during the entire production. In order to assemble the team of drivers they needed, she said, the director had to finance parts of the pre-production himself.

The effort paid off, though, and "Grand Prix" is widely regarded as one of the most technically accurate depictions of auto racing on film.

Frankenheimer is now in the process of archiving her husband's filmmaking materials, creating an official Web site for him and working to get "Grand Prix" released on DVD.

"It was the last romantic moment in racing," Frankenheimer said of the film. "The romance of it was still a little bit there.""Wanderlust I: Grand Prix" is Saturday, 6:30 p.m., at the Virginia Museum of Transportation. Joining Frankenheimer will be Phil Hill, one of two Americans to win the Grand Prix, and actor/racecar driver Perry King, who will auction off travel packages. A Grand-Prix style dinner will be featured.Advance tickets are $100 per person.342-5670.Frankenheimer