Suddenly (1954)
Word reaches the sleepy town of Suddenly that the President's train will make an unscheduled stop. Three hired killers led by the coldly eager John Baron seize a house on the hill above the station, holding a family and the wounded local sheriff hostage while they set a rifle on the platform below.
Released nine years before Dallas, Suddenly casts Frank Sinatra sharply against type as a twitchy contract assassin in a tight, cheaply made thriller from director Lewis Allen. The persistent legend that Sinatra bought up and destroyed every print after the Kennedy assassination is false; he did ask United Artists to pull it from circulation, but it simply lapsed into the public domain when the 1970 copyright renewal went unfiled.
Background
Suddenly casts Frank Sinatra sharply against his usual screen persona as a twitchy, coldly professional contract killer, one of three hired assassins who seize a house overlooking a train station in the small town of Suddenly after learning the President’s train will make an unscheduled stop there. The gang holds a family and the town’s wounded sheriff hostage while preparing a rifle position to carry out the assassination from the house above the platform.
What to watch for
A persistent legend claims that Sinatra personally bought up and destroyed prints of the film after the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, but this is not true; while Sinatra did ask United Artists to withdraw the film from circulation out of sensitivity to the connection, the film’s slide into the public domain actually happened for a more mundane reason, its copyright renewal was never filed in 1970. Watch for Sinatra’s unusually cold performance, a deliberate departure from his more charming screen image, in a tight, low-budget thriller that gained an uncomfortable new resonance after 1963.
