by Julian Spivey

In any history book you will see a section dedicated to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Everyone knows that Lee Harvey Oswald “supposedly” assassinated the president and if you’re looking for a film about the controversies surrounding Kennedy’s assassination check out Oliver Stone’s wonderful 1991 film “JFK.”

What the history books won’t tell you is that just days before Kennedy was assassinated that Oswald watched the 1954 Frank Sinatra film “Suddenly,” directed by Lewis Allen.

Allen’s film “Suddenly” is based on the efforts of John Baron, played by Sinatra, to assassinate the president in the small town of Suddenly, California as he makes a quick stop the switch trains.

“Suddenly” written by screenwriter Richard Sale was filmed in only four weeks. The 75 minute film is almost completely shot within the house of Pop Benson, played by James Gleason. The house sits upon a hill and makes for a perfect shot for Baron and his two accomplices. Benson, a former secret service man for President Coolidge, is trapped by the three men in his house along with his daughter Ellen, played by Nancy Gates, his grandson Pidge, played by Kim Charney, and the small town’s sheriff and family friend Tod Shaw, played by Sterling Hayden.

The film is quick and at certain times the acting by the minor characters is campy, but it still makes for an entertaining, thriller of a movie. The acting by Sinatra as the heavy is wonderful and brilliantly sadistic. The films plot is also somewhat similar to a future Sinatra film 1962’s “The Manchurian Candidate.” In “The Manchurian Candidate,” however, Sinatra is the good guy as in most of his films. There is a sense of pleasure watching Sinatra play such a bad guy for a change.

The most was filmed and released in the middle of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union and plays on the American patriotic mentality of the time as the captors held in their own house attempt to persuade Baron to give up the job. Baron isn’t doing the job to kill the President; he’s simply doing it because it pays good money, after all in one of his character’s finest lines he says: “Tonight at five o'clock I kill the President. One second after five there's a new President. What changes? Nothing!”

The film is definitely well worth a viewing and it shouldn’t be too hard to come across as it is in the public domain.

After the assassination of Kennedy, Sinatra, who held a controlling interest in the film, had it removed from circulation until the late 1980s.