TCM Schedule for Wednesday, May 28 -- STAR OF THE MONTH: FRANK SINATRA

[Longhorn]

3:30am Network (1976)
Television programmers turn a deranged news anchor into 'the mad prophet of the airwaves.'
Cast: William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Peter Finch. Dir: Sidney Lumet. BW-121 mins, TV-MA

5:33am Short Film: One Reel Wonders: T.V. Of Tomorrow (1953)
C-7 mins

5:48am Short Film: One Reel Wonders: This Is Tomorrow (1943)
BW-11 mins

6:00am Hidden Values: The Movies of the '50s (2001)
A look at some of the movies that defined the decade and what they said about Americans and American culture.
BW-47 mins, TV-PG

6:50am Short Film: One Reel Wonders: This Is A Living? (1953)
BW-9 mins

7:00am Garment Jungle, The (1957)
A dress manufacturer brings in the mob to fight unionization.
Cast: Lee J. Cobb, Kerwin Mathews, Gia Scala. Dir: Vincent Sherman. BW-88 mins, TV-PG

8:30am Affair in Trinidad (1952)
A nightclub singer enlists her brother-in-law to track down her husband's killer.
Cast: Rita Hayworth, Glenn Ford, Alexander Scourby. Dir: Vincent Sherman. BW-98 mins, TV-PG

10:09am Short Film: One Reel Wonders: Adventures In South America (1945)
C-10 mins

10:30am Shadow on the Window, The (1957)
Three delinquents murder a prosperous farm owner and hold his secretary hostage.
Cast: Philip Carey, Betty Garrett, John Drew Barrymore. Dir: William Asher. BW-73 mins, TV-PG

11:45am Short Film: From The Vaults: Operation Teahouse (1956)
C-4 mins

12:00pm Mob, The (1951)
A police detective fakes a suspension so he can go undercover.
Cast: Broderick Crawford, Richard Kiley, Ernest Borgnine. Dir: Robert Parrish. BW-86 mins, TV-14

1:30pm Lineup, The (1958)
A pair of hit men track down a heroin shipment while the police get closer.
Cast: Eli Wallach, Robert Keith, Warner Anderson. Dir: Don Siegel. BW-87 mins, TV-14

3:00pm Juggler, The (1953)
A Jewish refugee fights to overcome the psychological effects of his World War II experiences.
Cast: Kirk Douglas, Milly Vitale, Paul Stewart. Dir: Edward Dmytryk. BW-86 mins, TV-14

4:30pm Houston Story, The (1956)
A Texas oil driller schemes to steal millions of dollars in oil.
Cast: Gene Barry, Barbara Hale, Edward Arnold. Dir: William Castle. BW-81 mins, TV-G

6:00pm Duffy (1968)
A playboy tries to rob his father with the help of a gentleman crook.
Cast: James Coburn, James Mason, James Fox. Dir: Robert Parrish. C-101 mins, TV-PG

7:42pm Short Film: From The Vaults: Rowan And Martin At The Movies (1969)
C-11 mins

What's On Tonight: STAR OF THE MONTH: FRANK SINATRA

8:00pm Man With The Golden Arm, The (1955)
A junkie must face his true self to kick his drug addiction.
Cast: Kim Novak, Frank Sinatra, Eleanor Parker. Dir: Otto Preminger. BW-119 mins, TV-14

10:15pm Manchurian Candidate, The (1962)
A Korean War hero doesn't realize he's been programmed to kill by the enemy.
Cast: Laurence Harvey, Frank Sinatra, Angela Lansbury. Dir: John Frankenheimer. BW-127 mins, TV-PG

12:30am Not As a Stranger (1955)
A medical student will stop at nothing to become a top surgeon.
Cast: Robert Mitchum, Olivia de Havilland, Frank Sinatra. Dir: Stanley Kramer. BW-137 mins, TV-PG

3:00am Suddenly (1954)
Gunmen take over a suburban home to plot a presidential assassination.
Cast: Frank Sinatra, Sterling Hayden, James Gleason. Dir: Lewis Allen. BW-76 mins, TV-PG

4:20am Short Film: One Reel Wonders: Triplet Trouble (1952)
C-7 mins

[Longhorn]

1. Suddenly (1954)

President Kennedy's assassination in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963 shocked and stunned the nation but for one Hollywood superstar it had even more disturbing repercussions. Frank Sinatra, a loyal supporter and friend of Kennedy, had once played a potential presidential assassin in the suspense thriller, Suddenly (1954). When he heard that Lee Harvey Oswald had watched that film on the evening before he shot and killed the President, he demanded that the film be withdrawn from distribution.

Made nine years earlier, Suddenly is the story of a trio of assassins led by John Baron (Sinatra) who arrive in the sleepy California town of Suddenly with a sinister purpose: to assassinate the President when his train travels through the rural depot. But first the gunmen have to find the best vantage point and, posing as FBI agents, gain entrance to a hilltop house and take everyone hostage. The similarities between Baron and Oswald are striking: both are hostile loners with a warped ideology and both plotted their murders with a rifle from an open window. But the connection between Sinatra and presidential assassins didn't end there.

In 1962, Sinatra appeared in The Manchurian Candidate, directed by John Frankenheimer (also a close friend of the Kennedys). Once again the plot involved an elaborate plan to kill the President, leaving his vice-president (and Communist Party stooge) to take his orders directly from his operatives. But this time around, Sinatra played the hero, racing against time to stop his former army comrade (Laurence Harvey) and now a brainwashed victim of the enemy, from carrying out his orders. Sinatra also had this film withdrawn from distribution as well after Kennedy's assassination making both The Manchurian Candidate and Suddenly difficult films to see for many years.

Suddenly was based on an original screenplay by Richard Sale who got the idea from news stories about President Eisenhower's train trips to and from Palm Springs. Sinatra made Suddenly right after his Oscar®-winning performance in From Here to Eternity (1953) and it marked the first time he played the "heavy" in a film, though weighing less than 120 pounds, that label hardly sounds apt. Nevertheless, his performance as a cold-blooded, psychopathic killer is still considered one of his best. Newsweek wrote: "As the assassin in the piece, Sinatra superbly refutes the idea that the straight-role potentialities which earned an Academy Award for him in From Here to Eternity were one-shot stuff. In Suddenly, the happy-go-lucky soldier of Eternity becomes one of the most repellent killers in American screen history."

Once considered little more than a tautly directed B-movie, Suddenly has since come into its own as a highly regarded example of the film noir style. In his essay on Suddenly for the movie reference book, Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style, Carl Macek wrote, "The sense of claustrophobia and despair unleashed by the assassins in Suddenly is completely amoral, and totally opposite of the style of harassment found in such non-noir, socially redemptive films as The Desperate Hours <1955>....There are no reasons given, or asked for, regarding the assassination - the entire incident functions as a nightmare, a very real nightmare that invades the serenity of a small town. At the end of the film it is apparent that the Benson family will never be the same, suddenly scarred by people out of nowhere who irrevocably disrupt their middle-class tranquility."

Producer: Robert Bassler
Director: Lewis Allen
Screenplay: Richard Sale
Cinematography: Charles G. Clarke
Film Editing: John F. Schreyer
Art Direction: Frank Sylos
Music: David Raksin
Cast: Frank Sinatra (John Baron), Sterling Hayden (Sheriff Tod Shaw), James Gleason (Pop Benson), Nancy Gates (Ellen Benson ), Kim Charney (Peter Benson), Paul Frees (Benny Conklin).
BW-76m. Letterboxed.

by Jeff Stafford