Suddenly (1954) on Netflix
NR19541h 17mCrimeDramaFilm-Noir
In Suddenly, California, the president's train is due to stop. Three men claiming to check security take over the Benson house above the station, holding Ellen Benson and her family inside.
- Netflix4.2/5
- IMDb6.8/108,290 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes100%
Trailer
Plot summary
John Baron and two other men come to the Benson house on the hill above the station in the small town of Suddenly, California, saying they are with the FBI detail checking the town's security before the president's train makes its stop. Ellen Benson, a war widow who cannot abide guns, lives in the house with Pop, her father-in-law, and her son Pidge. The visitors are not agents. Baron's purpose is the view the house gives of the tracks, and the three take the family hostage. Sheriff Tod Shaw, whose courtship of Ellen has been unsuccessful, arrives with Dan Carney, who leads the president's Secret Service detail.
Cast
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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Suddenly (1954)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Sinatra asked United Artists to withdraw Suddenly from circulation because he had heard the rumor that Lee Harvey Oswald viewed it before shooting President Kennedy. The Hollywood legend that he bought up all remaining copies and destroyed them is not true.
- Sinatra did not renew Suddenly's copyright in 1970 because its plot resembled the assassination of John F. Kennedy, so the film entered the public domain and can be downloaded and viewed for free online.
- Frank Sinatra's role in Suddenly was the first occasion on which he was cast as a "heavy" in a dramatic film, a first for his career up to that point.
- Writer Richard Sale got the idea for the short story that became Suddenly from newspaper articles about President Dwight D. Eisenhower's visits to Palm Springs, California, by train.
- Richard Condon's 1959 novel The Manchurian Candidate, like Suddenly, features a mentally troubled former war hero who uses a scoped rifle to shoot at a presidential candidate; Sinatra starred in the 1962 film version, this time trying to stop an assassination by Laurence Harvey.
