Suddenly (1954 film)

In post-war America, a train carrying the president of the United States is scheduled to make a stop in the small town of Suddenly, California. Claiming to be FBI agents checking up on security before the president’s arrival, three men arrive at the home of the Bensons: Ellen, a widow, her young son “Pidge,” and her father-in-law, “Pop” Benson. The house is on top of a hill that looks down on the station where the presidential train is scheduled to stop, making it a perfect perch from which to shoot the president when his train stops. However, it soon becomes clear that the men are not Government agents but assassins, led by the ruthless John Baron (Frank Sinatra), who take over the house and hold the family hostage, planning to shoot the president from a large window in the home.

Sheriff Tod Shaw (Sterling Hayden) arrives with Dan Carney (Willis Bouchey), the Secret Service agent in charge of the president's security detail. When he does, Baron and his gangsters shoot Carney dead and a bullet fractures Shaw's arm.

Baron sends Benny, one of his two henchmen, to double-check on the president's schedule, but shortly after confirming to Baron that the train is scheduled to stop in Suddenly at 5 p.m., Benny is killed in a shootout with the police. Meanwhile, Jud (James O'Hara), a television repairman, has shown up at the house and also becomes a hostage. Pidge (Kim Charney) goes to his grandfather's dresser to get some medication and notices a fully loaded revolver which he replaces with his toy cap gun.

When the hostages try to appeal to Baron’s patriotism, it becomes clear that he has none: he has been hired to kill the president for money. But when Baron is confronted by the sheriff on the risks of killing the president, including whether he will ever see (let alone live to enjoy) his money, Baron's remaining henchman begins to show some reluctance to go through with the assassination. For Baron, however, these are the very least of his concerns, and it soon becomes clear that he is a psychopath whose pleasure comes from killing – who he kills and for what reason being of little importance to him.

In the meantime, the assassins have mounted a WWII-vintage German sniper's rifle onto a metal table by the window overlooking the train station. Jud, under the guise of fixing the TV, discreetly hooks the table up to the 5000-volt plate output of the family television. Pop Benson (James Gleason) then intentionally spills a cup of water on the floor beneath the table. Although the hope is that Baron will be shocked and killed in this way, it is his remaining henchman who touches the table first and is electrocuted, reflexively firing the rifle repeatedly and attracting the attention of police at the train station. Baron shoots and mortally wounds Jud, disconnects the electrical hook-up and aims the rifle as the president's train arrives at the station, only to see the train pass straight through. As an utterly surprised Baron says “[i]t didn’t stop,” Ellen Benson (Nancy Gates) shoots Baron in the abdomen, and Shaw picks up a gun and shoots him a second time. Baron, having dropped to the floor, begs for mercy —— "No, don't...no, please...no, no, no" —— and dies.

In the aftermath of the harrowing incident, outside the local hospital Shaw confirms to Ellen that Jud “didn’t make it.” Telling Ellen that he needs to go back to his office, Shaw then makes plans to meet Ellen after church the next day, and they kiss. After she leaves, a driver stops to ask for directions and then asks for the name of the town. When Shaw says it is “Suddenly,” the driver notes that “that’s a funny name for a town.”

• Frank Sinatra as John Baron
• Sterling Hayden as Sheriff Tod Shaw
• James Gleason as Peter "Pop" Benson
• Nancy Gates as Ellen Benson
• Kim Charney as Peter "Pidge" Benson III
• Willis Bouchey as Dan Carney, Chief Secret Service Agent
• Paul Frees as Benny Conklin (also voice of TV announcer)
• Christopher Dark as Bart Wheeler
• James Lilburn as Jud Hobson
• Ken Dibbs as Wilson
• Clark Howat as Haggerty
• Charles Smith as Bebop
• Paul Wexler as Deputy Sheriff Slim Adams
• Dan White as Burg
• Richard Collier as Hawkins
• Roy Engel as first driver
• Ted Stanhope as second driver
• Charles Wagenheim as Kaplan
• John Berardino as trooper

Writer Richard Sale gained his idea for the short story which was the basis of the film after he read stories in the news about President Dwight D. Eisenhower traveling to and from Palm Springs, California by train.[6] There were differences between the story and the film, the most thematically important being that the mother in the story was not bitter about her husband's death in World War II, and in fact, was not present during the assassination attempt,[1] so never had to make the choice the mother in the film has to make: whether to shoot and kill the assassin when the opportunity arises.

The exterior scenes for Suddenly were filmed in Saugus, California.[1]

The production company, Libra Productions, was producer Robert Brassler's company, and Suddenly was his first independent film. Previously, Brassler had worked for Twentieth Century Fox.[1]

Sterling Hayden as Sheriff Tod Shaw

Frank Sinatra as John Baron, berating a hostage.

When the film was released, Bosley Crowther, film critic for The New York Times, liked the direction of the film and the acting, and writing "Yet such is the role that Mr. Sinatra plays in Suddenly!, a taut little melodrama that... [it] shapes up as one of the slickest recent items in the minor movie league... we have several people to thank—particularly Richard Sale for a good script, which tells a straight story credibly, Mr. Allen for direction that makes both excitement and sense, Mr. Bassler for a production that gets the feel of a small town and the cast which includes Sterling Hayden, James Gleason and Nancy Gates." Crowther especially liked Sinatra's performance. He wrote, "Mr. Sinatra deserves a special chunk of praise...In Suddenly! he proves it in a melodramatic tour de force."[7]

The staff reviewer at Variety gave the film a good review and praised the acting. He wrote "[Sinatra] inserts plenty of menace into a psycho character, never too heavily done, and gets good backing from his costar, Sterling Hayden, as sheriff, in a less showy role but just as authoritatively handled. Lewis Allen's direction manages a smart piece where static treatment easily could have prevailed."[8]

The reviewer for Newsweek wrote about Sinatra's performance that he "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."[6] Film critic Carl Mazek in Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style (1982) makes the case that the "Machiavellian attitude" of John Baron links the picture with the brutal films noir of the 1950s like The Big Night (1951) and Kiss Me Deadly (1955).[9] Moreover, he continued:

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.[6][9]

On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a contemporary approval rating of 100% based on nine reviews, with an average rating of 6.78/10.[10]

• Assassinations in fiction
• List of films featuring home invasions
• List of films with a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes

Notes

Bibliography

• Selby, Spencer (1984). Dark City: The Film Noir. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company. ISBN 978-0786404780.
• Silver, Alain & Ward, Elizabeth, eds. (1993). Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style (3rd ed.). Woodstock, New York: Overlook Press. ISBN 978-0879514792.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Suddenly (film).

• Suddenly at the American Film Institute Catalog
• Suddenly at IMDb
• Suddenly on YouTube
• Suddenly at AllMovie
• Suddenly at the TCM Movie Database
• Suddenly at Rotten Tomatoes
• Suddenly is available for free download at the Internet Archive