Fresh from his Academy Award winning comeback in 1953’s From Here to Eternity, Frank Sinatra surprised world wide movie audiences by following up that life altering triumph with the darkest screen role of his legendary career- that of would be Presidential assassin John Baron in Suddenly. With a plotline inspired by then President Eisenhower’s train trips to Palm Springs, California, Suddenly finds Baron holding pacifist war widow Ellen Benson (Nancy Gates), her family, and the town sheriff (Sterling Hayden) hostage while preparing to shoot the President. In a tough, taut 75 minutes suffused with classic film noir elements, Suddenly presents characters alienated from their surroundings, men and women trapped in the dark side of a post war American society where the old cultural certainties have vanished.
