TCM Schedule for Wednesday, January 16 -- STAR OF THE MONTH: JAMES CAGNEY

[Longhorn]

4:15am Play it Again, Sam (1972)
A recent divorce gets romantic advice from the ghost of Humphrey Bogart.
Cast: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Jerry Lacy. Dir: Herbert Ross. C-86 mins, TV-14

6:00am 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

7:30am Song Of The Thin Man (1947)
Society sleuths Nick and Nora Charles investigate a murder in a jazz club.
Cast: William Powell, Myrna Loy, Keenan Wynn. Dir: Edward Buzzell. BW-87 mins, TV-G

9:00am Edge of the World, The (1937)
A fisherman fights to prevent changing times from destroying his family.
Cast: John Laurie, Belle Chrystall, Eric Berry. Dir: Michael Powell. BW-72 mins, TV-PG

10:15am Citadel, The (1938)
A struggling doctor is tempted to give up his ideals for a posh high-society practice.
Cast: Robert Donat, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Richardson. Dir: King Vidor. BW-113 mins, TV-G

12:15pm One Foot In Heaven (1941)
A minister and his wife cope with the problems of church life in the 20th century.
Cast: Fredric March, Martha Scott, Beulah Bondi. Dir: Irving Rapper. BW-108 mins, TV-G

2:15pm Informer, The (1935)
An Irish rebel turns in his best friend to earn passage money to America, then has to dodge the suspicions of his cohorts.
Cast: Victor McLaglen, Heather Angel, Preston Foster. Dir: John Ford. BW-92 mins, TV-PG

4:00pm Long Voyage Home, The (1940)
A merchant ship's crew tries to survive the loneliness of the sea and the coming of war.
Cast: John Wayne, Thomas Mitchell, Barry Fitzgerald. Dir: John Ford. BW-106 mins, TV-G

6:00pm San Francisco (1936)
A beautiful singer and a battling priest try to reform a Barbary Coast saloon owner in the days before the big earthquake.
Cast: Clark Gable, Jeanette MacDonald, Spencer Tracy. Dir: W.S. Van Dyke II. BW-115 mins, TV-G

What's On Tonight: STAR OF THE MONTH: JAMES CAGNEY

8:00pm Footlight Parade (1933)
A producer fights labor problems, financiers and his greedy ex-wife to put on a show.
Cast: James Cagney, Joan Blondell, Ruby Keeler. Dir: Lloyd Bacon. BW-104 mins, TV-G

10:00pm Something to Sing About (1936)
A New York bandleader takes Hollywood by storm.
Cast: James Cagney, Evelyn Daw, William Frawley. Dir: Victor Schertzinger. BW-92 mins, TV-G

11:45pm Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)
Spirited musical biography of the song-and-dance man who kept America humming through two world wars.
Cast: James Cagney, Walter Huston, Joan Leslie. Dir: Michael Curtiz. BW-126 mins, TV-G

2:00am Love Me Or Leave Me (1955)
True story of torch singer Ruth Etting's struggle to escape the gangster who made her a star.
Cast: Doris Day, James Cagney, Cameron Mitchell. Dir: Charles Vidor. C-122 mins, TV-PG

4:15am Taxi! (1932)
A feisty independent cab driver fights off a crooked syndicate.
Cast: James Cagney, Loretta Young, George E. Stone. Dir: Roy Del Ruth. BW-69 mins, TV-PG

[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's, had once played a potential presidential assassin in the suspense thriller, Suddenly (1954) and 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, he appeared in The Manchurian Candidate, directed by John Frankenheimer (also a close friend of the Kennedy's). 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