Influence
In 1959, five years after the release of Suddenly, a novel was published which had a remarkably similar ending. This was The Manchurian Candidate written by Richard Condon, a former Hollywood press agent recently turned novelist. His book also features a mentally troubled former war hero called Raymond Shaw who, at the climax, uses a rifle with scope to shoot at a presidential candidate. Because of such strong similarities, it is now thought that Suddenly was one inspiration for Condon's Manchurian Candidate.
The Manchurian Candidate was released as a film in 1962, again starring Sinatra, but this time out to prevent an assassination being committed by Laurence Harvey.
Another person who was certainly aware of Suddenly, whether or not he ever saw it, was Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. The movie played at several New Orleans theatres for two months in the winter of 1954-55, at a time when Oswald was living there and was a 15-year-old borderline juvenile delinquent. In his teenage world, Oswald cannot have been ignorant of such a violent and sensational movie.
It was long thought that Oswald actually saw Suddenly on television in October 1963 (one month before the assassination of Kennedy), but an investigation of that claim eventually revealed that he did not. The confusion arose because Oswald actually saw another presidential assassination film, We Were Strangers, not once but twice on one weekend in October 1963. His twofold viewing of that film came to be understood, in all the chaos immediately following the assassination of Kennedy, as his having seen two different assassination films at that time. Suddenly was naturally but mistakenly believed to have been the "second" one. Vincent Bugliosi, in his 2007 work Reclaiming History, claims that Oswald did see Suddenly on television in October 1963, but Bugliosi misquoted and ignored several other findings, and his claim is not correct.
Read more about this topic: Suddenly (1954 film)
Famous quotes containing the word influence:
“My administration is pledged to follow the policies of Mr. Roosevelt in this regard, and while that pledge does not involve me in any obligation to carry them out unless I have Congressional authority to do so, it does require that I take every step and exert every legislative influence upon Congress to enact the legislation which shall best subserve the purposes indicated.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men. We do not like that kind of immortality, but what is to be done about it?”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)
“I have always found that when men have exhausted their own resources, they fall back on “the intentions of the Creator.” But their platitudes have ceased to have any influence with those women who believe they have the same facilities for communication with the Divine mind as men have.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)