"Why don't you pass the time by playing a little solitaire..?"
“That’s the only way that film ever got made... It took Frank going directly to Jack Kennedy.”
Richard Condon,
Author of The Manchurian Candidate
I quote The Enemy: "Suddenly is a 1954 American film noir thriller directed by Lewis Allen with a screenplay written by Richard Sale. The drama features Frank Sinatra, Sterling Hayden, James Gleason and Nancy Gates, among others.
The tranquility of a small town is jarred when the U.S. President is scheduled to pass through and a hired assassin takes over the Benson home as a perfect location to ambush the president.
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 who, at the climax, uses a rifle with scope to shoot at a presidential 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."
" Frank was on Stage 22 of the Warner Bros. lot making Robin and the 7 Hoods when he got the news of John F. Kennedy’s assassination. For the first time in a long time, he went to church to pray.
Years later, when he learned that Lee Harvey Oswald had watched Suddenly a few days before shooting the President, he withdrew the 1954 movie in which he played a deranged assassin paid to kill the president.
He also forbade the re-release of The Manchurian Candidate, his 1962 movie dealing with a killer who is brainwashed to gun down a politician.
That November evening, Frank called the White House. He expressed his sympathy to Patricia Lawford, but did not talk with her husband, Peter.
“Frank was pretty broken up when he talked to Pat and would have given anything to come back to Washington for Jack’s funeral, but it just wasn’t possible to invite him,” said Lawford. “He’d already been too’ much of an embarrassment to the family.”
When Frank returned to work a few days later, he was dismayed by the comments he heard among the cast and crew. Over the loudspeaker system he said, “I have heard some unfortunate remarks on this set about Texas. This indicates that we are still not unified, despite the terrible happenings of the past week. I beg of you not to generalize about people, or make jokes about anyone from Texas. Or say anything that will keep us divided by malice or hatred. Now is the time for all of us to work together with understanding and temperance—and not do or say anything that will prevent that".
A few weeks later, Frank turned to Peter Lawford for help when Frank’s nineteen-year-old son was kidnapped at gunpoint on December 8, 1963.... "
"...He then told the President about his interest in making The Manchurian Candidate, a psychological thriller based on a novel by Richard Condon about two American soldiers who are captured by the Communists during the Korean War and brainwashed. One of the soldiers (Laurence Harvey) is programmed to assassinate a presidential candidate so that the Communist-backed candidate will become president. The other soldier, to be played by Frank, is deprogrammed by a psychiatrist and then works with the FBI to investigate Harvey. Frank had been approached with the property by George Axelrod and John Frankenheimer and wanted to make the film. It would be distributed by United Artists as part of the fifteen-million-dollar contract Frank had with the company. The problem was that Arthur Krim, president of United Artists, refused to distribute the movie. He was national finance chairman of the Democratic Party at the time and, as such, very protective of the Kennedys. He felt that the film was too politically explosive. Frank disagreed and took the matter directly to President Kennedy, who said that he had no objection whatsoever to seeing the film made. In fact, he enjoyed Condon’s novel and thought it would make a great movie. So Frank asked him to call Krim, and he agreed to do so.
“That’s the only way that film ever got made,” said Richard Condon. “It took Frank going directly to Jack Kennedy.”
Natalie Wood
... confided her secret to her TV brother, who recalls, Natalie herself could not even believe this permission, jumping at the chance to do something without her mother. She shared the confidence with Mary Ann, who was astonished even Maria would send Natalie alone, at fifteen, to a party at Frank Sinatras house. She literally threw her to the lions.
The day after the party, Natalie arrived at the Studio School embarrassed, telling Bobby she had something to confess.
Natalie had consumed quantities of wine at Sinatra's house, and in the course of the evening, told Sinatra about Clyde, the code name for penis Bobby had coined to fool Natalie's mother. Sinatra was so amused, he and his friends had incorporated Clyde into their hipster slang.
Natalie felt guilty because she had taken credit for the word. "Heres the kind of person Natalie was. She said that my friendship was very important to her. She was going to see Sinatra that evening, and if I wanted, she would tell Sinatra that I invented the word." Bobby laughed it off.
Some months later, he turned on the radio and heard Sinatra singing a tune called Clyde's Song. The singer was quoted in magazines saying Clyde was his code word for someone he didn't like. "Sinatra and his Rat Pack gang started using the 'Clyde' word in their Vegas act. Even JFK was saying the code word. I should have copyrighted it."
Some months later, he turned on the radio and heard Sinatra singing a tune called Clyde's Song. The singer was quoted in magazines saying Clyde was his code word for someone he didn't like. "Sinatra and his Rat Pack gang started using the 'Clyde' word in their Vegas act. Even JFK was saying the code word. I should have copyrighted it."
Natalie became a regular at Sinatras that May and June according to Hyatt, who saw her at studio school every day, keeping her secret. "I remember one Friday Natalie just couldn't wait to get out of there. She kept looking at her watch, dancing up and down, saying, 'I have to get to the hairdresser and look really beautiful tonight because - don't tell anybody - I'm going back to Frank Sinatras house. They're having a party and I can't wait to get up there.' It was a big deal to her.
Everybody was up there - Dean Martin, the Rat Pack, all the big stars, all way older than her. She was probably the only person under thirty there except for maybe some of the dancing girls from Las Vegas. I guarantee you she was the only fifteen-year-old there."
There was a mysterious, illicit quality to Natalies relationship with Sinatra, from the point of view of Bobby, her brother-confessor.
On October 29, 1953, MGM announced that the marriage was over: “Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra stated today that having reluctantly exhausted every effort to reconcile their differences, they could find no mutual basis on which to continue their marriage. Both expressed deep regret and great respect for each other. Their separation is final and Miss Gardner will seek a divorce.” That night, a New York disc jockey played a Sinatra record, which he introduced as “Ava Gardner’s newest release.”
Ava announced that she was leaving for Rome to make The Barefoot Contessa with Humphrey Bogart. She said she was in no hurry to file for divorce but nonchalantly dismissed the possibility of a reconciliation. She invented and reinvented her marriage for reporters and ranged from sexually ridiculing Frank as “Mr. Sin-Nada” (nothing) to proclaiming him “the man I’ll always love.”
Frank was devastated and made no pretense about it. When reporters asked him about the break-up, he said, “I guess it’s over if that’s what she says. It’s very sad … it’s tragic. I feel very badly about it.”
One friend suggested that he call Ava, and said she was as miserable as Frank was. “Then why is she going to Rome to make a picture?” Frank asked. “How are we going to make up if she’s going to be so far away?” He never made the call.
A few nights later, the newspapers reported that Ava was seen dining quietly with Peter Lawford at Frascati’s in Los Angeles. Knowing that Peter and Ava had dated years before, Frank flew into a rage and called Lawford, threatening him.
“Oh, God, he was furious with me for going out with Ava,” said Peter Lawford many years later. “He screamed, ‘Do you want your legs broken, you fucking asshole? Well, you’re going to get them broken if I ever hear you’re out with Ava again. So help me, I’ll kill you. Do you hear me?’ Then he slammed the phone down. I was panicked. I mean I was really scared. Frank’s a violent guy and he’s good friends with too many guys who’d rather kill you than say hello. I didn’t want to die, so I called Jimmy Van Heusen and said, ‘Please tell him nothing happened. Please.’ Jimmy said not to worry. That Frank would get over it. He knew we’d been friends since 1945. Well, Frank got over it all right, but it took him six years!”
Out of his mind with grief over Ava, Frank flew to New York en route to a nightclub engagement at the Chase Hotel in St. Louis. He wandered around Manhattan like one of the damned, filled with remorse and self-pity, unable to focus on anything but his terrible personal loss. He began frightening friends by telephoning in a gloomy voice, “Please see that the children are taken care of,” and hanging up.
On November 18, 1953, Jimmy Van Heusen, who had an apartment on Fifty-seventh Street, found Frank on the floor of the elevator with his wrists slashed. Van Heusen immediately called a doctor and rushed Frank to Mt. Sinai Hospital, but not before paying the man at the front desk of his building fifty dollars to keep quiet about the incident.
The people in charge of Frank’s booking at the Chase Hotel had no idea of what had happened, but they grew more concerned by the minute when he failed to show up for rehearsal.
“We were frantic,” said the booking agent, “and we started calling all over. We called the Sands in Las Vegas; we called his home in Los Angeles; we called Palm Springs and New York, but no one could find him. Finally someone decided to call Morris Schenker, a lawyer in St. Louis who has ties to everyone, to see whether he could find out something. He called us back minutes later and said Frank would not be coming because he’d just slashed his wrists.”
Frank’s closest friend, songwriter Jimmy Van Heusen, had lived through the traumas of the Ava Gardner courtship and the tumultuous marriage. Affable and easygoing, he had never crossed Frank, no matter how deplorable Frank’s behavior. He had harbored him in Palm Springs every time Frank stormed out of the house after a fight with Ava, and had spent those nights helping Frank drink his misery away.
When Van Heusen’s apartment in New York had been the scene of one of the worst rows between Ava and Frank, with both of them cursing and screaming and breaking furniture, Jimmy had laughed it off. But having recently suffered what he thought was a heart attack, Van Heusen was now trying to protect his health. The sight of his bloodied friend was more than he could take. So he finally stood up to Sinatra and told him he would end their friendship forever unless Frank promised to seek psychiatric care
On October 29, 1953, MGM announced that the marriage was over: “Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra stated today that having reluctantly exhausted every effort to reconcile their differences, they could find no mutual basis on which to continue their marriage. Both expressed deep regret and great respect for each other. Their separation is final and Miss Gardner will seek a divorce.” That night, a New York disc jockey played a Sinatra record, which he introduced as “Ava Gardner’s newest release.”
Ava announced that she was leaving for Rome to make The Barefoot Contessa with Humphrey Bogart. She said she was in no hurry to file for divorce but nonchalantly dismissed the possibility of a reconciliation. She invented and reinvented her marriage for reporters and ranged from sexually ridiculing Frank as “Mr. Sin-Nada” (nothing) to proclaiming him “the man I’ll always love.”
Frank was devastated and made no pretense about it. When reporters asked him about the break-up, he said, “I guess it’s over if that’s what she says. It’s very sad … it’s tragic. I feel very badly about it.”
One friend suggested that he call Ava, and said she was as miserable as Frank was. “Then why is she going to Rome to make a picture?” Frank asked. “How are we going to make up if she’s going to be so far away?” He never made the call.
A few nights later, the newspapers reported that Ava was seen dining quietly with Peter Lawford at Frascati’s in Los Angeles. Knowing that Peter and Ava had dated years before, Frank flew into a rage and called Lawford, threatening him.
“Oh, God, he was furious with me for going out with Ava,” said Peter Lawford many years later. “He screamed, ‘Do you want your legs broken, you fucking asshole? Well, you’re going to get them broken if I ever hear you’re out with Ava again. So help me, I’ll kill you. Do you hear me?’ Then he slammed the phone down. I was panicked. I mean I was really scared. Frank’s a violent guy and he’s good friends with too many guys who’d rather kill you than say hello. I didn’t want to die, so I called Jimmy Van Heusen and said, ‘Please tell him nothing happened. Please.’ Jimmy said not to worry. That Frank would get over it. He knew we’d been friends since 1945. Well, Frank got over it all right, but it took him six years!”
Out of his mind with grief over Ava, Frank flew to New York en route to a nightclub engagement at the Chase Hotel in St. Louis. He wandered around Manhattan like one of the damned, filled with remorse and self-pity, unable to focus on anything but his terrible personal loss. He began frightening friends by telephoning in a gloomy voice, “Please see that the children are taken care of,” and hanging up.
On November 18, 1953, Jimmy Van Heusen, who had an apartment on Fifty-seventh Street, found Frank on the floor of the elevator with his wrists slashed. Van Heusen immediately called a doctor and rushed Frank to Mt. Sinai Hospital, but not before paying the man at the front desk of his building fifty dollars to keep quiet about the incident.
The people in charge of Frank’s booking at the Chase Hotel had no idea of what had happened, but they grew more concerned by the minute when he failed to show up for rehearsal.
“We were frantic,” said the booking agent, “and we started calling all over. We called the Sands in Las Vegas; we called his home in Los Angeles; we called Palm Springs and New York, but no one could find him. Finally someone decided to call Morris Schenker, a lawyer in St. Louis who has ties to everyone, to see whether he could find out something. He called us back minutes later and said Frank would not be coming because he’d just slashed his wrists.”
Frank’s closest friend, songwriter Jimmy Van Heusen, had lived through the traumas of the Ava Gardner courtship and the tumultuous marriage. Affable and easygoing, he had never crossed Frank, no matter how deplorable Frank’s behavior. He had harbored him in Palm Springs every time Frank stormed out of the house after a fight with Ava, and had spent those nights helping Frank drink his misery away.
When Van Heusen’s apartment in New York had been the scene of one of the worst rows between Ava and Frank, with both of them cursing and screaming and breaking furniture, Jimmy had laughed it off. But having recently suffered what he thought was a heart attack, Van Heusen was now trying to protect his health. The sight of his bloodied friend was more than he could take. So he finally stood up to Sinatra and told him he would end their friendship forever unless Frank promised to seek psychiatric care
