The first time that I saw Suddenly, I was struck by the philosophical themes addressed by the characters in the film’s dialogue. Seeing it more than once brought the importance of these themes into sharper focus.
Suddenly is in the public domain and is available to watch online for free. Click here to see it at the Internet Archive. It’s worth it, however, to find the DVD published by Film Chest Inc. because it includes audio commentary provided by Tom Santopietro, author of several books and one about Frank Sinatra in particular.
The film starts with a vignette explaining the name of the town, Suddenly. Local deputy sheriff Slim Adams explains the history of the town to a passing motorist who stops for directions. I found this dialogue a bit stilted, maybe even unnecessary. The opening credits follow and appear over different shots of the town of Suddenly; these shots portray the town as small and sleepy. The visuals behind the credits and the violence and tension throughout the film would have contrasted sharply enough without the opening vignette.
Peter Benson, Ellen Benson’s son, nicknamed Pidge, walks down the main street in Suddenly and stops to admire a toy gun in a shop window. He meets Sheriff Tod Shaw and tells him that he would really like a gun. Tod Shaw is in love with Pidge’s mother Ellen. She’s a war widow; her husband Pete was killed fighting in World War II. She does not want her son to be a victim of violence and doesn’t want him to have a gun. Tod buys Pidge a toy gun anyway, which angers Ellen Benson when she discovers what Tod has done.
This difference of opinion is one of the factors that set the stage for existential conflicts about violence and gun ownership. Ellen Benson thinks her husband’s death in the war was a waste. Her loss and grief about her husband’s death make her protective of her son Pidge. Pop Benson, Ellen’s father-in-law, thinks his son would be ashamed that she held this opinion of his willingness to do his duty. (Pop Benson’s judgment seems a little harsh to me: I’m sure Ellen’s husband would have understood that his wife and son would miss him.) Tod Shaw and Pop Benson give the same speech to Ellen about what they see as her overprotecting Pidge. Tod and her father-in-law think Pidge should be allowed to have a cap gun and that he should know about injustice and evil in the world so that he will be better prepared to deal with it. They believe Pidge shouldn’t be sheltered from the realities and horrors of life. He should be equipped to protect and defend his home and family. I’m not sure how old Pidge is in the film, but I thought he was school age and a little young to be pressured into ideas about protecting his family and country.
A wire comes in to the local telegraph office, a top-secret message, that the president is traveling and intends to stop briefly in Suddenly. Tod Shaw, as the lead law enforcement official in town, learns of this news and meets with Secret Service agents about plans for the president’s safety. Pop Benson is a retired Secret Service agent, and he recognizes one of the agents. He and the rest of the Benson family soon learn that the president will be passing through town. One of the Secret Service agents, Dan Carney, used to work for Pop Benson; Carney is the one to tell Tod Shaw that they have heard credible reports that strangers might be in town to assassinate the president.
(This article about Suddenly contains spoilers.)
John Baron and his two accomplices, Benny Conklin and Bart Wheeler, arrive at the Benson residence and pass themselves off as Secret Service agents, but they really want to use the Benson house because of its strategic location: It’s perfect to take a shot at the president while he is sitting on the train. Baron and his men take the Benson family hostage and take over their home. When Tod Shaw comes to the Benson house with Carney, Carney is shot and killed, and Shaw is also taken hostage. The fact that the sheriff and the Secret Service agents are armed and on alert does nothing to protect the Benson family: They are still taken hostage by men who also have guns.
Both John Baron and Tod Shaw are World War II veterans. Baron won a Silver Star and killed twenty-seven Japanese. Shaw and Baron talk about the difference between killing in wartime and in peacetime, about winning medals and being given the chair. According to Baron, the difference between killing in the war and killing after the war is that he is no longer paid for it. In war, killing is sanctioned. Learning how to kill became useless after the war unless Baron could turn to crime and get paid handsomely for it. He maintains that nothing will change by killing the president because another person will step in to take his place. But he still wants to commit the murder and be paid for it.
John Baron says several things that make his arguments about killing cold and calculating. He reveals himself to be someone without any morals and with no respect for life. He says that the first time he killed a man, he felt some self-respect. He was taught to kill legitimately during wartime and found that he liked it: “The gun gives you the power of life and death.” At one point, Baron even talks about his childhood, which does offer a little bit of sympathy for him, but it’s not enough to excuse his actions as an adult.
Tod Shaw takes a different approach. He uses his skills to defend his town during peacetime in his job as sheriff. He sees the job as one of self-defense, and he sees killing otherwise as immoral and criminal. John Baron tells Tod Shaw that his tour in the military was finished and he then returned to the United States, which wasn’t true during the war. Shaw then realizes that Baron was court-martialed; even in wartime, Baron apparently crosses a line that the military refused to tolerate.
The amount of violence in the film is quite high, and most of it comes from people having guns. For example, Dan Carney, the Secret Service agent, is killed in the Benson house, as is Jud Hobson, the television repair person, in a separate incident. At the end of the film, Deputy Sheriff Slim Adams is in critical condition after a shootout with Benny Conklin (but the deputy sheriff will probably make it). Ellen Benson is the one who shoots John Baron first. She takes Baron by surprise and incapacitates him with a first shot. Sheriff Tod Shaw takes the gun from Ellen and shoots John Baron a second time, finally killing him.
In spite of their philosophical differences, John Baron and Tod Shaw can relate to one another because of their war service. The existential threats that the war posed and that continued to haunt Americans afterward are revealed mostly through the conversations between these two men. They came away with different opinions, philosophies, and views of life as a result of those wartime experiences, but they still share a lot of similarities simply by virtue of what they have seen during war. Their opposing views seem to represent the postwar malaise in the United States and the difficulty in coming to terms with the war.
I was struck by the talk of World War II and the experience of war, and by the philosophical themes it brought up for many of the characters, even if they wouldn’t have used the term philosophical themes themselves. These themes start with Pidge’s desire to have a cap gun and his mother’s reluctance to let him begin to learn that violence exists in the world.
I plan to write about Suddenly again because I want to give some attention to the mother, Ellen Benson, and her role, however small, in the discussion and (non)resolution of the gun issue. The role of Ellen Benson also highlights how women were often portrayed and treated in the 1950s. Some things have changed since the postwar period, but almost seventy years later, some things remain.
October 7, 1954, release date • Directed by Lewis Allen • Screenplay by Richard Sale • Music by David Raksin • Edited by John F. Schreyer • Cinematography by Charles G. Clarke
Frank Sinatra as John Baron • Sterling Hayden as Sheriff Tod Shaw • James Gleason as Peter (aka Pop) Benson • Nancy Gates as Ellen Benson • Kim Charney as Peter (aka Pidge) Benson • Paul Frees as Benny Conklin • Christopher Dark as Bart Wheeler • Willis Bouchey as Dan Carney, Chief Secret Service Agent • Paul Wexler as Deputy Sheriff Slim Adams • James Lilburn as Jud Kelly (Jud Hobson in the credits) • Kem Dibbs as Wilson • Clark Howat as Haggerty • Charles Smith as Bebop • Dan White as Desk Officer Burg • Richard Collier as Ed Hawkins • Roy Engel as the first driver • Ted Stanhope as the second driver • Charles Wagenheim as Kaplan • John Beraradino as a trooper
Distributed by United Artists • Produced by Libra Productions, Inc.
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