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John Frankenheimer’s The Manchurian Candidate premieres. Adapted by George Axelrod from the novel by Richard Condon, the film, set at the height of the Cold War, stars Frank Sinatra as an Army intelligence officer who suspects that the recurring nightmares he has been suffering following his release from a North Korean POW camp are tied to a sinister Communist brainwashing conspiracy that has somehow groomed his former fellow prisoner (Lawrence Harvey) to assassinate a US presidential candidate. A prescient political thriller anchored by a superb performance from Angela Lansbury as the vituperative, politically ambitious mother from hell.
