"Why don't you pass the time by playing a little solitaire?"
Political thriller released in 1962. It was directed by John Frankenheimer and written by George Axelrod, based on the novel by Richard Condon. The stars included Laurence Harvey as Raymond Shaw, Frank Sinatra as Bennett Marco, Angela Lansbury as Mrs. Iselin, Janet Leigh as Rose Chaney, and James Gregory as Senator Iselin.
Harvey portrays a decorated Korean War veteran who has been secretly brainwashed by Communists -- anytime he sees the Queen of Diamonds, he must obey any command given to him. Gregory is his politically ambitious father, and Lansbury is his even more ambitious mother. Sinatra is an old friend of Harvey's who is trying to save him... but is he also controlled by evil forces?
This is a beautiful, intense, terrifying, mind-trip movie. Made as a comment on the Cold War, it has not lost any of its power in the ensuing decades. Everyone turns in great performances, particularly Harvey, Sinatra, and Lansbury, who was nominated for an Oscar.
Unsurprisingly, the film's highly political nature caused it some problems. Before United Artists optioned Condon's book, Arthur Krim, who was the studio president and the finance chairman of the Democratic Party, worried that the subject matter was inappropriate. As a favor to Sinatra, who was helping to bankroll the project, President John F. Kennedy called Krim to tell him he didn't have a problem with UA making a film of the novel. And after Kennedy's assassination in 1963, Sinatra had the movie pulled from circulation. The movie was banned in Soviet Bloc nations like Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria, as well as in Finland and Sweden.
Marco: "This is me, Marco, talking. Fifty-two red queens and me are telling you... you know what we're telling you? It's over! The links, the beautifully conditioned links are smashed. They're smashed as of now because we say so, because we say they are to be smashed. We're busting up the joint, we're tearing out all the wires. We're busting it up so good all the queen's horses and all the queen's men will never put old Raymond back together again. You don't work any more! That's an order. Anybody invites you to a game of solitaire, you tell 'em sorry, buster, the ball game is over."
Some research from the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com)