Hollywood rumor holds that Sinatra removed the film from distribution after the John F. Kennedy assassination. This is untrue, as can be confirmed from the Time Magazine archives section online. Certainly the film was rarely shown in the decades after 1963, but it did appear as part of the Thursday Night Movies series on CBS on September 16, 1965 and again later that season. It was also shown twice on NBC, once in the spring of 1974 and again in the summer of 1975. Sinatra did not acquire distribution rights to The Manchurian Candidate until the late 1970s. He was involved in a theatrical re-release of the film in 1988. The film has aired on a fairly regular basis on the Turner Classic Movies and American Movie Classics cable networks.
Michael Schlesinger, who was responsible for the film's 1988 reissue, maintains that the film's apparent withdrawal was unrelated to the Kennedy assassination. He notes that the film was "simply played out" by 1963, and that MGM did not re-release it theatrically until 1988 due to disagreements with Sinatra's attorneys over the terms of the film's licensing.
Similar rumors and treatment surround the film Suddenly! in which Sinatra himself starred as a Presidential assassin.
