- Monday, the questions will start all
over again.
-
- When the much-publicized video of the
Zapruder film becomes available for the first time in retail stores, you
can expect discussions about the assassination of President Kennedy to
surface on TV talk shows and in dinner-table conversation.
-
- The video program featuring Abraham Zapruder's
original 26-second home movie, which has been digitally enhanced frame
by frame, includes material not seen before because it was contained between
the original film's sprocket holes.
-
- The video's slow-motion close-ups are
shocking, particularly those beginning with Frame 313: A shot explodes
in a bloody cloud, and fragments of the president's head fall backward.
-
- For those who scoff at the Warren Commission's
report, who think the gunshots could not all have come from behind Kennedy,
this visual evidence, widely available starting Monday, will strengthen
their belief.
-
- ``This is going to reinforce, for probably
nine out of 10 people, that John F. Kennedy was hit in the head from the
front. And if so, two shooters. And two shooters means conspiracy,'' says
George Michael Evica, a University of Hartford professor emeritus, author
and senior editor of a journal called the Assassination Chronicles.
-
- ``Maybe nine out of 10 people, they see
that head snap back. Jackie didn't do that, the car didn't do that. That's
a hit from the front.''
-
- Other assassination researchers disagree
just as strongly with that conclusion.
-
- The MPI Home Video documentary, titled
``Image of an Assassination: A New Look at the Zapruder Film,'' shows the
painstaking steps in renewing the Nov. 22, 1963, footage.
-
- The 45-minute video, retailing for $19.95,
is being released to satisfy numerous requests for research, educational
and personal use, ``balancing, as we have throughout the years, the public
interest in access with our desire to protect against exploitation of this
tragic event,'' Zapruder's son, Henry G. Zapruder, said in a prepared statement.
-
- But the video release also reveals what
most Americans may not know:
-
- The original Zapruder film, locked away
since 1978 in the National Archives in a storage vault kept at 25 degrees,
is not intact. The film has two breaks in it, and, some have argued, perhaps
more; four to 10 of the film's roughly 500 frames are believed missing.
-
- The film was damaged by lab technicians
at Life magazine, whose parent company, Time Inc., bought the rights to
the film in 1963. The missing frames were evident as early as 1964, when
the Warren Commission report was released.
-
-
-
- Complete copies
-
- Complete, unbroken copies of the Zapruder
film do exist. Evica says a Secret Service copy appeared in a Lee Harvey
Oswald mock trial presented on British television. But they are, nonetheless,
copies.
-
- An attorney for a company owned by the
Zapruder family says the original Zapruder film is indeed missing frames.
But it was used as a template for the video for reasons of authenticity.
-
- ``People want a reference to the original
Zapruder film, not the copies,'' says Jamie Silverberg, an attorney with
LMH Co., formed by Zapruder's widow, Lillian, and his children, Henry and
Myrna.
-
- Copies of the original would not include
the area between the film sprockets, which function to drive the camera
and projector but also contain additional bits of visual information, Silverberg
says. The copies contain only the main film image.
-
- The missing original frames are apparently
lost forever. MPI had considered reinserting the missing frames from copies.
But, Silverberg says, ``that wouldn't be an exact replication of the original
Zapruder film.''
-
- One of the breaks comes early in the
motorcade footage, but the other occurs when the president's head is behind
a street sign, near the time of the first gunshot.
-
- ``Researchers have always believed that
something conspiratorial happened in (the missing frames),'' says H.D.
Motyl, director of production at MPI Media Group in Orland Park, Ill. ``The
fact is, that if people want to investigate or see those frames, they're
available on copies.''
-
- Abraham Zapruder died in 1970, but his
name will always be linked with a sunny, deadly day in Dallas.
-
- Zapruder, a Dallas dress manufacturer,
filmed the parade with a Bell & Howell Zoomatic Director Series camera.
Standing on top of a concrete pedestal to get a better view, he asks his
assistant, Marilyn Sitzman, to steady him from behind should he become
dizzy.
-
- After the shots were fired and the president
shot, he began screaming: ``They killed him! They killed him!''
-
- Later, in an interview at the WFAA-TV
studio in Dallas, Zapruder said he never stopped filming despite the horror
before him. ``I saw his head partially open up, and I just kept shooting,''
he said.
-
- On the day of the assassination, after
reporters and a Secret Service agent found out about the film, it was processed
and three duplicates were printed. Two duplicates were given to the Secret
Service, which kept one and gave another to the FBI. Zapruder gave his
copy and the original to Life magazine in return for $50,000 for print
rights.
-
-
-
- Film withheld
-
- When Life publisher C.D. Jackson first
saw the film the Sunday after the assassination, he apparently was so upset
by the gruesome image of the president's head being blown apart that he
urged the company to obtain all rights from Zapruder and withhold the film
from public viewing until an appropriate, later time. Zapruder was paid
$150,000 by Time Inc.
-
- The film received its first public showing
in New Orleans in 1969, after it was subpoenaed as part of District Attorney
Jim Garrison's unsuccessful prosecution of businessman Clay Shaw. In 1975,
it surfaced again, in bootleg form, on Geraldo Rivera's ``Good Night America''
talk show.
-
- In the intervening years, scores of bootleg
copies of the tape were made.
-
- In 1975, Time Inc. -- concerned about
how the film was being used -- turned the copyright of the film over to
LMH Co. for a token payment of $1. The National Archives has maintained
the film, as a courtesy, since 1978.
-
- Evica believes the video may change people's
minds about the lone-gunman theory, and as such, may provide a ``historic
moment'' in the study of the assassination.
-
- ``What this film has always apparently
showed is John F. Kennedy being hit from the front,'' Evica said.
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