Transcripts For CSPAN3 The Presidency Abraham Zapruder And JFK Assassination 20171124

History centers here at smu can come together and its wonderful for us to chronologically at least the younger partner if you will, the Clements Center has been the leading center for southwest studies for at least a generation. We still in our toddler phase look up to them and they also babysit us. It works out quite nicely. Im thrilled to have you all here tonight for our continuing series looking at history and president ial history especially since this one in particular, our talk tonight has of course such a dallas flair to it. One might say its fundamentally a dallas story and we all know especially having gone through the last 50th anniversary of the fateful day in 1963 how much dallas is continuing to wrestle with what happened here, how much dallas is coming to terms with it and in fact i want to take a moment and point out one of our good friends, Nick Longford here from the 6th floor museum which i said this in front of her before, to my mind the single best Public History Museum in the country. [ applause ] precisely because it actually takes a hard look at as much as possible. And thats what were going to do tonights personally with this dallas story. I also want to point out you may have heard that about 25 years ago in fact, exactly 25 years ago, congress in its great infinite wisdom and foresight not a phrase we usually associate with congress, they knew that we were going to have this event tonight. And consequently wrote the law specifically so that all those jfk documents would become available. If you have not heard i was just shown on the phone ten seconds ago President Trump has decided to release most of the documents which is great for us because that means whenever we do a kennedy event well always have a bigger audience because people will always say what about those other documents. I guarantee you theres nothing of interest in those documents. I have not seen them but feeling confident about that. In the event, we are here to discuss a particular moment from that 1963 event and a particular moment that you have all seen. One of the fascinating things to me about the entire sequence that well hear tonight about the film is how much human memory is formed through images and visual representation. You all have been to the site of the film in 1963. Your memories have no idea that you were not there. Because youre processing the information. Its really become a way that that site has become a global site in many ways. You dont have to have ever been there to have been there. And the person who really gave us that moment, well, were going to hear that story tonight. Were going to hear it in particular from alexandra who began her career as one of the founding staff of the National Holocaust museum in washington, d. C. She graduated from Smith College and subsequently got a masters degree in education from Harvard University and then in 2002 che completed her first book, diaries of the holocaust which won the National Jewish book award exploring the history of the holocaust. It was subsequently made into part of part of that turned into an mtv series called im still here and she has recently come out in a second paperback edition. In november of 2016 she published her second book. My personal copy. So i get this back. A personal history 26 seconds, personal history of the supruda film. Help me in welcoming our speaker tonight alexandra. [ applause ] thank you so much. Can you all hear me . Can you all hear me . I want to thank andrew who was the director for the Clement Center for southwest studies and jeffr jeffr jeffrey angle for inviting me tonight. Of course, in the front row, my beloved family, my aunt mirna who was abrahams daughter. My cousin erin, dear family friends. That always makes it extra special for me to be in dallas. So what i thought i would do is begin by talking a little bit about how this book came to be. In the years that i was growing up, i think it would be safe to say the one thing that the supruda family did not talk about was the film. It was something that was compartmentalized in our lives. It wasnt we didnt know about it or i wasnt aware of it growing up but it wasnt something that we ever talked about. I overheard my parents or saw people stop my parents and ask them about our name but i cant recall a single time in my childhood when i asked a direct question about the film. What i knew growing up were the stories about my grandfather that my father told about who he was, his sense of humor, his personality, his eccentric side, his jokes, talents, but the film was off to the side. It might have stayed that way expect that my dad got sick in 2004. And died rather young in 2006. And at some point during his illness he said to me, you know, somebody really should interview me about the film. And i remember thinking theres something to he had something to say. But i didnt interview him. Which of course i regret now. But it was not something that i could do. It was not something that we could do as a family. So after he died i began thinking about the documents which were scattered around. Things at my aunts house, things in the lawyers offices, things in my fathers offices, papers, records, photographs, and i started to feel that it was important to would be important to bring these documents together and preserve them and i was not alone in the family in thinking this was something that we needed to do and also to interview people who were close to our family or who were involved in the life of the film who might be able to shed some light on it. But what i realized is that i didnt know what to ask. I didnt know i knew nothing about the life of the film. Really. The narrative, the story of our familys relationship to it was completely unknown to me. Even in order to begin to conduct interviews and gathering the papers and figuring out what about this body of material might represent i needed to educate myself so i started reading about the film. Being a writer and someone who is curious about the past and what i found as i began to read the books that had been published and the articles was that there were these gaps in the historical record, all these places where there were parts of the story that were missing. And there were parts of the story that had been told in the absence of any information from our family, conjecture, assumptions, ways of interpresenting our familys mode of behavior. I began to understand our familys public silence had left out really a critical thread in the understanding of the film. The essential piece of that is that when people wrote about the film, they forgot it was a home movie. The centrality of the home movie was never lost to us. This was so personal for my grandfather. And it was so personal for our family. And all the decisions that he made and that my father made in later years grew out of our familys values and our familys sense of what was important and my grandfathers history and that shaped the life of the film and that private life was braided together with the public life in a way that had never really been explored. It if hadnt been for that im not sure i would have written this book because i dont think i would have felt that there was a public story to tell. But i began to understand that only a zapruder could fill in the gaps and in order to do that i was going to become an expert of what i had known nothing about for most of my life. What im going to do tonight is just introduce you a little bit to the life of my grandfather and our family and talk about the taking of the film and how my grandfathers past influenced it and the life of the film over 50 years. So our grandfather was born in 1905 in imperial, russia. That is him in his mothers arms in if photograph. The little blond boy probably at the age of 2 or 3. His mother had four children. They were extremely poor. They lived exactly in the circumstances of hardship and suffering that all jews would have in imperial, russia at that time. Antisemitism, not being able to be educated. Poverty, deprivation of all kinds. His own father left russia where they were from in 1909 to come to america and left hanna with her four children. And they remained in russia until they did not reach the United States until 11 years later in 1920. During that time there was of course world war i, there were many, many, many antisemitic program that is took place in that region. Unbelievable violence directed at the Jewish Community and in 1918 the bulshavic revolution. You can see theres abraham and there are three siblings, ida all the way to the left, morris, the little boy in the middle and fanny the little girl to his right. At some point in those years morris between 1915 and 1920 morris either died or was killed. The circumstances are not clear. And this photograph and this document shows hannas emergency passport application by this time the father israel had gotten his naturalization citizenship and so she was able to apply for an emergency passport from warsau and make her way to the United States. By the time she did that morris was almost certainly dead and i think you can see the difference in her from the time of the first picture that was taken and her face in this later one after having lived through the war and 11 years of having been a mother to her four children alone, the loss of a son, the revolution and trying to make her way to america. They arrived in 1920, were reunited with my great grandfather israel. Our grandfather was someone who in russia had always wanted to study and always wanted to play music. He had a deep, deep, deep love of music. And was extremely statalented. He was able to play music by ear. He never had a lesson but he was just this was a great passion of his. When he came to america he said about becoming as thoroughly american as quickly as he could like so many people did. I found this document in the family papers, his certificate of literacy having gone to night school to learn english. This like so many jews of this generation, he of course, went to work on 7th avenue in the garment industry. This is his union booklet that shows inside he paid his dues faithfully i want you to know. And then 1925 is abe in the middle with hair which is not how hes usually seen and holding a banjo with his friends at the lake. I think its so amazing to see that first picture of him, this little boy in imperial russia and 20 years later there he is with his bow tie on the lake with his friends and embracing his new life in america as thoroughly as he could. I like to say that i dont know if this is true, my aunt is here so she can correct me if im wrong. I like to say our grandfather had three great loves. He loved music. He loved cameras and gadgets. And he loved my grandmother. This is what she looked like standing in front of the apartment they both lived in. They were living on beaver street in brooklyn. In 19 i believe this picture was taken in the early 30s and she loved him from the very beginning. She was just smitten so i was told by alice, her oldest from that she set her cap at him and that was it. He was always the one for her. They married in 1933 and here they are at niagara falls. The thing about my grandfather that is so relevant for this story because so far this story is probably like a lot of your parents or grandparents stories. Its extremely familiar, coming to this country very poor, becoming american, embracing a new life. For my grandfather and grandmother, being american, snappy dressers, not having an accent, embracing a social life, adopting american ways was deeply important to them. My grandfather wanted to shed everything that had to do with the old ways, with russia and with everything that represented. His older sisters on the other hand and his parents were not so successful in doing that. And it was something that i think he saw that they were just at an age where it was that much harder for them to, you know, really let go of the past. But as a boy of 15 coming to this country and coming of age here, this was incredibly important to him. The other thing i should say is they went to the other thing they did on their honeymoon was to go to the 1933 chicago worlds fair. The theme of the worlds fair was a century of progress and that really encapsulates this other great love of his, gadgets, cameras, anything that represented madernty. He loved to tinker around the house and wire things and make things work more efficiently. This gave him an enormous amount of pleasure and that relates intimately to him becoming such a home movie enthusiast. Just briefly show you, they moved to dallas in 1941. Here they are together in dallas. A picture i think really captures something of their rapport. I should have said i never knew my grandfather. He died when i was 11 months old. Everything i know from him i know from stories and interviews and the photographs. And i always grew up with a sense of his absence and this book gave me an opportunity to fill in a great many gaps about his story and who he was. Then here he is with my grandmother and my aunt mirna. Who is sitting right here in the front row and my dad looking adoringly at his father. They eventually moved out to marquette street in Highland Park and really attained the middle class. Did exactly what one was supposed to do coming to america as an immigrant and found their way. So well fastforward to 1963. Heres my grandfather. How most people are used to seeing him. And with his receptionist, who i had no idea she was so hot until i found this picture. I mean shes kind of fabulous, right, with the cigarette and everything . So, you know, this is a good moment to sort of talk about i think the zapruders and the kennedys. At this time in the early 1960s everyone in our family were devoted kennedy supporters. My grandfather and grandmother of course, my aunt volunteered for the campaign in south dallas. My dad, one of the Amazing Things that happened in the course of this research was that i found well, first, one of these letters, there was a letter that my father had written to senator kennedy during the campaign that came to me through gary mack, the former curator of the 6th floor museum and when i was corresponding with the president ial the kennedy president ial library i came upon another letter my father had written to kennedy president. He was just about to graduate from harvard law and wrote this beautiful letter pleading for a job and saying i want to be part of the new frontier. You ask not what my country can do for me, but what i my country. Im asking you, you know, what can i do. And so it really represented for me not only a window into my father as a young man and a very much an idealist and very much of this time, but also the depth of attachment that our family had for president kennedy and the kennedys as so many other people did. That this wasnt something that came about retroactively, but was something that existed from the very beginning. On the morning of november 22nd, 1963, you all recognize, of course usually i have to show people this map, and show them where my grandfather was standing. But i have feeling in this particular room i could dispense with that activity. My aunt mile rrena and ruth and went down to love field to welcome the president and the first lady and were there at this moment when they got off the plane. My uncle was waiting on main street, looking out of his Office Building to see the motorcade go by. And my grandfather had that morning gone to his office, which was located at 501 elm street, just adjacent to where the motorcade was going to pass by. And had said several days before that he planned to bring his movie camera. And i should have said by now that 1963, he had started taking home movies in 1934 when my aunt was a baby. And there are a lot of i mean, forgive me. But really boring, right, home movies of her taking a bath of and of her waking up from a bath and of her sitting and waiting in her highchair just like everybody elses home movies. And the children growing up in new york and dallas. And so he was really someone who had been taking movies, home movies, for a long time. And he was quite good at it. And the previous year, you may have seen coming in the bell and howell director series zoom attic camera he had bought this brandnew top of the line camera. But he had left it home that day. And its such an interesting story. People have always said, this is a great example of where it helps. Always the story was, he forgot it, or, you know, it was rainy or he thought he was too short. But the truth is that he was always, as ive learned, always a little reticent. A little hesitant to put himself forward. A little insecure, perhaps because he hadnt had an education, because he was an immigrant to this country. So he left the camera at home. And when he got to the office, lilian rogers, who was his longtime assistant and became a dear friend of the family, basically nagged him until he went home to get it. And, you know, people always say this is so amazing, this so incredible. This is such a twist of fate. But if you knew him and her, you knew this is how everything happened in their relationship. He hesitated. She nagged. He demured. She nagged a little bit more. And then he did it. Thats how it went. And so, again, its this weird way in which for me, i understood at some point as i began to do this work that i knew things that i didnt even know i knew. You know, i didnt know the history of the film, but i knew the family. I knew how things worked. I knew our story. And those were the pieces that could be put together with this bigger history to tell it in a fuller way. He went down to dealey plaza with the camera. Scouted out a spot. Again, being quite a good photographer, he tried a couple of locations before eventually settling on this fourfoothigh little concrete abutment where he stood, set the camera to full zoom. He had marliilyn, the hot receptionist behind him, because he had vertigo, to make sure he didnt get dizzy. [ laughter ] im just saying. And waited for the motorcade to pass by. So im going to im going to let my grandfather take over. And some of you may have seen this short interview that he gave, describing what he saw that day. The gentleman just walked in our studio that im meeting for the first time, as well as you. This is wfatv, dallas texas. May i have your name, please, sir . My name is alexander zap ruda. And would you tell us your story . I got out, and about a half hour earlier, a good spot to shoot some pictures. And i found a spot one of these concrete blocks near the park interpass. And i go to the top and there was another girl from my office, she was behind me. And as i was shooting, as the president is coming down from houston street, making his turn, it was about halfway down there, i had a shot. And he slumped to the side, like this. Then i had another shot or two, i couldnt see whether it was one or two. And i saw his head practically open up. All blood and everything. And i kept on shooting. Thats about all im just sick. I cant i think that pretty well expresses the entire feelings of the whole world. Yeah. So that interview was taken was made just within hours of the assassination. What we have now has been pieced together about the events of that immediate afternoon were that immediately after the assassination, of course, our grandfather knew exactly what had happened. And knew for sure that the president was dead, which not you know, no one else around him knew this. He got down from this concrete ledge, and was distraught, screaming that that the president was dead, that he had been killed. And was sort of dazed on the plaza. And was approached by Harry Mccormick, who was a reporter for the dallas morning news, who saw him with the camera and said, you know, what do you have . Do you have film of what happened . And our grandfather immediately responded that he needed to talk to the federal authorities. Immediately aware that there was going to be the minute that the press got wind of this, that was going to be something to contend with. But that he had to be in touch with someone from the federal government. So Harry Mccormick knew soorls, the head of the secret service in dallas and had to find him and bring him back to my grandfathers manufacturing company. So my grandfather went back to the office. There waiting for him was darwin payne, another reporter, who had become aware of the film, who interviewed him at that very moment, and the notes for that interview, handwritten notes for that interview are incredibly powerful and poignant and in the archives of the sixth floor museum. My grandfather immediately tried to reach my father. First calling our home, my mother to my parents, meanwhile, i have should have said this. My parents, meanwhile my dad had gotten a job in the justice department, working for bobby kennedy, his longawaited dream job working in the administration. They had married on october 31st, 1963, had their honeymoon and come to washington. So this was two weeks after he started this job that he had wanted so much. And my grandfather was able to get my father on the phone. And the way that my father remembered this was that he was distraught, he was crying, he kept saying over and over again that the president was dead. But the thing that stood out to me when i read this account that my father had given was that he kept saying he couldnt believe that this had happened in america. He couldnt believe that the president could be shot down like a dog on the street. And, again, i think it takes knowing his past to understand that he had just been a witness, and the recorder of this moment that belonged to the exact past that he had fled from. This was exactly the kind of senseless violence, political assassination, somebody being dragged off a train and killed, that he had left behind in russia for america. Because of everything that america represented. And although i dont think that he could have put that into words in that way at that moment, the fact that he kept emphasizing that he couldnt believe it happened here, i think speaks so much to the the particular irony of him having been the person who caught this on film and what it really meant for him to be that person witnessing it in that particular moment. There was not time to think about that then. Things happened very quickly. Forest sorls came to jennifer juniors. They set out to try to get the film developed. And here is another very important one of those little moments, things that happened in history that changed the course of history that in ways that you couldnt predict. Forest sorls did not in that moment say, mr. Yes. Pruder, were going to take your camera and get it developed and well be in touch with you. He said, lets go see if we can get the film developed. And so they set off together and this interview was done at wfaa, where they went to try to get the film processed, unsuccessfully. Went on to kodak. And at the kodak labs, forest sorls learned that oswald had been arrested and was called back to secret service headquarters. And as he was leaving, he said to my grandfather, if it comes out, would you give us a copy . And my grandfather said, sure. And that was that. It is one of the things about this story that i thought so much when i was writing it is that you cannot forget that it was 1963. Its moments like this that remind you of a time when that would have been an interaction between these two people over this object. Instead of it being immediately swarmed upon and understood as something that could potentially be of enormous significance. It took the rest of the day to get the film developed. To get duplicates made. To deliver two copies of the film to the secret service in dallas. And by the end of the night, my grandfather came home in his car with the original camera, the original film, and a copy of the film with him. Walked into the house that night and without saying anything to anybody, set up the projector and showed the film to my grandmother and my uncle. My aunt reports that she was much too distraught to watch the film at that time. And i ended up beginning the book with this story of the film being shown in the den of the zapruder family home on the night of november it 22 hadnt, because it puts the film where it belongs, understood as a home movie, exactly the way the films had always been shown in the den to the family. Even though this had this tremendous significance, it was, nevertheless, deeply, deeply personal to him. And that was something that never changed. That night, before my grandfather could go to bed, he got a call from richard stally, dick stally, l. A. Bureau chief of life magazine, who had come to dallas, learned my grandfathers name, looked him up in the phone book, and called the house, wanting to know if he could come over and see the film. And this is a photograph of a young dick stally. The immediately, my grandfather understood, i think, the outlines of the problem that was facing him. There was going to be a media frenzy over this film. He was traumatized, of course, deeply fearful that it would be exploited or used in a way that was not in keeping with his values. But aware that he needed to be rid of it. That he wasnt going to be able to keep it. And that he had this object in his hands that he was going to have to figure out something, what to do with it. And in that context, i think that the call from dick stally was probably something of a relief. Because, of course, life magazine was very much beloved, a very trusted pictorial magazine. At the time. They were decent, respectful people. They had a relationship with the Kennedy Family. And i think he felt in that moment that this might offer him a way out of the situation. A way to entrust it to someone into an institution that would treat it respectfully. But also not have to keep it. And that is, in fact, what happened. Im not going to take too much time to go into all the details. You can read the book. [ laughter ] if you want to. But i will just say, over the course of the weekend, the prohibprint rights were sold on saturday morning and the film rights on monday. There was an unbelievable frenzy in the office on saturday, a scene that i described in great detail over with the reporters desperately trying to get their hands on the film and trying to convince my grandfather to sell to them and not to richard stally. And then a rather colorful episode with dan rather that occurred on monday, and ill just leave that there. One of the things that sorry. Theres one missing here. Oh. Hmmm. One of the things that made this is a little bit out of order. But one of the things that made this story complicated wow, were missing a slide. Thats interesting how that happens. One of the things that made this story very difficult for me to take on was that there was i a moral dilemma at the heart of it. A moral dilemma that my grandfather was aware of. And that kind of reverberated through our family, even though we didnt talk about it. And that was the obvious thing. How does one ultimately financially profit from a National Tragedy like this . Without taking a moral hit . This was something that plagued my grandfather over the weekend of the assassination. What to do, what to do. He couldnt keep the film. He knew that he needed to get rid of it. It also represented a financial opportunity. The truth is, he grew up incredibly poor in russia and i think anyone can understand how hard it would have been to walk away in that moment. And yet it felt wrong. It felt like there was something about it that was deeply unpalatable and contrary to his values. So he struggled enormously over those days figuring out what to do. And ultimately what he did is he walked the line. And by that i mean he did sell it to life magazine for 150,000. But he made life promise to treat the film with dignity and good taste, which is in the contract. If you can just stop and imagine for a moment a contract with a major magazine that requires they handle this film with dignity and good taste. Thats the last time that ever happened. [ laughter ] i can tell you that right now. But also they would defend the copyright, prevent the film from being exploited or sensationalized or from being widely distributed in illegal copies. And most of all, he decided to donate 25,000 of the money that he got to the widow of j. D. Tippett, who was the officer who was shot, of course, in the texas theatre. And i think he was trying to find a way to find a balance. Not to give it away, not to walk away from the money, but also not to sell it to the highest bidder, to put certain things in place to protect it and to do something good with the money he had. And so this kind of balance would be repeated throughout our familys life again and again and again. Every time we had to deal with the film and we faced this kind of dilemma, that was more or less the approach that our family took. So the middle section of the book im going to shift gears here. Because for 12 years, from 1963 to 1975, the film was owned by life magazine. Not by our family. And one of the great things that happened in the course of my research was that i went to life magazine archives and i asked if i could see all the files related to the zaprosecutor film, expecting them to say no and they said sure. And they just turned them over. Which was just unbelievable, actually. And what i ended up finding in these hundreds of pages was this very revealing, i think, and important story about the beginning of the life of the zapruder film in america, and the dilemmas that began to swirl around it from the very beginning, which only grew greater and greater and greater over the years. These are, some of you will recognize these images of life magazine. The first one printed on november 29th of the film in the issue about the president s assassination, and then this one in color from the memorial edition. From the very beginning, life magazine faced its own dilemma. Which was how to use the zapruder film with dignity. How to balance the publics need to see this these images or desire to see these images, with the very strong editorial feeling on the part of the Editorial Board that these were inappropriate, as indeed they were to the time and the American Public shouldnt see them. Shouldnt see them because they were disrespectful to the president , shouldnt see them because they were too violent and too graphic. And so this basic problem remained the problem of life magazine for the 12 years they owned it. But with each passing year, the pressure grew on life magazine to make this film available. Of course, with the Warren Commission and then later the conspiracy theories that began to grow and the suspicion that the Warren Commission was that the conclusions of the Warren Commission were inaccurate, the fact that people could not see the film continued to feed the sense something was being held back. In reality, life magazine was not in collusion, the records clearly show that life mag wasnt in collusion with the federal government to hide something from the American People. But they were really reflecting a time when there was a strong sense that this was something that people shouldnt see. And even as that changed, they were protecting their financial and commercial interests in the film. They did not have a way to show it as a film. And they didnt want to give it to somebody else, like cbs news, for example, who wanted to see it and requested repeatedly. And so instead, they kind of just sat on it. And the more they sat on it, the more frenzied the desire grew to see the film. All of this is even more complicated by the fact and im going to just this is just a little sense of some of the documents. All of this was further complicated by the fact that gradually, starting in the late 60s, versions of the film began to leak out. And people began to see it. And when they saw it, because of the way that the film looks, it did not look like what the Warren Commission concluded. You all know what im talking about. It looks like the president was hit in the front of the head. Even if you believe that the president was hit in the back of the head by lee harvey oswald, it still looks like he was hit in the front of the head. And so there was this indriven sick problem, which was every time someone saw it seemed to be further confirmation of the fact that life magazine was suppressing the film. These were the outlines of this tremendous tension that took place inside life magazine, and this rising pressure Walter Cronkite went on the air and criticized life magazine for not making it public. Bootlegs began to get out. There were lawsuits against life magazine. And then eventually in 1969, there was, of course, the famous clay shaw trial. Jim garrison in new orleans accusing businessman clay shaw of conspiring to kill the president. And there was a subpoena to get the film and to show it. This was the first time the film this is now 1969. The first time the film was ever shown in a public setting in the courtroom. And as you can see, this is the headline of the new Orleans States item, our grandfather was compelled to testify, much to his regret. He did not want to testify, but he did. And one of the the outcomes of this trial was that jim garrison, who got hold of the copy of the film, through his subpoena, set about making as many bootleg copies as he possibly could. And distributing them as widely as he could. And one of the very interesting things for me about this is that, of course, this wasnt what our family wanted. But there is a way in which you can understand that the people who were bootlegging the film, and the people who were distributing it really believed that there was a coverup. And that this was truth that was being suppressed. And that they were doing the right thing. And so the thing about this book that i found so fascinating in the end is that at so many different junctures, there are people who vehemently disagree with one another. But no one is really wrong. You know, people are reflecting different times or different values or different spirits or a change in cultureme. But ultimately, the desire to see this film was something that simply couldnt be suppressed and yet life magazine was not in a position to make it available for all the reasons ive said. So there is the conundrum that continued to get played out over and over again. This is a photograph of our grandfather who died on august 30th, 1970. And five years later, the film was returned to our family. It was Geraldo Rivera aired a bootleg copy of it on his program. It was the first time that it was seen on national television. Again, amid this increasing pressure, sense of that there had been a conspiracy, that the zapruder film was showed the truth. That until the zapruder film was made public, it would always be you know, that this truth would always be suppressed. And life magazine by this point had really had it. You know, there was nothing in it for them. They couldnt use the film, because they couldnt do so and be in keeping with the terms of their contract. Essentially. There was no way to use the film in good taste. Its not it cant be shown in good taste. Its not in good taste. And so there was no way for them to do it. They kept trying. The records show these efforts to try to try to do a documentary or to partner with a hollywood director. But it always somehow fizzled. And all the criticism coming at them from all of these different quarters, and then finally, the bootlegs. Which they were contractually obligated to defend the copyright. But it was impossible to defend. No one could defend the copyright. Thats all they would have done. And, in fact, one of the memos, one of the executives says i get it from all sides. I get it from the networks, i get it from the public. I get it from the zaruders. You know, they had it. So they decided they were going to get rid of it. And heres another part of the story. My haunt aunt is shaking her he because she knows whats coming. There was always the story known that life magazine returned the film to our family and we paid 1 for it. That was always wellknown. But what people didnt know is that the force behind that decision was my grandmother. Who was i mean, force is the right word. She was a force of nature. For all those who knew her, you could testify to that. And she felt very, very strongly that the film should be back in our family. That this is what her husband would have wanted. That it was our responsibility. Perhaps that it might have some value some day. I hate to say it. But thats true. And no one else in the family really wanted to deal with it. And life magazine would have been happy to donate it to the library of congress or to the National Archives. But my grandmother basically, to use a yiddish expression, haukd my father just bugged him, until finally he agreed to negotiate with life for the return of the film. And i love this, because this is how history really happens. You know, it really does happen with just inside families or a person who is not my grandmother isnt a historical figure. Shes not known in the world. And yet she exerted her will in a certain way that completely changed the life of the zapruder film, and had all of these reverberating effects that no one would have ever been able to anticipate. And that only, you know, now are we able to look back and to see. When my father got the film back in 1975, he inherited all the problems that life magazine had not dealt with. That is, how to make it available to the public, on what terms, for how much money, when, why, who. And all i can say is that this is the last thing in the world that he wanted to do. But he did it. And the story of the next chapter, which is really the last chapter of the life of the film, is really about this very difficult problem of figuring out inside our family and really my father, most of all, how to respond to the growing public demand, and interest in access to the film, while also respecting our familys values, our grand fathers wishes for the film, and the sense that it shouldnt be exploited, it shouldnt be sensationalized. It should be used with respect. Theres no clearcut answer. And this is something that i wrote about in the book. You know, on one end of the spectrum, he could have made it could have put it in the public domain, which is what a lot of people wanted and made it available to everyone for free under any set of circumstances. But as he said to me, one of the few things he actually ever said to me about this when i asked this question, he said, you know, then it would be on hats and tshirts down on the national mall. And we cant have that. We cannot allow that. This is your name. This is your grandfather and his wishes. We cant allow that to ham. On the other ha happen. On the other hand, he also couldnt say no like life magazine did to everyone. That time had passed. And so what was the middle ground . The middle ground was to respond individually to every single request. Hundreds of requests a year. Every single one. Is this and the other thing that he didnt want was to be a censor. He said i dont want to be in the position of deciding whether or not its right for someone to use it or wrong for someone to use it. And yet someone had to bear that responsibility. It was a thankless task. Let me just tell you. There was no approach that he could take that was going to satisfy everyone. And as a result, what he said about doing was to develop a policy that really reflected our family. He made it available for free to anyone who wanted it for scholarly purposes or educational purposes, teachers, students, kids who were writing their report on president kennedy. But when there was a desire to use it for commercial purposes, he charged for its use. And that was really those were the broad grounds. But the last thing that i will say about that is that the other thing about the life of the film in writing this book that was so fascinating is that times kept changing. So its not just that the film it had to reflect our familys values. There was an approach you could take. But as the culture changed, as after following watergate, for example. And a rise in a sense of the possibility of conspiracies that were, in fact, true, covered up by the government. And changing technologies. All of these things meant that with each passing year, these questions had to be looked at anew. It wasnt simply make a decision and then hang on to it the whole time. But rather that it was something that was going to have to be decided and then decided again and decided again. How am i doing for time . Im okay . Oh. Until okay. [ inaudible ] i know. Shes in charge. Yeah, shes in charge. So that all sort of was everything was sort of going along. My dad had sort of more or less figured out a way to deal with the film. I went through all of the legal records, all of the license requests, every single one, for the years from 1975 until 1992. What i found was exactly in the way that my grandmother had shaped history unwittingly, my dads secretary shaped history, too, because he deferred to her. Very often, when he did not want to make a decision about the film, he allowed her to make a decision. This was something that was being that was functioning inside really inside our family. In a very kind of smallscale way. Until 1992. When oliver stones movie, jfk came out. Of course, this is the esquire cover, which they requested the use of the film, it was granted. And it was, as you all know, oliver stones film that led to the passage of the jfk act on october 26th, 1992. Exactly 25 years ago. The result for our family of the passage of the jfk act was that the film, which had been put in safekeeping in the National Archives in 1978, became caught up in this effort to make everything that belonged to the to the federal government that was related to the kennedy assassination available to the American People. It triggered a question. Did the law mean that the federal government was taking the zapruder film, under the takings clause of the constitution, taking the film from our family. Taking possession of it. And for those of you who dont know, ill just briefly give you this very brief outline. You know how this works, right . The takings clause. If you have a house and the government decides that they want to build a highway through it, and tear it down, they have to pay you just compensation for your home. How do they determine just compensation . Comparables. How do they find comparables . Well, how much are the houses worth that are on either side of your house or on your street. What are the comparables for the zapruder film . What is going to happen if the federal government decides that theyre going to take the original zapruder film and theyre going to have to pay our family just compensation for it . This was the last thing that my father wanted. He did not want the federal government to take the film. Not because he didnt want the federal government to have the film. But as he said to me several times, why would they take a film they already have . Its in the National Archives . Its not going to move. Its already there. But if they take it, then they are going to trigger this process by which the american taxpayers are going to be on the hook for just compensation. And my dad was, irony of ironies, a tax attorney. So he understood exactly what this meant in a way that perhaps another person wouldnt. And i really this was a very difficult part of the book to write. Because i adored my father. And i you know, i wanted to be fair and be truthful. And it seems disingenuous to paint him as someone who, you know, didnt care about the money. But the truth of the matter is that when it came to the original zapruder film, which was sitting in the National Archives, our family never thought about the financial value of that as an artifact. It honestly had never occurred to anyone. But when this happened, it suddenly threw our family into this dilemma of allow the government to take it, fight the taking, dont fight the taking. Fight for just compensation. Dont fight for just compensation. Which was a battle that ended up going on for nfor nine years. These are just a handful of the articles that were published. I was in my 20s when this was happening. So i was a little more aware, although really not fully aware of just how just how complicated this was. And here i think its important to say that, you know, we were always very aware that our grandfather was a private citizen who was thrust into a public role. And we have this strange name, zapruder, that is not easy to dodge. You know, when people talk about the zapruder film, theyre not talking about somebody else. Theyre obviously talking about us. Its not the miller film or the smith film. And so i think the fact of our name and the uniqueness of our name and the attachment of our name to this film is also part of the story. Because it wasnt just our familys values, but, you know, your name. And the virtue of a good name really means something to people. And it certainly meant something to us. But the other side of it was that our family was criticized in ways that were very, very painful. And this was something that i really had to take on in the writing of this book. But not in a way that meant being instantly defensive. But trying to understand, what is the other side . What were people criticizing . What were they reacting to . Is there something in the other side that is legitimate . And what did my fathers point of view represent . And all of this came about through interviews and trying to talk to people who knew my father and trying to understand, trying to think of what i knew about him in order to get the fullest possible picture of these very real dilemmas that do not have easy answers. The very last chapter of the book centers on the arbitration hearing, ultimately our family was not able to come to an agreement with the federal government. The federal government decided to take the film in 1997. But we were very far apart on price. For just compensation. Which i know will come as a giant shock to eaveryone in thi room. So it was agreed to have an arbitration hearing. And the last chapter of the book is about this hearing. And one of the things that is so fascinating about it is that while it is true that its about money, it also is really about what the zapruder film had become. What does it represent in American Life . What does it mean to the American People . How did its complex history shape it as an icon . How did its own story make it what it is . And what how do you assign a monetary value to something that has become a National Memory of a tragedy that was the lightning rod for so many issues around media ethics, copyright, that was used in film, literature and art as a sort of touch point for issues around visual truth and what we even are looking at when we look at a film and why this particular film doesnt do what film is supposed to do, which is to answer the question of what happened to the president. All of these things became part of this dialogue and debate about what the film represented. With that, im going to finish by reading just a very brief part of the epilogue to the film. Epilogue to the book. In which i attempted to sum up, to some degree, what the legacy, the public legacy of the film is. I also wrote about the private legacy. You know, for our family, i think there was something about this book that i didnt do it for this reason. But i understood afterwards that, you know, Everyone Needs a story. You need a story in your family. You need to understand where you came from and the forces that shaped who you are. And i understood that my parents and my aunt and my uncle and my grandparents were so wounded by the assassination. It was so deeply painful. That they really didnt that is really why they didnt talk about it. And our association with it was painful. And so but the net result for our generation was that we didnt have we didnt know the story. And there was something about pulling it into the light and constructing it, facing all the scary questions, looking at the moral dilemmas, among other things, that i think i think it was was important and healing for all of us to move past this idea that there was something to hide, or that there was something to be ashamed of or there was some dark secret that might be lurking. But rather that, you know, at the end of the day, were just people, like other people. We did the best we could like other people do the best they could. Not always perfect. But the thing i always come back to, especially with my grandfather and my father is they dealt with these problems with humanity. They did they took it seriously. And they did the best that they could. So thats thats the end of the story for us. This is the more on the public legacy. So ill finish by reading these two pages. And then ill be happy to take questions. What is its public legacy . What is the compelling lure that makes the assassination researchers, the film, art and cultural historians, the writers and journalists, the academics and students and hobbyists and kennedy buffs return to it as a touchstone, time and again . I have come to think that it is because the zapruder film is in every way a conundrum. It contains its owner reconcilable contradictions. It is visual evidence that refuses to solve the mystery of who murdered the president , why, and how. It is a single strip of film in which we all see different things. It shows the entire course of history changing under the influence of a single bullet. It is quite possibly the most important historical film ever made, and yet it is an amateur home movie. It is six feet of eight millimeter film on a plastic reel that turned out to be worth 16 million. It is the most private and the most public of records. It is gruesome and terrible, but we cannot stop looking at it. But more than that, the deepest, most compelling conundrum of the film is an extension one. It lies in the arc of the film itself, the fall from grace, the unforgiving inevitability of it. It is a sunny day, a handsome husband and his beautiful wife are riding down the street, smiling and waving. And within less than half a minute, his head explodes and he is dead, and she is covered in his brains and blood, trying to recover his skull from the trunk of the limousine. He is alive, and then he is dead. She is a wife, and then she is a widow. She is grace itself, be aask th she is sprawled across the back of the car. How can it be that our protections and our illusions can be stripped from us so quickly . Most of us are able to live our days exactly because we are not confronted with this vulnerability. The inex applicationable capriciousness of fate. And yet there is the zapruder film. It exists, and we cannot turn away even though we fear it and avert our eyes and wish desperately it would end differently every time. Maybe it is the same impulse that causes us to watch the challenger explode in the bright blue florida sky or the twin to youers crashing down into Lower Manhattan on a crisp, fall morning. It is because we resist the knowledge that hope sometimes turns to despair in an instant, and that tragedy comes out of nowhere on a beautiful sunny day. And paradoxically, because sometimes we need to confront that very truth, simply to see the thing we feel cannot happen, in order to touch for a moment the very limits of what we know about life. And to remind ourselves of the fragility of it all. Thank you. [ applause ] thank you. That was amazing and amazingly sincere and genuine and moving. We have the opportunity for questions. We also are being filmed this evening by cspan. So if you would not mine, when you ask a question, please wait for the microphone so we can record your own message for posterity. Well argue over the copyright later. And then also, if you wouldnt mind, try to face the camera a little bit when you do it. So ill turn it over to you. Okay, great. I hope thats not going to intimidate people too much from asking questions. Weve got a gentleman here. So im going to run a mic over to him. See if its working. Yeah. You want me to turn like this . Yeah. My name is paul peters. And my dad was one of the doctors that took care of kennedy when he was assassinated. And ive heard, you know, all the stories growing up. And i answered the phone when kennedy was assassinated. And when he called from the parkland er and said, son, i need to talk to your mom. The president has been shot. And so that is vividly ingrained in my mind over the years. But i saw Something Interesting when you showed the picture of the esquire magazine with that frame from your grandfathers film. When the 50th anniversary of the assassination occurred, i had my dad had passed away, but i had dr. Mcclelland, who was also one of the main physicians there, come and talk to the salesmanship club, about his opinion on the assassination. And as he is giving the presentation, a guy out in the crowd stands up and says, can i come to the podium . Im john conleys son. And so and we were showing some framebyframe pictures of the assassination. And he wanted to point out something that he thought was important. You know, i guess for the conspiracy theories, et cetera. But when john kennedy was shot, he grabbed his throat, and sort of slumped to the side. And supposedly, that same bullet went through john connolly, through his lung, and rested in his wrist. Well, if you look at the frames, and actually the frame from esquire is probably the right frame to see. He is turning around, looking at jfk, and jfk has already been shot. And so john connollys son said, my dad, you know, swore to his dying day that that bullet didnt hit him. Because he was able to turn around and look at kennedy with his hands on his throat, slumped to the side. And he hadnt been hit yet. Right. Well, this is well, this is a great example of ive heard this. That connolly that connolly said that. And although im really not versed in all of the ins and outs of what different people have said and what they believe, i think that it is you know, its very telling. There are inconsistencies throughout the record that that im not sure will ever be resolved. Well, just to give you a good example. Both my dad and dr. Mcclelland were standing right beside jfk in his dying moments. And both of them have different interpretations of what happened to him. Well, and thats the thing. That is the thing about the film, of course. This idea that, you know, you can look at it and look at it and look at it, and people are looking at the same document and see different things. And interpret it differently. And, you know, it became something that i didnt talk too much about, but one of the things that was so interesting is the Cultural Impact of the film. That it became kind of a it began to reflect a kind of postmodern dilemma. You know, what are the limits of visual representation . What is truth . How can you have a record of what happened that does not show you what happened . You know, or it shows you what happened in the largest sense, but not in the way that you need it to. And, of course, the famous movie, blowup is a great sort of commentary on this. And then it was don did he lieu low and other people over the years who picked up on this, and reflected on, you know, sort of living in a time when we dont have consensus over even the basic things that are before us. Yeah i cant. Other questions or thoughts . Yes. I was wondering, how old were you when you first looked at your dad and said, why does everybody look at me funny when i say my name is zapruder . [ laughter ] i dont think i ever said that. Because you know how it is you grow up you dont know anything other than what you grow up with. So i i dont remember ever learning about the film. It was never like they sat me down and said, like, we have something to tell you. You know . But i always knew about it. I dont the only thing i can say is that and i began the book with this after this little prologue about the home movie. The one thing that i do remember is that when i was 10 or 11 years old, i went into my school library, and got a copy of william manchesters death of a president. And looked up my grandfathers name in the index and read the account of what had happened. And the truth is that i was just like any other, you know, 10 or 11yearold girl. My grandfather was famous. This was the coolest thing in the entire world. I had no sense of the gravity of this. And this was what my parents impressed upon us. This is not something to brag about. This is not something to call attention to. You know, this is a terrible was a terrible National Tragedy. We would have preferred to have nothing to do with it. And so that was the message that i got, very loud and clear. And, you know, i will say that that was a message that was very hard to overcome in the decision to write this book. That one of the very hardest thing about writing this book was to go so much against the prevailing culture in our family. And even though i asked my family, you know, how they felt about it, and in the end at the end of the day, the decision was mine. And to confront it and to be public about it in a way that our family had never wanted to be was a difficult difficult choice to make. One that i dont regret now. But certainly brought with it a great deal of complicated times. Other thoughts. I have a question, actually. Oh, good. Were on tv. So you have to ask questions. [ laughter ] so one of the things that you talk about wonderfully in the book, and tonight, as well, is the way in which a single human life can interact with a great moment unexpectedly. And it obviously ripples throughout time and ripples throughout your family. Im curious if now the book has come out and youve had a chance to have it been received. Have you interacted with other people who i know there are no comparables. But other people who had comparable experiences where they were next to history, thrust into history, and if youve been able to learn anything from their experiences . Yeah. Thats a great question. I mean, i think i have you know, people like this gentleman who asked a question before, i think ive found there have been many people who have who have been near this history proximate to it in a way that i am. But also, this book i mean, the amazing thing to me about this story is how much it lives still in peoples lives. You know, that there so i was recently, for example, at i dont remember where i was. I was somewhere. [ laughter ] i was in ohio. And paul landis, who was the secret Service Agent in the car behind the president , came to this talk. And so i have met a lot of people like that whose lives were changed by the assassination, and i just my experience of that really is that its very humbling, of course. Because my own connection to it is so distant, in a way. But im also amazed by how nowhere more than in texas, but how much it lives in people. I mean, i went i gave a talk in houston, and there was a woman who came and she had a baggie with a ticker tape she had gotten on the day of the parade and she had it with her and wanted to show it me. I mean, this something that she started crying, you know, talking about this day, and what it meant to her. So i think that is something that that is very touching, but also somewhat surprising, i think, that it that it lives on in this way for people. I dont know if that really answers your question. Oh, good. Did your father think that oswald worked alone . Did he have any thoughts about it . Both my grandfather and my father believed that oswald was was the lone gunman. My grandfather was 58 years old when this happened. And was a russian immigrant and a deep patriot. And the idea that he would believe anything other than the Warren Commission is unthinkable. It really is. He just i mean, it wouldnt have been you know, he wasnt he was just of a generation where he just wouldnt have thought anything other than what the government said was true. And then he died in 1970, so really, he didnt live long enough to have any reason to really revisit that. My father was not a person who tended to believe in conspiracies. I mean, we used to tease him, because he used to he used to say that he thought this whole thing with the ozone layer was ridiculous. And he wasnt really serious, but it was a little bit his attitude. You know, he wasnt someone who sort of he wasnt you know, he wasnt cynical. He was deeply humanist, optimist, kind of person. And so i think he also he believed he took that at face value. And, again, you know, whether he would have ever changed his views, i dont know. But i will just say one other thing, which is that i as laugh a little bit when people ask what we think. Because you really you might as well pluck somebody off the street and ask them what they think happened. Because we have no special knowledge. Our relationship to this is, you know, through the film. But it isnt as if in fact, i would say for most of our lives, weve known less than most people about the film and about what happened. Really. Its just not something that we have ever been students of until now. I just think it would be interesting to see how many people in the room were either here that day in dallas or actually went down yeah. Or something if you want to raise your hand. Who were in dallas at the time. Yeah. Thats great. Thank you for asking that. Did your father have any commentary about jack ruby afterwards . Can you say it again . Sorry . Did your father have any comments about jack ruby shooting oswald afterwards . I dont think i dont recall anything about that our grandfather said or my father said about jack ruby. Although what i will say about that is that one of the things i learned in the course of this work is that the fact that jack ruby shot and killed oswald was a huge gamechanger in the life of the film. Because if oswald had been alive, and there had been a trial, it would have been very different. But the zapruder film took on the role of the socalled unimpeachable witness. Which was very problematic. And so that was an event that had many repercussions, but certainly one of them was that it elevated the significance of the film, and some might say elevated it in ways that were not particularly helpful. Because it doesnt definitively show something that we can consider a consensus about what happened. I just i arrived a little bit late, so i apologize if i missed your comments. But did the Kennedy Family ever reach out to you, to the zapruder family, after, or during all of this . Not really. So Jackie Kennedys office requested that our grandfather be interviewed by william manchester, and that he, you know, cooperate with his efforts to write the book, which he did. That is the only contact that i know of. But one of the things, at least for our generation, is that we would have tried very hard to avoid being forcing a conon f foritation with the Kennedy Family. I think we always felt very uncomfortable. I said this in the book that our film was their familys tragedy and we were never really able to forget that, nor did we want to forget that. And so one incredibly weird thing happened which is that when my twin brother and i graduated from high school, Teddy Kennedy gave the speech and i remember my brother saying 20 years later, i asume he left before they got to the zs and i hope he did. Because the last thing any of us would want was for Teddy Kennedy to be sitting there thinking. So it was just sort of that feeling of kaesh yeah. Yeah, its so michael. Yes, i have a question that maybe you know some spokesen to it. But to the gentleman whose dad was the doctor, one of the doctors in the room. Since jfk was catholic and they had called a priest for the last rights since it came from our perish. But do you know if they let the priest into the operating room to do that. Did either your father or his friend mention they the last rights there . Because i was told that they kind of kept him alive until he could receive last rights. And i dont know if you spoke to anything like that in your book no. Okay. Thats my question. Im off the hook for tes one. I know that he really didnt leave the emergency room and he pretty much was dead when he got there but he his lungs were still breathing, but the gun shot wound had pretty much got his brain stem, so he passed away fairly quickly after he was there. I know the priest did give the last right. I dont know if it was in that room or they took him to a separate room. But it wasnt in the operating room because he never went to the operating room. Great presentation. Really if had joyed it. You seem like your familys kind of pride. Did your grandmothfather tell y father that he regrets shooting the film . Isnt that ironic. I dont know that he ever said anything specifically about the camera. But he definitely said many times that he wished that he had not taken the film and he was very my understanding is that he was really traumatized by what he had seen, that he had nightmares for years. He was not only very concerned about the exploitation of the film but just the mere fact of having seen the murder at such close range i think stayed with imhad. He tenlded to dread the anniversary of the assassination. He took very few home movies after that. I wouldnt say that by any means that it ruined his life. He had lots of grandchildren were born. Obviously that was great for him. But i think i think it was i think it was very, very painful and i think he did i would say its safe to say he regretted it and wished it had been either no one or anybody but him. So i want to steal the puraugative of one last question. Are you going to ask about the files . Love that nobody asked about the files. What do you think about the files . I dont think anything about the files. So i ask this one historian to another. It is hard to avoid noting that a person such as yourself chose to work in primary documents to history, both tragedies. Yes. Very cheerful person. My first book being about the holocaust, i know. My daughter said the next one has to be rainbows and unicorns. She really did say that. Shes 12. I think the thing for me and it was relevant both for the last book and this one that somewhere along the way i have this idea its not my own idea, nauta new idea, but this sense that the people in the past and people other than ourselves live in the fullness of their time exactly the way that we do. So in it past the complexity, the nuance, the dilemmas, all of that is real for people. And that we have this tendency when we look back and tell the stories of the past to flatten things and simplify them and that the work that i do as a writer is to try to rean mate that past and to inhabit it and see it from are had the different sides and that was something i did with these diaries collected in my first back and that was the tremendous challenge of this book was to try to get pasts the it headlines and past the simplification and past the judgments of what was right and wrong and who did what to think what were the dilemmas . Even the people who were critical of our family, who condemned our family for are all the things they felt were wrong and its true that work is done around primary sources but ultimately its about people. Thats what is most interesting to me. So thank you for the questions. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. [ applause ] let me thank you all for coming and remind you there are copies of the book you can take home and take home with a signature as well. So thank you for coming. Now to them, both of them immigrants who aacquired u. S. Citizenship, citizenship brought with it extraordinary opportunities. Okay. They had not been born in the United States. But by becoming citizens they if h enjoyed equal legal status. It became a land of opportunity for them. And this is what many immigrants will find. One of the reasons is the germans in general faced less an taginism than the irish. I think the experience for any immigrant is difficult. People may not trust you. You may not speak the same language as anyone and then there are matters of degree. Watch the entire. Good evening. My name is deborah bufftan and