Tuesday, May 26, 2015

What Harold Weisberg thought about the veracity of the figure in the Martin film actually being Lovelady is debatable. But, what is not debatable is that Harold Weisberg went to his grave asserting that the Man in the Doorway was Oswald. 



"What Groden has done is prove that the shirt Lovelady was wearing that day could not have been the shirt the man in the Altgens picture was wearing that day! Lovelady’s shirt was fully buttoned at the very time the shirt on the man in the doorway was not buttoned where it could not be buttoned!"

In saying that "it could not be buttoned" Harold meant that Oswald's shirt could not be buttoned because his buttons were missing. It wasn't a matter of choice or preference. It wasn't a matter of conscious decision. It was a matter of limitation. 

What he means is that if you're going to say that this guy is Lovelady, it rules him out to be Doorman because Doorman's shirt is unbuttoned and sprawled open, and this guy's shirt is not. 


Harold Weisberg never retracted his claim that Lovelady wore a striped shirt. He found out about Gorilla Man in 1966, but even in 1967, in his deposition to Jim Garrison in New Orleans, he repeated his contention that Lovelady wore a short-sleeved, striped shirt. But, in the statement above, he pointed out a very obvious thing, that the man on the right had his shirt buttoned all the way to the top, except for the top button. In other words, he wore it the way 99% of men wear such shirts: buttoned to the top except for the top button. But, Doorman has the unbuttoning and the massive shirt sprawl that we see only on Oswald. 

And keep in mind that it's not as though all shirts do that. Even unbuttoned, most shirts do not sprawl open that much. This was an unusual situation, unique to Oswald. 

In fact, we can't even be sure that Gorilla Man's shirt wasn't buttoned all the way to the top, including the top button. I presume it wasn't just because most men don't secure that button, but it's not as though we can see any of his white t-shirt; we can't.

So, to Harold Weisberg, this was definitive: even if this guy was Lovelady, he could not possibly be Doorman. Period. Harold was adamant about it. And to suggest otherwise is to descend into vile, evil, bloodied malfeasance.     


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