Oswald in the doorway: the blog of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, by Ralph Cinque

This is Part 2 of my analysis of Twenty Six Seconds, the book by Zapruder's granddaughter Alexandra Zapruder. 

So, Abe went home with the film, even though three copies had been made for the government: two for the SS and one for the FBI. And late that night, he got a call from Dick Stolley of LIFE magazine, who wanted to buy the film. Zapruder had arranged to show the film to some federal agents the next day at his company, Jennifer Junior, and he told Stolley he could come.

Stolley did, and he said he was stunned, that it was the most dramatic moment of his career. 

Ms. Zapruder described it this way: "They watched the film in silence until the President's head exploded in a shower of red." 

But, it isn't a shower of red. It's more like a splotch of red, the kind that could be painted on, and it's not what a bullet would do. A bullet would enter the head. It might or might not go through it. And afterwards, there would be blood oozing from the entrance wound, but nothing like what we see in the Zapruder film with the big red explosion.

And think about it: if that was visible to Zapruder's camera, then it was visible to the eyes of the spectators, and nobody reported seeing such a thing. 

And what's so hard to watch about a red splotch? It isn't gore. It's not as though you're seeing exposed brain. That would be gore. And there was exposed brain. Officer Cheyney said he was soaked in JFK's brain matter. So, why don't we see JFK's brain actually exploding in the Zapruder film? I mean: actually being "blown off." 

Stolley, on behalf of LIFE, paid Zapruder $25,000 a year for the film for 6 years. So, $150,000 total. That's worth well over a million dollars today.  Zapruder donated the first payment to the Tippit family, but it wasn't his idea.  He was told that it would look good for PR.  It was his lawyer, Sam Passman, who urged Zapruder to donate it to Tippit's family. And I don't fault Zapruder a bit for any of this. It was nice of him to donate anything. I'm pointing this out because throughout the book, Ms. Zapruder defends her grandfather from the charge of being mercenary and exploitative, that right away he was out to make a buck off his film. She insists his primary motive was to find the right home for the film, where it would be presented with dignity, and showing respect for the dead, etc. 

But, the deal was that no copy remained with him, and that was smart. They should have done the same thing with Mary Moorman. They should have gotten someone to pay her a large sum for her photo and taken it off her hands completely. That way, they would not have had to keep going back to her. She claimed that authorities repeatedly borrowed her photo from her. But why? They made copies the first day. They even made a negative of it the first day. So, why did they have to see her original again and again for? Because: they were going to alter it. What good would it do to alter the copies if she still had the unaltered original? But, they didn't make that mistake with Zapruder. 

So, what did LIFE magazine do with the film? They published carefully selected frames on November 29, just a week later, and then again in Oct 2, 1964. I have the latter one, and I just ordered the former. In the latter, they published one attractive frame of JFK waving and smiling at the crowd before he disappears behind the freeway sign. I've shown you that if you look closely at the film, you can see that JFK stopped waving before he reached the sign, and he put his hand over his face. But, since no one reported that he did that, I have to think they painted the hand in, and it looks painted. 

The alteration of the Zapruder film must have been done progressively and not all at once. I'm sure they started messing with it right away, but there is no way they were finished by November 29, 1963. So, at that point, they were going to be very careful about which frames they allowed the public to see. Yes, to the smiling/waving one, and no to the ones which showed he stopped waving and looked distressed before he reached the sign.  

But, what LIFE magazine did with the Zapruder film mostly was keep other people from seeing it. CBS tried very hard to get it from them, but they wouldn't budge. Others tried too.

So why did LIFE buy it from Zapruder? Did they really do it with the goal of making money from it? No. They bought it mainly to get the film away from Zapruder and to make sure that no one else got it. LIFE magazine did it as an agent of the government. LIFE was in bed with the U.S. intelligence agencies. It looked a lot better if a private corporation bought the film from Zapruder rather than for the government to just demand that he forfeit it so that they could start altering it. And remember: he gave it to the government for free. So, it wasn't about getting the film; it was about getting it away from him so that they could alter it. 

You probably know that in 1968, Jim Garrison forced LIFE magazine to show the Zapruder film to the grand jury in the Clay Shaw case, and "back and to the left" became a household term. But, stop thinking that there was any loss of control. They knew exactly what they were doing. BY LEAVING IN THE BACKWARD MOTION OF JFK'S HEAD, THEY WERE AUTHETICATING THE ENTIRE ZAPRUDER FILM. That was like the stamp of authenticity on the grounds that, "If we were going to alter anything, we would have altered that, and since we didn't, it means we altered nothing." That's what they got for letting the world see "back and to the left." 

And then, they just did a few experiments with watermelons and whatnot to claim that, shot from the rear, a head could still go back and to the left. But, stop thinking about what they lost, and start thinking about what they gained: which is everyone believing that JFK wasn't shot until he got behind the sign. 

Ms. Zapruder went through the story of how Robert Groden got involved in the public release of the film. The story goes that he was working at an imaging company with a guy named Moses Weitzman who had been hired by LIFE to convert the Z-film to 16 mm and then 32 mm. And that resulted in more copies being made, one of which he kept "as a sample of his expertise." The way Ms. Zapruder put it is that Groden just accessed it himself, that it was there, and he just helped himself to it. I don't know what Groden claims.   

This is where the story gets weird because LIFE magazine started feeling antsy about owning the film, and they wanted to get rid of it. Their first thought was to donate it to the National Archives. Zapruder was dead by then, but they had to run it by his family. LIFE wanted to get rid of the film because "there was no way to use it in a tasteful way." Are you buying that? 

Robert Groden was going around showing the Zapruder film to groups, large and small. Then, he was invited on the Geraldo Rivera program, where it was shown to  the whole country. I think it's interesting that LIFE had copyrighted the Zapruder film. So, why didn't they sue Groden and Rivera for copyright infringement?  

Instead, LIFE felt compelled to unload the film. They offered to sell it back to the Zapruder family for $60,000, and if they wouldn't pay, they would just give it to the National Archives. But, the Zapruder family was represented by Henry Zapruder, Abe's son, who was a Harvard-educated tax attorney. But, according to the author, it wasn't Henry's desire to drive a hard bargain with LIFE. She put the blame on her grandmother, Lil, Abe's widow. She said that she was the money grubber. And she gave marching orders to her son Henry to deal and haggle but get that film back at the lowest price possible. 

According to Ms. Zapruder, her family was prepared to pay the $60,000 to LIFE for the film, but then LIFE said they wanted the price to be $1. I'm going to quote her now: "I never understood why LIFE gave the film back to our family for $1."

But, she went on to say that NBC newscaster Tom Snyder was badmouthing both LIFE and the Zapruder family. So, LIFE, wanting to smash all claims that they were being mercenary about this national treasure, just gave it back to the Zapruders for a buck. 

OK, now, I am going to finish this section by telling you what I think happened. I think LIFE magazine wanted to unload the Zapruder film because they knew it was altered, highly altered, and they were involved in altering it. But, the public would never suspect the Zapruder family of altering it. So, if the Zapruder family owned it and vouched for it, and said that they got it back in the same condition it was in when they turned it over, that would legitimize it. It would look better.  It would sell better. The story of the Zapruder film, that JFK wasn't hit until he was hidden behind the sign, would sell better. And that was worth much more than $60,000 or $600,000 or $6,000,000.

It wasn't about profit. It was about history, and what the history of what happened on November 22, 1963 would be.