The Zapruder film is a silent 8mm color motion picture sequence shot by Abraham Zapruder with a Bell & Howell home-movie camera, as U.S. president John F. Kennedy's motorcade passed through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. It unexpectedly captured the president's assassination.
Although it is not the only film of the shooting, the Zapruder film has been described as the most complete, offering a relatively clear view from a somewhat elevated position on the side from which the president's fatal head wound is visible. Given the camera's 18.3 frames-per-second speed, the film served as a "clock" to construct a detailed timeline of the shots fired. Zapruder's home movie became an essential piece of evidence in the Warren Commission hearings, and in all subsequent investigations of the assassination. It is one of the most studied pieces of film in history, particularly footage of the final shot which helped spawn theories of whether Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin.
In 1994, the film was selected for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant", and was the first amateur film to be selected.
Creation
Abraham Zapruder stood on a concrete pedestal along Elm Street in Dealey Plaza holding a Model 414 PD Bell & Howell Zoomatic Director Series Camera. He filmed from the time the presidential limousine turned onto Elm Street for a total of 26.6 seconds, exposing 486 frames of standard 8 mm Kodachrome II safety film, running at an average of 18.3 frames/second.
After Secret Service agent Forrest Sorrels promised Zapruder that the film would be used only for an official investigation, the two men sought to develop the footage as soon as possible. As television station WFAA's equipment was incompatible with the format, Eastman Kodak's Dallas film processing facility developed the film and Jamieson Film Company produced three copies. Zapruder gave two of the copies to Sorrels and they were sent to Washington. The original film was retained by Zapruder, in addition to one of the copies.
On the morning of November 23, 1963, CBS lost the bidding for the film to Richard Stolley of Life magazine. Zapruder sold the print media rights to Life for $50,000, Includes a photocopy of the first agreement that Abraham Zapruder signed with Life magazine, for the amount of $50,000. with the stipulation that he could not sell the motion picture rights until after November 29 when Life planned to publish selected frames from the film. But then within days the deal changed. Life publisher C. D. Jackson was involved in the renegotiated agreement in which Life paid Zapruder $150,000 ($ today) and acquired all rights—motion picture as well as print. Jackson insisted that the disturbing film should be withheld from public viewing until an appropriate later time.
CBS News correspondent Dan Rather was the first to report on national TV about the contents of the Zapruder film after he was given an opportunity to watch it. The inaccuracies in his description contributed to many conspiracy theories about the assassination. In his 2001 book Tell Me a Story, CBS producer Don Hewitt said that he told Rather to go to Zapruder's home, "sock him in the jaw", take the film, copy it, then return it and let the network's lawyers deal with the consequences. According to Hewitt, he realized his mistake after ending their telephone conversation and immediately called Rather back to countermand the order, disappointing the reporter. In a 2015 interview on Opie with Jim Norton, Rather stated that the story was a myth.
Frame 313 of the film captures the fatal shot to the president's head. After claiming to have a nightmare in which he saw a sign in Times Square, New York City, with the phrase "See the President's head explode!", Zapruder insisted that frame 313 be excluded from publication. The November 29, 1963 issue of Life published about 30 frames of the Zapruder film in black and white. Frames were also published in color in the December 6, 1963 special "John F. Kennedy Memorial Edition", and in issues dated October 2, 1964 (a special article on the film and the Warren Commission report), November 25, 1966, and November 24, 1967.
Zapruder was one of at least 32 people in Dealey Plaza known to have made film or still photographs at or around the time of the shooting.
Subsequent history The Zapruder film frames that were used by the Warren Commission were published in black and white as Commission Exhibit 885 in Volume 18 of the Hearings and Exhibits.Warren Commission Hearings and Exhibits, Vol. XVIII . Online version at the History Matters Archive. Copies of the complete film are available on the Internet...Stabilized versions of the Zapruder film . Research quality. Based on the "Costella 2006" frames. Large file sizes. Requires QuickTime viewer from apple.com. Entire film is covered in six "fixed camera" video clips, plus one "stabilized pan" video clip. Full speed.. Licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione. The Zapruder film has been added to the sound recorded by police in Dallas.All 486 frames of the Zapruder film . The "Costella 2006" frames. Research quality. Does not require special viewers, but not shown in movie form.John P. Costella, "The New Zapruder Film", Assassination Research, Vol.2 No.2 (2003) Stabilized version which allows frame-by-frame easy forward. One of the first-generation Secret Service copies was loaned to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in Washington, D.C., which made a second-generation copy. After studies of that copy were done in January 1964, the Warren Commission judged the quality to be inadequate, and requested the original film. Life brought the original to Washington in February for the commission's viewing, and made color 35mm slide enlargements from the relevant frames of the original for the FBI. From those slides, the FBI created a series of black-and-white prints, which were given to the commission for its use.
In November 1964, the U.S. Government Printing Office released 26 volumes of testimony and evidence compiled by the Warren Commission. Volume 18 reproduced 158 frames from the Zapruder film in black and white. Frames 208–211 were missing, a splice was visible in frames 207 and 212, frames 314 and 315 were switched around, and frame 284 was a repeat of 283.Frames 207 and 212 , frames 283 and 284 (actually 283) , frame 314 (actually 315) , and frame 315 (actually 314) .
The switching of frames 314 and 315 confused the movement of JFK's head in reaction to the fatal shot. Assassination researchers Ray Marcus and David Lifton were the first to notice the transposed labeling of those two frames in Volume 18. In December 1965, Lifton asked his girlfriend at the time, Judith Schmidt, to send a letter he had drafted to the FBI's photo expert, Lyndal Shaneyfelt, pointing out the discrepancy.: "I was employed at North American Aviation at the time, had a security clearance, and was worried about writing the FBI about such a matter. So after drafting the letter I asked my girlfriend, Judy Schmidt, to sign it." She and Lifton were surprised when a few weeks later she received a signed letter from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover stating that frames 314 and 315 had been swapped due to a "printing error", and that the error did not exist in the original Warren Commission exhibits."Life To Release Today Part of Kennedy Film", The New York Times, January 30, 1967, p. 22.
In early 1967, Life released a statement saying that four frames of the original (frames 208–211) were accidentally destroyed, and the adjacent frames damaged, by a Life photo lab technician on November 23, 1963. Life released those missing frames from the first-generation copy it had received from the film's original version. The Zapruder frames outside the section used in the commission's exhibits, frames 155–157 and 341, were also damaged and were spliced out of the original rendition of the film, but are present in the first-generation copies.
In 1966, assassination researcher Josiah Thompson, while working for Life, was brought in to examine a first-generation copy of the film and a set of color 35mm slides made from the original. He tried negotiating with Life for the rights to print selected frames in his upcoming book Six Seconds in Dallas. Life refused to approve the use of any frames, even after Thompson offered to give all book sale profits to the magazine. When the book was published in 1967, it included detailed charcoal drawings of important individual frames, plus photo reproductions of the four missing ones. Time Inc., parent of Life, filed a lawsuit against Thompson and his publishing company for copyright infringement.Time Inc. v. Bernard Geis Associates, 293 F.Supp. 130, 146 (D.C.N.Y. 1968). The following year, a U.S. District Court ruled that, in accordance with the doctrine of fair use, the Time Inc. copyright of the Zapruder film had not been violated. The court held that "there is a public interest in having the fullest information available on the murder of President Kennedy," adding that Thompson "did serious work on the subject and has a theory entitled to public consideration" and that "the copying by defendants was fair and reasonable."
In 1967, Life hired New Jersey film lab Manhattan Effects to make a 16 mm film copy of the Zapruder film's original version. Pleased with the results, they asked for a 35 mm internegative to be made. Moses "Moe" Weitzman made several internegatives in 1968, giving the best to Life and retaining the test copies. Weitzman set up his own optical house and motion-picture postproduction facility later that year. Hired in 1969, employee and assassination researcher Robert Groden used one of Weitzman's copies and an optical printer to make versions of the Zapruder film with close-ups and minimize the shakiness of Zapruder's camera.
On June 28, 1967, near the end of the four-part TV series, A CBS News Inquiry: The Warren Report, CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite criticized Time, Inc. for still sequestering the Zapruder film:
Before the 1969 trial of Clay Shaw, a New Orleans businessman charged with conspiring to assassinate JFK, the New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison subpoenaed a copy of the film from Time Inc. Garrison had unsuccessfully subpoenaed the original film in 1968. He was only able to obtain a relatively low-quality copy made several generations from the original. The courtroom showings of Garrison's copy in 1969 were the first time Zapruder's film was shown in public as a motion picture, and not as a set of printed frames. The jurors in the Clay Shaw trial were said to have been "spellbound" by the Zapruder film, which Garrison screened six times. He drew the jurors' attention to the section after frame 313 where the fatal head shot seems to knock Kennedy backward and to his left, suggesting there was a second shooter positioned in front and to the right, and proving, in Garrison's argument, the charge of conspiracy. Garrison allowed the subpoenaed copy to be duplicated, and these low-quality copies began circulating among assassination researchers and journalists.
Zapruder's film was aired as part of a local Los Angeles area TV newscast on February 14, 1969. The film was also broadcast on the late-night TV show Underground News, hosted by Chuck Collins on WSNS-TV, Ch 44, in Chicago in 1970. The film was given to director Howie Samuelsohn by Penn Jones and later aired in syndication in Philadelphia, Detroit, Kansas City, and St. Louis.