The JFK 100

New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner) addresses the jury at the trial of Clay Shaw:

To prove there was a conspiracy involving Clay Shaw we must prove there was more than one man involved in the assassination. To do that, we must look at the Zapruder film, which my office has subpoenaed. The American public has not seen that film because it has been kept locked in a vault in the Time-Life Building in New York City for the last five years. There is a reason for that.⁽¹⁾

 

In 1963 Richard B. Stolley was the Los Angeles Bureau Chief of Life magazine, one of the most influential news organs of that era. Stolley has described many times how he flew to Dallas hours after the assassination to personally cover the events unfolding there. Tipped off by Life freelancer Patsy Swank, Stolley was the first journalist to contact Abraham Zapruder about the purchase of his film, for which Life soon paid $150,000.⁽²⁾

Life did not bury the Zapruder film for twelve years, as Stone charges, [Stolley states]. All the relevant images were printed immediately except for frame 313 [the instant of the fatal head shot]. We felt publishing that grisly picture would constitute an unnecessary affront to the Kennedy family and to the President's memory. Today, that may seem a strange, even foolish, decision. But this was 1963, a few years before Vietnam brought carnage into American living rooms. The head wound was described only in words in that issue. Life published frame 313 in 1964 and several times later, and for years urged that the Kennedy investigation be reopened.⁽³⁾  

"Life decided not to sell the Zapruder film for TV or movie showing for reasons of taste and competition," Stolley continues. "Copies were given to the Secret Service and to the Warren Commission."⁽⁴⁾

Stolley adds that he often hears conspiratorial rumors about Life publisher C. D. Jackson, and indeed, such rumors are repeated in JFK's documented screenplay.⁽⁵⁾ "Because he had served in military intelligence, the theories go, he had both a motive and an opportunity to influence how the magazine handled the Zapruder film," Stolley explains. "The truth is that all decisions involving its use (or nonuse) were made only by editors, not by anyone on the publishing side."⁽⁶⁾

NOTES:

1. Oliver Stone and Zachary Sklar, JFK: The Book of the Film (New York: Applause, 1992), p. 151. All quotations are from the shooting script and may vary slightly from the finished motion picture.

2. Richard B. Stolley, "The Zapruder Film: Shots Seen Round the World," Entertainment Weekly, January 17, 1992, reprinted in Oliver Stone and Zachary Sklar, JFK: The Book of the Film (New York: Applause, 1992), pp. 410-12.

3. Richard B. Stolley, "The Zapruder Film: Shots Seen Round the World," Entertainment Weekly, January 17, 1992, reprinted in Oliver Stone and Zachary Sklar, JFK: The Book of the Film (New York: Applause, 1992), p. 412. For more on Life and its active role in pursuing leads of possible conspiracy in the assassination, see Patricia Lambert, False Witness (New York: M. Evans and Co., 1998), pp. 41-42, 45-47, 55-56, 82-83.

4. Richard B. Stolley, "The Zapruder Film: Shots Seen Round the World," Entertainment Weekly, January 17, 1992, reprinted in Oliver Stone and Zachary Sklar, JFK: The Book of the Film (New York: Applause, 1992), p. 412.

5. Oliver Stone and Zachary Sklar, JFK: The Book of the Film (New York: Applause, 1992), p. 152.

6. Richard B. Stolley, "The Zapruder Film: Shots Seen Round the World," Entertainment Weekly, January 17, 1992, reprinted in Oliver Stone and Zachary Sklar, JFK: The Book of the Film (New York: Applause, 1992), p. 412.