Twenty-Six Seconds

by Alexandra Zapruder

  For the general public, most of whom were not scrutinizing each frame and questioning how closely the captions matched the images, the publication of these graphic frames touched a cultural nerve that had little to do with questions of evidentiary interpretation. While only a small sample of letters survive in the archives, they speak clearly to how jarring these images were in the context of 1964 America. One reader wrote: “The repeat printing of the motorcade photos are [sic] completely unnecessary and are extremely inconsiderate; the use of color further emphasizes your desire to sensationalize. Granted, it was important to report on the findings of the Warren Commission, but your terrible approach to bring the public’s attention to your report is repulsive and uncalled for. What are you trying to prove?” Another writer chimed in: “The pictures of President Kennedy’s assassination in gore color rank equally with the life-like or death-like pictures of the Ugly War in Vietnam… I begin to believe that we all love violence and death more than life.” “I was astounded and disgusted to see the last moments of our President so exposed,” wrote another reader.

  The broad outlines of this argument—that decency and good taste should prevail over the public’s right to knowledge—had been drawn in 1963 when Bernard Quint threatened to resign if the editors used frame 313, and the editors drafted a preemptive letter to defend their (much tamer) use of the images. But if they had previously dodged an outcry, they walked right into the thick of it this time. It is not clear whether they believed that the public was ready to see the images or if they genuinely believed that it was necessary to show them for the purposes of the report. Either way, their decision and the public response to it speak to the taboo nature of the film’s images and the painful, complex way in which they would gradually make their way into the collective American psyche.

  Most would agree that the film broke a social and cultural barrier not only by its violence but also because it witnessed the instant shattering of the physical person of the president, the institution of the presidency, and the image of perfection and power that the Kennedys projected. This was, of course, a modern problem, linked to technological progress and the ability to capture and share information that was previously either fleeting or socially unacceptable. For many, this was exactly why people shouldn’t see it; to show it was to normalize visual images that should remain taboo, or to cross that boundary publicly and permanently. Others asked what could possibly be learned or contributed by publishing such violent pictures. Wasn’t it just satisfying a voyeuristic desire to see the otherwise forbidden?

  On the other side of the debate, there were those—particularly those in the media—who justified dissemination under the broader rubric of the public’s “right to know.” Proponents of this point of view held that what happened belonged to the world and that no federal, corporate, or private entity should decide for the public what they should or shouldn’t see. Ultimately, the question was whether to cross that barrier and face the social consequences or hold back and hope to protect social norms in the process. At different times, LIFE did both.

  For the subset of the public that was looking at the film for the clues it contained about the assassination, and comparing their own interpretations with what was written in the Warren Report, this issue of LIFE magazine raised a completely different set of concerns. Why had the editors printed two different images in the magazine, and why were the captions changed? Could LIFE be colluding with the members of the Warren Commission to deceive the public about what had happened during the assassination? After all, resetting the magazine plates was elaborate and costly. Why would they do that unless the president’s head wounds in the first printed photo (frame 323) did not support the Warren Commission’s assertion that the president was shot from the rear? Perhaps, the thinking went, LIFE’s editors were scrambling to do a sort of visual damage control during the course of the run.

  I found nothing in the LIFE archives about this very unusual situation, but it seems certain that this was an editorial and not a political decision. From a purely practical standpoint, of course the editors wanted the images in the magazine to match the narrative of the Warren Commission; after all, they were writing an issue reporting on its findings. The problem wasn’t that LIFE magazine had to turn itself inside out to find frames of the film that matched the Warren Commission’s findings. The problem was that the film didn’t clearly and unequivocally show a single narrative upon which everyone could agree. No matter which frames they used, or how they described them, or which experts they consulted, the “unimpeachable witness”—the universally agreed-upon most valuable, most meaningful, most significant film of the assassination—did not convincingly answer the fundamental question that everyone asked of it.

  In November 1964, those who wanted to see more of the film got their wish. For seventy-six dollars, they could purchase the full set of twenty-six volumes of the Warren Report, including testimony, documents, and other supporting material that the commission used in their investigation. Volume 18 contained 160 images from the Zapruder film, made by LIFE technicians from a set of 35mm transparencies created from the camera-original film. It was far from seeing the film in motion, and it was only part of the 486 frames that compose the entire twenty-six-second sequence, but for the small and growing band of assassination researchers who were already conducting their own investigations into the president’s murder—and, in many cases, compiling evidence and building a case against the findings of the government—it was certainly more useful than the select frames that had thus far appeared in LIFE and a handful of other publications. Richard Trask described in National Nightmare how “more than one researcher quickly made crude filmstrips of the printed portion of the film utilizing motion picture cameras that had the capacity for single frame exposures.” He was among them. After he shot each frame from the film in the Warren Report with 8mm color Kodachrome, he wrote in the introduction to National Nightmare, “the result was a short, muddy and bumpy movie that crudely displayed several copies of the Zapruder film in motion!”

  There had, of course, been many who suspected a conspiracy in the president’s murder from the very beginning. With the publication of the Warren Report, these early critics had an extraordinary wealth of evidence to review, consider, and criticize. Ranging in temperament from contentious and aggressive to sober and methodical, they pored over every word and image in the report, scrutinizing and questioning everything from procedural problems to inconsistencies in the medical, ballistics, pictorial, and testimonial evidence.

  Harold Weisberg was among these first critics. He wrote a scathing condemnation of the Warren Report, accusing the commission of deliberately covering up the evidence of a conspiracy. As part of his broader case, he focused on inconsistencies that he found in Abe’s Warren Commission testimony and in the publication of the images in the Warren Report. Perhaps most significantly, he called attention to an issue that would become increasingly important over the next few years, pointing out that four frames (208–211) were missing from the sequence published in Volume 18 and that published frames 207 and 212 had visible splices running through them.

  He was not the only one to have noticed this omission, and since there was no note or explanation in the report of the hearings to explain the missing frames, researchers grew suspicious. As we know now, the reality was more embarrassing than nefarious; LIFE had damaged those frames on the original film in Chicago during the first hours of its ownership. But this was not public knowledge at the time, and it would be several years before LIFE would offer an explanation. In addition, two critical frames following the mortal shot to the president’s head (frames 314 and 315) were transposed. This was not helpful, given the brewing controversy over the direction in which the president’s head went after the shot. In a nutshell: Forward = Book Depository, Lee Harvey Oswald, and single shooter vs. Backward = Grassy Knoll, multiple shooters, and conspiracy. Some interpreted the transposed frames as an attempt by the government to make it lo
ok like the president’s head went forward instead of back, in order to support its single-shooter theory, though others felt that the mistake was so obvious that they made nothing of it.

  Those who wanted to see the evidence for themselves, to pore over it and reach their own conclusions, faced a maddening paradox when it came to the Zapruder film. They believed it was impossible to fully understand what had happened without seeing it, and yet they felt repeatedly obstructed when they tried to do so. Not only that, but when it did appear, it seemed to cry out for attention with its inconsistencies and gaps. After all, why were there four key frames missing from the Warren Report with no explanation? How could an editorial error really be to blame for transposing two critical frames of the film when to show them correctly would seem to contradict the report’s conclusions? And what of the multiple images and confusing captions in LIFE’s Warren Report issue? Seen through this prism, it’s no surprise that many became very suspicious indeed.

  In fact, the film was more accessible than people realized. The Warren Commission had deposited all the material from the investigation at the National Archives, which held at least one 8mm copy of the film and several sets of the 35mm color transparencies that LIFE had made for the commission’s use. It was possible, though certainly not easy, to come to Washington and request access to the film and the transparencies for study. However, reproducing the images or showing the film on television was another story.

  Another early critic of the Warren Report, and a vehement defender of Lee Harvey Oswald, was Mark Lane. He was one of many who reached out to Abe to ask him about the film. Lillian, Abe’s longtime assistant, recalled that, in general, he did not want to speak with any of these researchers, concerned as he was about his words being twisted or taken out of context. “I think Lane bullied him,” Lillian recalled. “Something about ‘Who do you think you are, not giving any interviews?’” Abe eventually agreed to the interview, but according to Lillian, it did not go well. Lane grew frustrated when he felt he was not getting answers—or perhaps the answers he wanted—and things turned ugly. Abe accused Lane of being in it for the money, to which Lane responded, “You’ve made millions!” That’s all Abe needed to hear to be done with that interview. According to Lillian, affable, mild-mannered Abe got up, grabbed Lane by the shoulder, and shoved him right out the door.

  Lane published his book Rush to Judgment in 1966 and it quickly shot to number one on the New York Times best-seller list. It was very much a sign of the times, as the American public appeared more and more skeptical of the single-bullet theory and questioned the plausibility of the Warren Commission’s theory. The conversation was changing, and with this change came louder and louder clamors for access to the Zapruder film.

  By 1966, the Zapruder film had taken its place among assassination researchers and investigators—governmental and otherwise—as a central piece of visual evidence in the murder of the president. For the wider public, its appearance as stills in LIFE could be either horribly fascinating or tastelessly disrespectful. In that same year, filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni released his first English-language movie, Blow-Up, to international acclaim and box-office success. Although the film was inspired by a short story by Julio Cortázar titled “Las babas del diablo” (“The Devil’s Drool”) from 1959, and the filmmaker never made an explicit link to the Zapruder film, it is impossible not to see in key scenes of the movie a social commentary on the questions that the film raised.

  The movie is set in 1960s London and follows the story of Thomas (David Hemmings), a young high-fashion photographer whose wealth, sexual encounters, and fame leave him bored and disaffected. Walking in a park one day, he takes a series of photographs of a pair of lovers embracing; the woman (Vanessa Redgrave) protests and follows him, trying in vain to get the film back. When he develops the pictures in his studio, he thinks he notices something in the woods, in the direction of the woman’s gaze. We see him from the back, looking at the photo, when he suddenly cocks his head and moves in for closer examination. Suddenly animated, he jumps up and rushes to the darkroom to develop the image in an enlarged format, focusing on the area in question, pinning the image up in his studio alongside the others. In the photograph he deciphers a man behind a fence, pointing a gun at the couple. He sees again that the woman, an anxious expression on her face, seems to be looking in the direction of the gunman. Thomas continues to develop images, pin them up, examine them, enlarge them, and pin them up again in an effort to make out what has happened. In a later image from the series he believes he sees a corpse, perhaps the woman’s lover. But the more he enlarges the photographs, the more the image dissolves into abstract forms that he cannot make out. It becomes impossible to tell whether the shape is a dead body or a benign part of the landscape. He returns to the park that night and finds the dead body under a tree, but he does not tell anyone or notify the police. The next morning, when he goes again to look for the body, it is gone, and he finds that someone has entered his studio, torn it apart, and removed all the photographs and negatives of the crime except for the extremely enlarged, essentially unreadable image of the corpse.

  In his book Shooting Kennedy, art historian David Lubin writes that “Thomas’s step-by-step investigation of his still photographs, recapitulates the meticulous close analysis of Zapruder’s footage performed by forensic experts and conspiracy theorists alike in the months preceding the making of Antonioni’s film.” Although the film addressed many other themes, this particular scene (which Lubin describes as a “set piece,” twelve minutes long, without any dialogue) asks the same questions that many could ask about the Zapruder film. Is there a difference between visual representation and visual truth? We can see that something has happened—the president is murdered, or a man is pointing a gun—but we do not know who the actors are, what exactly occurred, or why. We are witnesses to something whose visual representation does not bring clear answers or universal consensus. Instead, we have fragments of information and sequential moments in time that can be stitched together to create a narrative explanation, but it is subject to interpretation, and what one person sees is not what another person sees.

  In this way, the photograph, a modern technological invention that allows us to document events, preserve memory, and share experiences, can perhaps provide information but it cannot always give us what we really seek: knowledge and, more important, understanding. Scientific methods and technological inventions can get us only so far. In Antonioni’s film, there is clearly a murder, and Thomas has captured some evidence concerning it, but in the end, he is left only with an image that he has himself rendered useless by having placed too much faith in it. He enlarged it so much in his search for clues that it not only fails to deliver the information but also mocks the viewer by confusing him as to whether what he thinks he sees is even there. Antonioni was the first but far from the last to raise these questions, implicitly or explicitly, in relation to the Zapruder film. The conspiracy theorists were likely in no mood in 1966 to entertain such abstract thoughts about the film or consider their relevance to the assassination, but the conversation that Antonioni started continued in various forms in the world of arts and letters for many decades.

  In the fall of 1966, a new researcher came on the scene. Josiah Thompson was an assistant professor in philosophy at Haverford College, holding both his BA and PhD from Yale. His area of expertise was Kierkegaard, and he had served in the navy and lived in Denmark before returning to the States to complete his PhD. Like many of the early critics who preceded him and paved his way, he found himself drawn into the subject matter by a combination of innate curiosity, passion, and intellect. In an article by Calvin Trillin for the New Yorker in 1967, titled “The Buffs,” Thompson describes the unorthodox nature of the scholars and the study of the assassination: “The marvelous thing about it is that there are no credentials. There’s no PhD in the assassination. It’s pure scholarship. You have to make your own credentials.” This leveling, democratic qual
ity reflected a truly American spirit: a dogged refusal to accept the crushing of the Kennedy dream and the idealistic faith that the raw evidence of the case could be assembled and reassembled like a jigsaw puzzle until the truth was revealed. No one was excluded from trying their hand at it, as long as they had an idea, the passion for it, and access to the material. And when they didn’t gain access to the material? Well, they were not about to let it lie.

  Thompson had become interested in the assassination at the time it occurred, and had even visited the local FBI office in New Haven to point out an inconsistency he noticed between a statement made by one of the Dallas doctors regarding the president’s wounds and what he saw in the frames of the Zapruder film. “I’m sure they must have died laughing after I left,” he said in the Trillin article. He was critical of the Warren Report, dabbling in research until he crossed paths with first-generation assassination scholar Vincent Salandria in 1965. He became seriously interested at that time, visiting the National Archives with Salandria to review the Zapruder film and working on a draft of a long article. In September 1966, he traveled to New York to meet with an editor at Harper’s to see if he could place the article. While he waited to meet the editor, he met up with an old friend, Don Preston, who was the executive editor of Bernard Geis Associates. They talked about Thompson’s work, which Preston found intensely compelling, and then went out to eat with Geis himself. In the bygone way in which things were apparently done in the sixties, he had a book contract by the time they had finished lunch.