Abraham Zapruder
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Abraham Zapruder |
Abraham Zapruder (
May 15,
1905 â€"
August 30,
1970) was a manufacturer of women's clothing, who filmed
U.S. President John F. Kennedy's 1963 motorcade traveling through
Dealey Plaza in
Dallas, Texas, and unexpectedly recorded the entire
assassination of the President. The
Zapruder film is famous for being the only film to have recorded the entire ordeal.
Abraham Zapruder was born into a Russian-Jewish family in the city of
Kovel in
Ukraine (then under the Russian Empire). He received only four years of formal education in Russia. In 1920 during the turmoil of the
Russian Civil War, he emigrated to the United States and settled in
Brooklyn,
New York. Zapruder pronounced his last name with the stress on the first syllable, not the second.
In 1941, he moved to Dallas to work in the garment industry and co-founded a company called
Nardis. In 1959, he founded his own company that produced two clothing brands,
Chalet and
Jennifer, Jr.'s. His offices were located in the
Dal-Tex Building, just off Dealey Plaza.
Zapruder was a supporter of the
Democratic Party and a fan of President John F. Kennedy. When he learned that Kennedy's
motorcade would pass through Dealey Plaza, he decided to film the procession with his
Bell & Howell movie camera. His film captured the assassination of the President and has become one of the most studied pieces of film in history.
Zapruder, realizing that he may have critical evidence, agreed to turn the footage over to
Secret Service agent
Forest Sorrels, who was not interested in the original and perfectly happy to have a copy. Zapruder made three copies, retaining the original footage, and began shopping it around to media outlets. Zapruder eventually sold the original and the publishing rights to his film to
Life Magazine for $150,000. He donated $25,000 of the proceeds to the widow of slain Dallas police officer
J.D. Tippit. After his death, his heirs recovered the rights to the film.
About an hour and a half after the assassination, and while the undeveloped film was still in the camera and had yet to be processed, Zapruder appeared on Dallas television station
WFAA where he gave a now famous interview. He later screened the footage for law enforcement officials and several journalists including
Dan Rather, who was a young
CBS reporter at the time.
Zapruder later testified before the
Warren Commission and at the 1969 trial of
Clay Shaw. He died of a malignant brain tumor in 1970, in Dallas.
Zapruder was played by
Ray LePere in the 1991 film
JFK.
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Abraham Zapruder's Bell & Howell Zoomatic movie camera, in the collection of the US National Archives |
Zapruder filmed the assassination using a then top-of-the-line Model 414 PD 8 mm Bell & Howell Zoomatic Director Series movie camera purchased in 1962 loaded with
Kodak Kodachrome II safety film. This historic film footage is the "
Zapruder film". Zapruder, who suffered from
vertigo, had to be steadied by his secretary
Marilyn Sitzman as he stood atop the most western of two pedestals that are part of a concrete
pergola in the plaza.
After the assassination, Zapruder returned to his office, where a reporter and secret service agent
Forrest Sorrels turned up within an hour. Realizing the importance of the footage but still shocked by what he had seen, Zapruder agreed to turn the film over to Sorrels provided that it was only for the use of the Secret Service and others investigating the assassination, as he also wanted to sell the film. The group took the film to television station
WFAA where Zapruder appeared on air less than two hours after the assassination.
There, Zapruder described and illustrated on TV exactly the wound on the right side of JFK's head which his film would later show: [
1][
2]
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Abraham Zapruder locates JFK head wound in WFAA Dallas interview, less than 2 hours after assassination |
::
WATSON (Station WFAA Dallas): [...] And would you tell us your story please, sir? :::
ZAPRUDER: I got out in, uh, about a half-hour earlier to get a good spot to shoot some pictures. And I found a spot, one of these concrete blocks they have down near that park, near the underpass. And I got on top there, there was another girl from my office, she was right behind me. And as I was shooting, as the President was coming down from Houston Street making his turn, it was about a half-way down there, I heard a shot, and he slumped to the side, like this. Then I heard another shot or two, I couldn't say it was one or two, and I saw his head practically open up
[places fingers of right hand to right side of head in a narrow cone, over his right ear], all blood and everything, and I kept on shooting. That's about all, I'm just sick, I can't…:::
WATSON:
I think that pretty well expresses the entire feelings of the whole world.:::
ZAPRUDER: Terrible, terrible.:::
WATSON:
You have the film in your camera, we'll try to get...:::
ZAPRUDER: Yes, I brought it on the studio, now.:::
WATSON:
We'll try to get that processed and have it as soon as possible.But WFAA had no capability to develop 8 mm film and so it was taken to Eastman Kodak who agreed to process it immediately.
Three copies were run off, with two going to the Secret Service and one to Zapruder. That night, Zapruder is said to have had a nightmare in which he was walking through
Times Square and saw a booth advertising "See the President's head explode!" He determined that, while he wanted to make money from the film, he did not want the full horror of what was seen to be made public. On
November 25,
1963, Zapruder sold the film to
Life Magazine for $150,000, divided into six annual payments of $25,000. Zapruder donated his first $25,000 payment to the widow of murdered Dallas policeman
J. D. Tippit. Part of the deal with
Life was that Frame 313, showing the fatal shot, would not be shown.
Testimony
At 9:55 p.m. Dallas time on
November 22, United States PRS Special Agent
Maxwell D. Phillips sent a hand-written memo (Warren Commission Document, CD87) to U.S.
Secret Service Chief James Rowley that accompanied one of the first generation copies said of Zapruder's origins of at least one shot, "According to Mr Zapruder the position of the assassin was behind Mr Zapruder." Behind Mr. Zapruder was the
Dealey Plaza grassy knoll. However, in his testimony to the
Warren Commission Zapruder was less certain:
Mr. LIEBELER. Did you form any opinion about the direction from which the shots came by the sound, or were you just upset by the thing you had seen?:Mr. ZAPRUDER. No, there was too much reverberation. There was an echo which gave me a sound all over. In other words that square is kind of--it had a sound all over.
*
Madtv, a comedy television show did a sketch showing other
home movies Zapruder made, these were films of the family at
birthday parties,
Bar Mitzvahs, etc. The morbid twist was certain family members met unfortunate and bloody ends at the hands of an unseen assassin. After the clips are shown,
Sam Donaldson (played by an actor on the show), the reporter who is presenting the movies, says that all these movies are the same and pleas to the Zapruder family to stop making movies.
*
Andrew Denton's film and television production company is named
Zapruder's Other Films Pty Ltd.
* Zapruder was mentioned in the
Marilyn Manson song "Posthuman" from the 1998 album Mechanical Animals: "She's got eyes like Zapruder and a mouth like heroin.She wants me to be perfect like Kennedy."
* In the film,
Enemy of the State, Robert Dean, played by Will Smith, jokingly mentions the Zapruder film in his personal collection.
*
Zapruder's testimony during the Clay Shaw trial*
Video of JFK assassination that Zapruder shot*
Longer, lesser quality of video of JFK assassination that Zapruder shot
