Abraham Zapruder

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Abraham Zapruder (May 15, 1905 – August 30, 1970) was an American 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 assassination of the President. The Zapruder film is famous for being the most complete visual record of the assassination.

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[edit] Background

Abraham Zapruder (he pronounced his last name with the stress on the first syllable, not the second) 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 with his family to the United States and settled in Brooklyn, New York.[1] He found work in Manhattan's garment district as a clothing pattern maker. He and his wife Lillian married in 1933, and had two children.[2]

In 1941, following a job offer by a friend, Zapruder moved to Dallas to work for Nardis, a local sportswear company. In 1954, he co-founded Jennifer Juniors, Inc., a company that produced two clothing brands, Chalet and Jennifer Juniors.[3] His offices were located in the Dal-Tex Building, just off Dealey Plaza (it is the building directly across the street east of the Texas School Book Depository).

Zapruder was a supporter of the Democratic Party and an admirer of President John F. Kennedy. When he learned that Kennedy's motorcade would pass through Dealey Plaza, he originally decided to observe without a camera. At the insistence of his secretary, he returned home to get his Bell & Howell movie camera and film the procession. His film captured the assassination of the President and has become one of the most studied pieces of film in history. It became an essential part of the Warren Commission Hearings.

[edit] As an assassination witness

Abraham Zapruder locates JFK head wound in WFAA Dallas interview, less than 2 hours after assassination
Abraham Zapruder locates JFK head wound in WFAA Dallas interview, less than 2 hours after assassination

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, and at the time of the assassination, loaded with Kodak Kodachrome II safety film. This historic film footage (comprising about 486 frames which run in real time in 26.6 seconds), is the "Zapruder film". Zapruder stood atop the most western of two pedestals that are part of a concrete pergola (the Bryan Pergola) sited along Elm Street in the plaza. Behind him stood his receptionist, Marilyn Sitzman, to steady him if he got dizzy while filming.[4]

While walking back to his office, Zapruder encountered Dallas Morning News reporter Harry McCormick. The two discussed Zapruder's film, and McCormick agreed to meet Zapruder at the latter's office to discuss getting the film developed immediately. McCormick then encountered Forrest Sorrels of the Secret Service office in Dallas, whom McCormick knew, and told him about Zapruder and his film. McCormick and Sorrels visited Zapruder's office 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 to be developed, where Zapruder appeared on air less than two hours after the assassination.

There, Zapruder described and illustrated on TV where he thought Kennedy's head wound was: [1][2]

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 the Eastman Kodak processing plant in Dallas which agreed to process it immediately. Because that Kodak lab did not have the equipment to copy 8 mm film, three copies were run off at another lab, then returned to Kodak for processing. Zapruder kept the original, plus one copy, and gave the other two copies to Agent Sorrels, who immediately sent them to Secret Service headquarters in Washington.

At 11:00 that evening, Zapruder was called at home by an editor at Life magazine, who arranged to fly to Dallas to meet Zapruder the following morning to talk about purchasing the publication rights of the film.

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!"[citation needed] 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 original film and its print, television, and motion picture rights 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.

[edit] 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." However, in his testimony to the Warren Commission Zapruder was less certain:

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?
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.

He also explained that he had initially inferred that the shots came from behind him only because the right side of the president's head exploded, and police officers ran up the knoll to the parking lot behind where he was standing.

[edit] After the assassination

Abraham Zapruder's Bell & Howell Zoomatic movie camera, in the collection of the US National Archives
Abraham Zapruder's Bell & Howell Zoomatic movie camera, in the collection of the US National Archives

The assassination left Zapruder so traumatized, he never bought nor used another movie camera for the rest of his life.

Zapruder later testified before the Warren Commission, where he broke down and wept as he recalled the horrible events of that day, 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.

A 2007 film Frame 313 tells the story of Abraham Zapruder's life. In the film, Zapruder was played by Dawid Pawlisiak.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Passenger list, S.S. Rotterdam, Port of New York, 12 July 1920, sheet 73, lines 4–7. Zapruder's father Israel had emigrated before them.
  2. ^ Richard B. Trask, National Nightmare on Six Feet of Film (Yeoman Press, 2005), p. 18. ISBN 0-963-85954-4.
  3. ^ "Business Charters", The Dallas Morning News, August 13, 1954, p. II-16
  4. ^ Interview of Marilyn Sitzman by Josiah Thompson, 1966.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links