I have the November 29, 1963 LIFE magazine with frames from the Zapruder film. It came out exactly a week after the assassination and 6 days after LIFE took possession of the film from Zapruder.
The frames they published were black and white, even though the Zapruder film was in color. And they are also very blurry, more so than the film. I am going to discuss what they published and what they didn’t publish, and the latter will surprise you.
So, their spread started with the lone motorcycle cop, and then it cut to the limo, just as it does today. And it features the sign that we know so well. But, realize how the Zapruder film is divided and the story it tells. It’s divided into two parts: before the sign and after the sign, and the story it tells is that JFK was OK until he disappeared behind the scene. Then, behind the sign, he was shot in ways we can’t see, and he emerges from behind the sign stricken.
So, that was their story, and to tell it, they quit showing JFK at frame 166. This is the last you see of him until he emerges from behind the freeway sign. I realize it is very blurry.
Here it is from the Costella frame.
I cut that frame because they cut their frame. I cut it to match what they did. They cut it right behind JFK, and so did I. Notice that Jackie is not looking at JFK. Rather, she is working her side of the street, like a good political wife.
So, why didn’t they show any more of him unstricken? The answer is that there was no more of him unstricken. He was shot in the back right after that, and no doubt it showed. So, they weren’t going to feature it. Here, for example, is frame 200. Notice that Jackie is turned and looking at JFK now, and that’s because she knows that something is wrong. And he seems to be covering his face with his hand. He didn’t do that. That isn’t a hand. It is paint.
But, that is doctoring that came later. I can only guess how it originally looked. I’m sure it took years to get the Zapruder film in the shape it is today.
So, the next thing they showed of him in LIFE magazine was him emerging from behind the sign. You see an array of frames that pretty much capture the narrative that we are familiar with, but you don’t see the spectators. You don’t see Babushka Lady or Charles Brehm and his son or Jean Hill and Mary Moorman. So, they omitted all those frames. Why? Well, they occur when Zapruder, apparently, failed at centering the Kennedys. This is frame 291.
Do you think Zapruder screwed up? I don’t think so. I have no reason to think he would have had any difficulty centering them at that point, since he did so before and afterwards. I know that a lot of doctoring was done to Mary Moorman. They used a still image of her and repeated it. Here is 312, in which the Kennedys have passed her, yet she is still posing to shoot.
Notice that she is not pointing her camera at them; she’s pointing it straight ahead. It’s a still image. They had huge problems with Mary Moorman, and as I have been saying for years, they wound up ditching her photo and replacing it with one taken by Babushka Lady. Apparently, Mary captured something that they did not want us to see. And they eventually made it that Mary didn’t take her photo until after the fatal head shot. Mary said, at the time and all along, that she took her photo at the time of the first shot, but they changed it to her not taking it until after the last shot.
I spent over a year studying the Moorman photo and her whole saga, and I am as sure as ever that she did not take it. Here is one of my posts about it, if you’re interested.
But, moving on, LIFE magazine omitted 313, when his head exploded from the fatal head shot. And they didn’t mention the fatal head shot. They made it that he was shot behind the sign, and that was it. They didn’t say he was shot again. They just said that he collapsed into Jackie, and they showed a frame of it. I think it was 321.
On the right, they actually painted in eyes on Jackie. If you look closely, you’ll see that she has these dark round eyes that are scary.
That does not occur in the film, so they must have done it with paint. And, notice how they whitened his face and the front of his head. It’s stark white, isn’t it? They didn’t want to admit that he was shot. They just said: “The President collapses on his wife’s shoulder.” They did not state or imply that he was shot. and I understand why. It was a shot taken from the front, slightly in front. Right and front. And the story was going to be that all the shots came from the rear, from the 6th floor window. So, that’s why they didn’t want to admit that he was shot there.
Eventually, they changed their minds and decided to highlight the fatal head shot. But, they did not include it in the 11/29 LIFE.
The final section shows a lot of frames of Jackie crawling on the back hood of the limo. You don’t see Clint Hill until he’s climbing up. In the film, you see him running and overtaking the moving limo. But, of course, it was sped up. The limo was either stopped completely or going no more than 2 or 3 miles per hour.
So, the bottom line is that they carefully avoided showing JFK getting shot in the back high on the hill, but that is what happened. And they avoided showing the fatal head shot or including it in the narrative. They left out all the familiar spectators on the south side of Elm. And they avoided showing Clint Hill running and catching up with the limo.
