Why the man who captured JFK’s death never made another film
Abraham Zapruder shot one of the most significant film sequences of all time on that fateful day in Dallas –and was traumatised by it. Camilla Tominey tells his story
The home movie that changed the world almost didn’t happen. When Abraham Zapruder – the only person to film the assassination of John F Kennedy from start to finish – turned up for work that morning, he had left his 8mm camera at home.
The dressmaker not only had to be persuaded to go back for the camera, but also to overcome his vertigo and stand on a four-foot tall concrete plinth in order to capture the best footage of the presidential motorcade riding through Dallas on that fateful day.
Zapruder’s silent 26-second colour motion picture sequence would go on to be used by both sides in the debate over who shot JFK – those who blamed lone gunman Lee Harvey Oswald, and those who believed it was a conspiracy.
“The Zapruder film” is one of the most studied pieces of footage in history, yet little is known about the unassuming 58-year-old behind the camera.
For the first time, a TV documentary has pieced together the story of the man behind the most famous home movie in history, using original archive recordings of the people who witnessed that momentous day, including long-forgotten interviews with Zapruder himself.
As Steve Anderson, executive producer of JFK: The Home Movie that Changed the World, explains: “It is probably the first example of citizen journalism and had a seminal effect on the reading of what happened that day.
“The Warren Commission [established by President Lyndon B Johnson to investigate the assassination] used it almost as its point of record. This documentary brings Zapruder’s words and pictures together for the first time on TV.
“This is an epic story of the 20th century; a Jewish immigrant born into chaos and poverty in Imperial Russia in 1905, who ends up being the sole witness filming one of the most shocking events in history. What a story.”
The story begins with Zapruder emigrating to America in 1920, aged 15, arriving in Brooklyn, New York, speaking no English.
Studying the language at night, he found work as a clothing pattern maker in Manhattan’s garment district and married Lillian Sapovnik in 1933, with whom he had two children.
According to his granddaughter Alexandra, who wrote Twenty Six Seconds about the Zapruder film in 2016 and contributed to the documentary: “My grandfather had been taking home movies since the mid-1930s. He loved taking home movies and he took them of everything.”
She describes him as “very determined to be an American”. In 1941, the family moved to Dallas, Texas, where he founded dressmakers Jennifer Juniors on the fourth floor of the Dal-Tex Building, across the street from the Texas School Book Depository, Oswald’s vantage point.
Known simply as “Mr Zee” to staff, Zapruder “didn’t have a lot of confidence” because he “didn’t have a lot of education”, according to Alexandra.
Despite being a huge fan of JFK and regarding him as “the inspiration to the youth of America”, he didn’t bring his top-of-the-line Bell & Howell Zoomatic Director Series Model 414 PD to work that morning
‘I walked out the back door with the most famous home movie in American history’
because, as he later told his family: “I never believed I’d be able to see the president.”
“He was reserved and wasn’t comfortable taking a risk and putting himself out there,” says Alexandra. “Even though he was very smart, he was hesitant in a way. He decided not to gamble on it.” By mid morning, with the handsome president and his beautiful wife, Jacqueline Kennedy, having already wowed the crowds in Fort Worth, excitement at their imminent Dallas arrival was reaching fever pitch.
The Zapruders were out in force that day. Alexandra’s aunt and best friend had gone to greet Air Force One, landing at Love Field; her uncle Myron was positioned in Main Street to watch the motorcade.
It was Lillian Rogers, Zapruder’s assistant, who finally insisted: “You’re the one who has been making home movies for years, you have to go home and get your camera.”
Having agreed to close the office for lunch to allow all his staff to watch the spectacle about to unfold, Zapruder set about looking for the best spot to take pictures in Elm Street in Dealey Plaza.
As he later explained: “One place I couldn’t stand very erect, another place a tree was in my way and, finally, I picked the very spot I stopped at.”
He was accompanied by his receptionist Marilyn Sitzman. “I told her to watch me while I take these pictures because using a zoom lens you kind of get dizzy and I says, I might have to have somebody to hold on to.”
Zapruder started filming the presidential motorcade as it turned from Houston Street onto Elm Street in front of the Book Depository at 12.30pm, capturing 486 frames on Kodak Kodachrome II safety film.
“I was shooting as they were coming along and Jacqueline and the president were waving, and as it came in line with my camera, I heard a shot.”
Zapruder’s iconic footage of the couple is briefly obscured by a road sign before the President emerges clutching his throat with both hands. But it is the next frame, 313, which shows in gory detail the second shot blowing his head apart, forcing the horrified First Lady, in her distinctive pink suit, to clamber on to the back of the moving open-top limousine in a bid to escape the gunfire.
“I didn’t realise what had happened,” says Zapruder. “Then a second shot came and then I realised. I saw his head open up and I started yelling, ‘They killed him, they killed him’.”
Although millions have since watched Zapruder’s film, he was one of the first to realise that the president had not just been injured, but murdered. As he later told a reporter: “He’s dead, I know he’s dead. I watched through the viewfinder and I saw his head explode like a firecracker.
“I was still in shock when I got back, I was kicking and banging the desk. I couldn’t understand how a thing like this could happen. I personally have never seen anybody killed in my life and to see something like this, shooting a man down like a dog, I just couldn’t believe.”
Amid the chaos and confusion, word quickly spread that Zapruder had caught it all on camera and soon journalists were trying to hunt down the footage – but he was determined to give it to the authorities first.
Within minutes the Secret Service arrived at Jennifer Juniors to escort Zapruder to WFFA, the local television station, to get the film developed. He was immediately invited on air to describe what he had seen, telling stunned viewers: “I saw his head practically open up, all blood and everything, and I kept on shooting. That’s about all, I’m just sick… terrible.”
‘I used to be an ardent movie taker – after that day I lost the appetite to take pictures’
Deciding they didn’t have the technology to process the double 8mm film, it was taken to Eastman Kodak, which produced two copies about 200 metres from where Johnson was being sworn in that evening: one for the Secret Service and another for the FBI. Zapruder kept the original.
Life magazine reporter Dick Stolley, who would go on to become founding managing editor of People magazine, had found out about the Zapruder film and had been calling his home every 15 minutes in a bid to secure a meeting.
A weary Zapruder eventually answered and told him to join other reporters at his office at 9am the following morning. Stolley arrived at 8am and after seeing the footage decided: “There is no way in hell that Life magazine is not going to wind up with that film.”
After some negotiation, he agreed to pay Zapruder $50,000 for print publication rights, raising the amount to $150,000 (£120,000) for all rights one week later. Fearful of being accused of capitalising on the Kennedys’ misery, Zapruder agreed to give $25,000 to the widow of JD Tippit, a Dallas police officer who was shot and killed by Oswald 45 minutes after the assassination.
Other journalists offered to pay Zapruder more money for the film, but he ultimately gave it to Stolley because he acted like “a gentleman”.
“I walked out the back door with what turned out to be the most famous home movie in American history,” recalled Stolley.
Another reason Zapruder chose Life was because he had apparently had a nightmare in which he saw a booth in Times Square advertising “See the President’s head explode!” A condition of the sale to Life was that frame 313, showing the fatal shot, would be withheld.
It was not aired until 1975, five years after Zapruder’s death from stomach cancer, after Life had sold the film rights back to his family for $1.
Despite the Warren Commission finding no evidence of a conspiracy, Life’s refusal to release all parts of the Zapruder film was cited as evidence of a cover up by conspiracy theorists. But as Zapruder pointed out at the time, had JFK been shot from the front rather than the back, “I would have heard a different sound, like a shot coming from my right ear”.
In 1999, the Zapruders donated the copyright of the film to the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, after the federal government agreed to pay them $16million.
As Alexandra tells the documentary: “Over time, that film became less and less ours and more and more belonged to the American public. The film speaks to the total frailty of human life.”
It also speaks to the frailty of Abraham Zapruder; he didn’t record any more home movies after that.
“I’m sorry to say I used to be an ardent movie taker and after that tragedy somehow I lost, I don’t know what to call it, appetite or desire to take pictures,” Zapruder later admitted. “I’m sorry, I have beautiful grandchildren growing up, I’d love to take some movies of them. I’ll have to get back to it but somehow I just didn’t have the desire to do so.”
‘JFK: The Home Movie that Changed the World’ premieres at The Chiswick Cinema on Monday Nov 13 and drops on ITVX on Thursday Nov 16