The Television President: John F. Kennedy as an Image

That ol’ Jack magic had them in his spell

That old Jack magic that he weaved so well,

The women swooned, and seems a lot of men did, too.

So sang Frank Sinatra, to the tune of his hit song “That Old Black Magic,” at the inaugural-eve gala for president John F. Kennedy. Sinatra was right: Kennedy certainly had the American people under his spell.

“Kennedy’s image was appealing to so many people because it combined the traditional with the new,” explains Mark White in Kennedy, “The war hero, familial, religious and royal aspects of his image had a traditionalist appeal, while his erotic glamour and appearance of cutting-edge cultural awareness conveyed a sense of the avant-garde” (p.38).  He was able to maintain his image as the perfect traditional family man, national hero, and stylish supporter of the arts— despite the fact that much of this image was very deliberately manufactured.

The Twenty-Six Seconds That Changed Everything: The Zapruder Film

It was nearly accidental that Abraham Zapruder caught the Kennedy assassination on film. On the morning of November 22, Zapruder, a dress manufacturer who worked in an office right by Dealey Plaza, left his camera at home because it was cloudy outside. Later, though, the sun came out, and Zapruder’s secretary persuaded him to return home to get his now famous 8mm Bell and Howell camera so that he could film president Kennedy’s motorcade passing through Dealey Plaza. Standing on a pedestal on the north side of Elm Street, Zapruder began filming when the first police motorcycles turned onto Elm, and in the next twenty-six seconds shot what was to become arguably the most famous film footage in history.

Tormented by the shock of witnessing such an event, and by the responsibility of being in possession of a recording of it, Zapruder could not sleep. Primarily, “Zapruder worried about the exploitation of his film.”*  In a recurring dream, as he described to Richard Stolley, the LIFE Magazine reporter who bought the film in 1963, Zapruder “walk[ed] through Times Square and came upon a barker urging tourists to step inside a sleazy theater to watch the President die on the big screen.”**  Zapruder immediately feared that his film would lead to a perversion of the horrific death of his beloved John Kennedy, and went to great lengths to ensure that the footage be used appropriately.

It wasn’t until 1975, five years after Zapruder himself died, that the American public saw his film. On the March 6 episode of ABC’s Goodnight America, host Geraldo Rivera screened a bootleg, optically-enhanced copy of Zapruder’s footage. “If you’re at all sensitive, if you’re at all queasy, then don’t watch this film,” said Rivera as he introduced the film.

Here is that episode:

* Vågnes, Ø. (2012). Zaprudered: the Kennedy assassination film in visual culture. University of Texas Press. page 7.

** Stolley, R. B. (1998). Zapruder rewound. Life, 21(10), 43. page 43.