The Zapruder film, shot by Abraham Zapruder, captured the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas. The film was initially not intended to capture the event, but Zapruder’s secretary suggested he retrieve his camera. The film shows the President’s open-top limousine moving slowly down the street before shots were fired, and ends with the limousine heading towards the hospital. The original film was kept by Zapruder and eventually sold to Life magazine. The film has been scrutinized for evidence of a conspiracy, with some suggesting it was edited or manipulated. The original camera is now in the custody of the National Archives.
The film Zapruder is a color 8mm home film shot in Dallas, Texas by a Ukrainian immigrant named Abraham Zapruder, a businessman specializing in women’s clothing. The film begins with footage of a young girl’s birthday party, but it’s the ensuing 26.6 seconds of footage that makes Zapruder’s film one of the most important pieces of evidence in political history. Using a Bell & Howell Zoomatic Director Series Model 414 PD 8mm Movie Camera, Zapruder captured the most complete footage of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas’ Dealey Plaza.
Abraham Zapruder originally did not intend to film the president’s motorcade as it passed his offices in the Dal-Tex building. His secretary suggested that Zapruder retrieve his camera from the office and film the once-in-a-lifetime event. Zapruder shot the film from atop a concrete staircase, with his secretary holding him down from behind. The relevant parts of the Zapruder film begin with the appearance of several spare motorcycles and the first limousines in the motorcade. Filming stops abruptly, possibly because Zapruder realized the president was not present in those lead vehicles.
When filming resumes, the President’s open-top limousine can be seen moving slowly down the street. The President and Governor of Texas, John Connally can be seen waving to the crowd. Just before the limousine passed under a large traffic sign, the first shot was apparently fired, forcing Zapruder to reflexively shake his camera. When the limousine comes into view again, the president is clearly seen clutching his throat. At this point Zapruder reacts again to the sound of a second shot.
A few frames later, the Zapruder film shows the other passengers in the limousine, including the president’s wife Jackie Kennedy, attempting to comfort the president and governor. At frame 313, the Zapruder film shows a spray of blood as a third shot hits John F. Kennedy directly on the head. At that point, Mrs. Kennedy tries to get out of the back of the limousine but she is pushed away by a Secret Service agent. The Zapruder film ends with the limousine hurtling across an overpass towards the hospital.
Within hours of the assassination, news of Abraham Zapruder’s footage traveled through media and investigative agencies across the country. Zapruder himself took the camera and its undeveloped content to a local TV station while giving his first interview. The original film was immediately processed by a local Kodak developer and several copies were made available to investigators. Zapruder himself kept the original footage and three copies, intending to sell the future rights. Eventually the owners of Life magazine acquired the publishing rights to the Zapruder film for US$150,000.
The actual Zapruder film wasn’t shown to the public in its unedited form until the mid-1970s. Zapruder was a supporter of Kennedy and did not want the bloody headshot captured in frame 313 to become an indelible image in the minds of sensitive viewers. That particular set of stills, however, would eventually become a source of contention for the assassination investigators. Kennedy’s head movements seen in the Zapruder film could be interpreted as the result of a shot fired in front of the motorcade, not from Lee Harvey Oswald’s position above and behind. For this and many other reasons, the enhanced versions of the Zapruder film have been scrutinized by both professional and amateur criminologists.
Some argue that the Zapruder film was edited to remove evidence of a conspiracy, or altered through sophisticated cinematic techniques to “paste” footage of the procession onto the original footage of the Zapruder crowd. Sometimes the reactions of witnesses in the background don’t seem to match the actions of the limousine passengers. The proportional sizes of objects and people in the background also appear larger than the passengers in the motorcade, which may be the result of zooming in on the background to mask a composite shot of a different motorcade.
Critics of the Zapruder film also point out a number of inconsistencies with the movements of the limousine passengers. The driver is seen spinning his head at an incredibly fast rate, and the injured governor can be seen tossing his hat even after suffering a broken wrist. These and other anomalies seem to indicate that the original Zapruder footage may have been manipulated by film experts to remove incriminating images or to reinforce an established but fictitious timeline of events.
The original camera used by Zapruder to capture the historic footage is now in the custody of the National Archives, and copies of the film itself can be found in several places online.
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