Abraham Zapruder
How much did Life pay Abraham Zapruder for the rights to his assassination film?
Dallas clothing manufacturer made the most important movie of all time. Abraham Zapruder set out to record a visit from John F. Kennedy and ended up chronicling a national catastrophe. For 35 years his 18-second color film—jerky, soundless, devastating—has fueled, refuted, or confirmed a hundred assassination theories. Zapruder (below right, in a live TV interview the day of the assassination) was deeply shaken by his role as an eyewitness to the tragedy. Says his son, Henry Zapruder, of Washington, D.C.: “He felt the loss of the president foremost, but the black mark on Dallas hurt him very deeply too.” Adds his daughter, Myrna Ries, of Dallas: “In spite of that horrible event, he loved Dallas till the day he died.”
He was born in 1905 in Kovel, Russia. His only education was four years of Hebrew school.
In 1920 he immigrated to Brooklyn and went to work as a patternmaker. He married Lillian Shapovnick in 1933. Eight years later, he moved to Texas to work for Nardis of Dallas and later established two labels of his own, Chalet and Jennifer, Jr.’s.
On November 22, 1963, Zapruder was at work, awaiting the presidential procession. His employees persuaded him to return home and fetch his 8-mm Bell and Howell movie camera. His secretary, Marilyn Sitzman, accompanied him down to Elm Street, where they climbed atop a concrete structure to get a better view.
Zapruder later testified before the Warren Commission: “I heard the first shot, and I saw the president lean over and grab himself…For a moment I thought it was, you know, like you say, ‘Oh, he got me,’ when you hear a shot…but before I had a chance to organize my mind, I heard a second shot, and then I saw his head opened up and the blood and everything came out…then I started yelling, ‘They killed him, they killed him…’”
He sold the rights to his film to Life magazine for $150,000. After his death on August 30, 1970, Life sold them back to his family for $1. Since 1978, the original has been stored at the National Archives. The Zapruder family allows scholars to use it for free but charges for commercial use; Oliver Stone, for example, paid $40,000 to include snippets of it in JFK.
Last year the federal government declared the original film the property of the American people. Zapruder’s survivors requested $18.5 million in compensation. Although private appraisals place its value as high as $70 million, the Justice Department’s first offer was only $750,000. Negotiations are still under way.
