Twenty-Six Seconds: A Personal History of the Zapruder Film

by Alexandra Zapruder

Overview

The moving, untold family story behind Abraham Zapruder's film footage of the Kennedy assassination and its lasting impact on our world.

Abraham Zapruder didn't know when he ran home to grab his video camera on November 22, 1963 that this single spontaneous decision would change his family's life for generations to come. Originally intended as a home movie of President Kennedy's motorcade, Zapruder's film of the JFK assassination is now shown in every American history class, included in Jeopardy and Trivial Pursuit questions, and referenced in novels and films. It is the most famous example of citizen journalism, a precursor to the iconic images of our time, such as the Challenger explosion, the Rodney King beating, and the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers. But few know the complicated legacy of the film itself.

Now Abraham's granddaughter, Alexandra Zapruder, is ready to tell the complete story for the first time. With the help of the Zapruder family's exclusive records, memories, and documents, Zapruder tracks the film's torturous journey through history, all while American society undergoes its own transformation, and a new media-driven consumer culture challenges traditional ideas of privacy, ownership, journalism, and knowledge.

Part biography, part family history, and part historical narrative, Zapruder demonstrates how one man's unwitting moment in the spotlight shifted the way politics, culture, and media intersect, bringing about the larger social questions that define our age.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781455574827
Publisher:	Grand Central Publishing
Publication date:	09/12/2017
Pages:	496
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Alexandra Zapruder began her career on the founding staff of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. A graduate of Smith College, she later earned her Master's Degree in Education at Harvard University. She is the author of Salvaged Pages: Young Writers' Diaries of the Holocaust, which won the National Jewish Book Award in the Holocaust category. She also served as the guest curator for an exhibition of original diaries at Holocaust Museum Houston. She wrote and co-produced I'm Still Here, a documentary film for young audiences based on Salvaged Pages, which was awarded the Jewish Image Award for Best Television Special by the National Foundation for Jewish Culture and was nominated for two Emmy awards. Alexandra has traveled around the country and spoken to thousands of teachers, students, and others about her work.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Prologue: Home Movie 19

Chapter 1 Assassination 27

Chapter 2 Exposure 48

Chapter 3 First Glimpses 75

Chapter 4 All Rights to LIFE 104

Chapter 5 Images in Print 129

Chapter 6 Mounting Pressure 158

Chapter 7 Court Cases and Bootlegs 189

Chapter 8 LIFE's Dilemma 223

Chapter 9 The Eternal Frame and the Endless Debates 254

Chapter 10 The Floodgates Open 276

Chapter 11 JFK: The Movie and the Assassination Records Act 299

Chapter 12 To Take or Not to Take the Film 319

Chapter 13 A Final Firestorm 348

Chapter 14 Arbitration and Resolution 381

Epilogue: Public and Private Legacy 413

Acknowledgments 423

Notes 433

Reading Group Guide 457

Index 469

Editorial Reviews

"A fascinating and cautionary tale."—Wall Street Journal

"Zapruder is a gifted writer and storyteller who delicately unravels a minor mystery few people know or care about, but that she makes human, complex and quite interesting."—New York Times Book Review

"Making use of family and government archives, interviews, and her own memory, Alexandra offers a supple, tender portrait of a family lashed to history."—Boston Globe

"The fifty year saga of the most important witness to the JFK assassination-a home movie shot by Abraham Zapruder-is a high-stakes morality tale, suspenseful, thought-provoking, and at times nasty. Zapruder's embattled descendants defend their claim to the film, while researchers, conspiracy theorists, disapproving editorial writers and the federal government swirl around them, and millions of dollars hang in the balance."—John Berendt, New York Times bestselling author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

"A first-rate work of biography and history, addressing the film and the family in all their complexity and character...absorbing, deeply researched."—USA Today

"Enlightening...an intelligent blend of memoir and cultural criticism that breaks fresh ground in the crowded field of JFK assassination studies."—San Francisco Chronicle

"A moving and enlightening account of the famous film."—Joyce Carol Oates, The Washington Post

"Riveting...offers up a complex and highly entertaining story of an assassination, a reel of film, and a Texas-based clan, which also draws in Dan Rather, Life magazine, Geraldo Rivera, the Warren Commission, a pile of money, and a whole lot more."—The National Book Review

"The odyssey of America's most famous amateur footage is recounted with skill and sensitivity....Alexandra is a fine storyteller... the story never lags...Alexandra Zapruder has written a book which transcends the film and the tragedy in Dallas."—Washington Independent Review of Books

"Riveting."—The Dallas Morning News

"It is rare to find a book like TWENTY-SIX SECONDS that uncovers new informationa bout one of the most tragic events in American history...an intelligent examination of the changing media landscape, sudden notoriety, and its aftermath."—Washington Times

"[A] well-written exploration of conspiracy, propriety, copyright, and public good versus private gain...reaffirming [the film's] position as a true relic, one of the few in a secular world."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"An intriguing history of one of the most significant home movies ever recorded."—Kirkus Reviews

"Exhaustively researched."—Bookreporter

"Zapruder offers a unique perspective."—New York Post

"A fascinating history."—Men's Journal

"Connects the complex dots between [the author's] grandfather's chance footage of the attack (he was an amateur camera buff catching the president's motorcade) and the film's controversial and lasting impact on America's psyche, politics, culture, and laws-as well as the ways it strengthened and hurt the Zapruders over the next 50 years."—Elle.com

"A wholly unique family memoir and a fascinating monograph about one of the most consequential artifacts in recorded history...So much has been written and said about the Kennedy assassination that a reader might wonder what is left to be said. In the pages of TWENTY-SIX SECONDS, Alexandra Zapruder says it."—Jewish Journal

"Adds a fresh narrative to an old tragedy."—People

"Zapruder evokes the tension and horror of the assassination. Scrupulous facts are woven into an intensely personal, sometimes painful, family history....TWENTY-SIX SECONDS is an important contribution to our understanding of history on a grand scale, and to the personal history of a private family reluctantly thrust into history's spotlight."—Lone Star Literary Life

From the Publisher

Zapruder is a gifted writer and storyteller who delicately unravels a minor mystery few people know or care about, but that she makes human, complex and quite interesting.

The New York Times Book Review - Alessandra Stanley

★ 09/12/2016
This well-written exploration of conspiracy, propriety, copyright, and public good versus private gain is seen through the prism of the world’s most famous home movie. Sometimes “personal history” is code for lazy research, but Zapruder (Salvaged Pages: Young Writers’ Diaries of the Holocaust) has doggedly followed the tortured life of her grandfather’s short 8 mm film, which captured the moment of President Kennedy’s assassination, through the shock of witness, media frenzy, FBI fumbling, conspiracy theorists, lawsuits, artists, and Oliver Stone. At the center of the story is Abe Zapruder, who died when the author was an infant. An immigrant from Ukraine, Abe eventually found modest success as a dressmaker in Dallas. For him, J.F.K. was the symbol of American promise, so when he sold his film to Life, it was with the understanding that the magazine would safeguard J.F.K.’s dignity—and give Zapruder $150,000 for it. The movie was sold back to the family for $1, 12 years later, when it became too much of a burden for the magazine. And there it stayed until 1993 when the government seized the film, even though it was on loan to the National Archives. What follows is a dispassionate discussion of how much the film is worth. Zapruder doesn’t shy away from the fact that her family made money from the film, but it was the government that decided the “small, depressing, inconclusive, limited spool of celluloid” was worth $16 million, reaffirming its position as a true relic, one of the few in a secular world. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

10/15/2016
Abraham Zapruder's short home movie of President John F. Kennedy's 1963 assassination became the centerpiece for conspiracy theorists and an iconic component of American culture. Here, Abraham's granddaughter Alexandra (Salvaged Pages: Young Writers' Diaries of the Holocaust) tells the complex story of the film's history, originally sold to Life magazine for $150,000 and now housed in the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, property of the U.S. National Archives. The author shines as a memoirist, offering compelling accounts about her grandfather and how the film affected generations of Zapruders. The narrative gets bogged down with descriptions of legal battles over copyright ownership vs. public fair use. However, included are enlightening passages on the film's role in books that express growing public mistrust of the government and its part in such media events as Oliver Stone's controversial 1991 motion picture JFK. VERDICT This work offers fresh insight into Abraham Zapruder, family man, and provides new perspectives of the film's role in assassination debates. See David Wrone's The Zapruder Film and David Lubin's Shooting Kennedy for accounts that place the Zapruder film in historical and cultural context.—Karl Helicher, formerly Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, PA

Library Journal