An unusual auction will sell previously unseen footage from around the assassination of President John F Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963.
The footage – 8mm, silent film in colour – shows moments from the motorcade and a shot of the president’s car as it speeds to Parkland Memorial Hospital, where JFK was pronounced dead.
A short clip of the footage is due to be released in a documentary about Clint Hill, one of the Secret Service Agents on duty that day, but otherwise exclusive copyright for the otherwise unbroadcast footage comes with the physical roll of film.
An image from the film can be seen here. Its sale is likely to attract huge interest in the Kennedy Assassination community. But how much is it worth? Image courtesy RR Auction.
What will the new owner see on the footage? The blue Lincoln Continental Convertible flying into the frame, flags fluttering, and with Agent Hill clinging onto the vehicle in which Jacqueline Kennedy can be seen, wearing her now famous pink suit, apparently slumped over her husband’s body.
The assassination of President Kennedy has been exhaustively studied, and every image of that day has been catalogued. What many of them do or don’t show has been disputed.
For new footage to be unveiled now is extraordinary, and will undoubtedly cause a stir in the enormous community of people interested in the assassination.
The footage was taken by Dale Carpenter, Sr, a truck driver who went along to watch the president’s visit to Dallas. It is being sold by his grandson.
Having missed the Kennedy car in his first shot (of around 40 seconds), he climbed up to a higher point to try to catch the rest of the route and ended up capturing what is believed to be the only moving images of Kennedy’s car on the North Stemmons Freeway.
The later footage is about 10 seconds long, and cuts out to film of a family party.
Auctioneers RR Auction say: “Virtually every still photograph and motion picture of the events in Dallas was confiscated for examination by authorities in the aftermath of the assassination; every frame of all known footage has been exhaustively studied by government investigators, historians, researchers, conspiracy theorists, and the public at large. As this reel has remained unknown and unseen for decades, it represents a unique opportunity to reopen the study of the tragedy of November 22, 1963.”
Where the footage ends up, and where and when – and if – it is shown will not likely end the controversy over what exactly happened that day and who was responsible for it.
It’s hard to value such an item, and RR list it with a $100,000 estimate. The sale closes on September 29.
