Rarely seen footage captured in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963, during the assassination of President John F. Kennedy is going up for auction in Boston later this month. And while the 8mm film lasts just 10 seconds, it’s a fascinating peek into history that’s been hiding away in private hands for decades.
The silent, color film was captured by Dale Carpenter Sr., a businessman from Texas who just happened to be filming the president’s motorcade that fateful day in Dallas.
The auction house explains in an online listing that this newly unearthed footage doesn’t actually capture the moment Kennedy was shot. But it does show the before and after, including the president’s motorcade passing through Dallas before arriving in Dealey Plaza. And then “a remarkable post-shooting clip” of the presidential limousine quickly zooming along North Stemmons Freeway on the way to Parkland Memorial Hospital.
“Secret Service Agent Clint Hill dominates the scene, spreadeagled precariously above the back seat, having leapt onto the back of the vehicle to shield the first lady and wounded president,” the auction house explained. “Jacqueline Kennedy, slumping over her stricken husband, is easily identified in the rear seat by the bright hue of her iconic pink suit.”
The chain of custody for this rare footage is oddly mundane, given its historic significance. Carpenter died in 1991 at the age of 77 and the reel from the JFK assassination includes other family movies, including footage from a birthday party for his kids. As the New York Times explains, the footage was first passed to his wife Mabel, then to his daughter, Diana, and then to his grandson, James Gates.
It was Gates who inherited the historic footage among 30 other reels of his grandfather’s around 2009, though he reportedly didn’t think much of it at the time. After all, they had been stored in a milk crate and largely forgotten for decades. But now the footage is available to any private collector who wants to own a piece of history and has the money to shell out.
“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,” RR Auction said in its listing. “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.”
