Former President John F. Kennedy staged his own assassination just two months before he was shot and killed by Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas, Texas.
The 35th president of the United States and his wife, Jackie, had decided in the summer of 1963 to create their own James Bond-style film, which were the then president’s favorites. according to Vanity Fair.
They then spent the weekend of September 21 and 22 filming scenes at Hammersmith Farm, a compound in Rhode Island owned by Jackie’s family, with the First Lady acting as director and partner to lead photographer, Robert L. Knudsen, behind the camera.
None of the actors (all friends of the first family or their Secret Service agents) realized that two reporters on a nearby boat were observing the presidential party aboard JFK’s yacht Honey Fitz that day.
The reporters were accompanied by a photographer who had a camera with a zoom lens and managed to get some shots of the set.
The photos were never published, even when the Associated Press published a story describing the scene at the pier with newspaper headlines such as “Kennedy cut for camera at weekend retreat.”
But Knudsen’s son kept photographs from the session, as well as some footage from the president’s short film, which he shared with Vanity Fair.
One of the photographs shows Knudsen in a business suit, perched on top of a dock post with his camera.
Off to the side, the president could be seen holding a towel, presumably to wipe away the ketchup that had spilled from his mouth as he pretended to die.
John F. Kennedy staged his own assassination just two months before Lee Harvey Oswald killed him in Dallas, Texas.
Jackie can also be seen standing next to the photographer, as if she were directing, and two children are also seen: Caroline Kennedy and Marcantonio Crespi, the son of Countess Vivian Stokes Crespi, who spent the weekend with the first family.
For years, the only thing known about the home movie was that the Kennedys enjoyed making a movie that weekend at Hammersmith Farm, with Kennedy’s good friend Red Fay, who originally claimed that he was the only one killed in the footage. .
“We were bored and decided to put the photographer to good use,” Fay told the Associated Press in 1983, after the publication of Ralph Martin’s JFK biography, A Hero for Our Time.
But Knudsen noted that Kennedy wrote the script himself and that there were several different takes. In some, the president was the one who was shot, while in others, Fay was the one who fell to the ground.
Once the film was completed, Jackie received one copy and Fay received another, but is believed to have destroyed it following the murder of her old friend.
No other copies were thought to exist.
Knudsen, however, retained seven minutes of the original footage.
One scene shows the presidential party leaving the Honey Fitz, when JFK suddenly clutches his chest and falls as if he’d been hit by a bullet, Vanity Fair reports.
He and his wife, Jackie (pictured), invited friends to her family compound in Rhode Island, where they created their own James Bond-inspired film.
Among those appearing in the film was JFK’s good friend Red Fay (left), who originally insisted that he was the only one killed in the film. His wife is seen reading the then-president’s palm aboard their yacht, the Honey Fitz.
Other party members then step over his body, but Fay trips and falls on top of the president, at which point “a stream of red erupted from the president’s mouth,” soiling the front of his shirt.
Another sequence filmed by Knudsen showed a van full of Secret Service agents pulling up to the house and stopping abruptly before eight jumped from the vehicle.
Among the agents on the scene were Roy Kellerman, who would later be in charge of agents in Dallas, riding in the presidential limousine in the front passenger seat, and Paul Landis, the First Lady’s agent.
She had asked them to participate in her project.
“We’re making a movie about the assassination of the president,” Jackie allegedly told the agents, “and we’d like you and the other agents to drive to the front of the house, then jump out and run to the door.”
When they did, the agents found the president lying on the floor with ketchup smeared on him and Jackie sitting on the stairs directing, Landis said.
He said he understood it was a joke and admitted it was strange, but thought it was typical of the couple’s playful nature when they were out of public view.
In other scenes, Fay could be seen with a rope around his neck and ketchup on his mouth and shoulder, while others showed him and the Countess throwing a pistol into a bag which they then carried away.
White House theater records show that JFK and Jackie, along with Fay and another close family friend, Bill Walton, screened “home movies” the next day, September 23.
JFK and Jackie would revisit the film a week later with Ben Bradlee of the Washington Post, a confidant of the president and Bradlee’s then-wife, socialite Tony Pinchot.
But after JFK was shot in the head while traveling in an open-top motorcade on November 22, 1963, the film gained renewed attention.
Some thought it showed the president’s willingness to take physical risks, as he did by insisting on traveling with the roof down, and staffers and outside observers joked that it showed JFK was relaxed about security in his off hours.
Meanwhile, Knudsen told the Associated Press in 1983, “I was wondering if it was a premonition I had or a quirk of fate.”
Mckinley Cheshire, a Palm Beach psychiatrist, also said that the film “could easily have been just a fantasy to release many of his own inner fears and counteract his own phobic behavior: an effort to face the reality that his life was really in trouble.” danger”. danger.’
The psychiatrist went on to suggest that JFK’s decision to have others walk over his body was “his way of saying they should move on without him.”
After JFK was shot in the head while riding in a motorcade with the top down on November 22, 1963, the film gained renewed attention.
The president was well aware of the possibility of being killed in office, Cheshire revealed.
He had once told the Irish ambassador: “Crowds do not threaten me.” What worries me is that guy on the roof with a gun.
Just a month before his assassination, JFK was also reading a book that recounted the minute-by-minute assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and even on the morning of his death, he made a comment about the possibility of an assassination.
The president reportedly told his wife at the Hotel Texas in Fort Worth: “You know, last night would have been an incredible night to assassinate a president.”
‘I mean it; There was the rain and the night, and we were all being pushed around,” Jackie later recounted.
“Suppose a man had a gun in a briefcase,” the president suggested. “Then he could have dropped the gun and briefcase and disappeared into the crowd.”