TSBD 6th Floor Museum Denies Possession of Large Format LIFE Magazine (Zapruder) Transparencies

Where Are the Large Format LIFE Magazine Transparencies of the Zapruder Film?

 

Douglas P. Horne

 

Inside the ARRB

April 9th, 13:17

SUMMARY: In April of 1997 I personally located the large format LIFE magazine transparencies of individual Zapruder film frames---the transparencies that had featured so prominently in Josiah Thompson's 1967 book "Six Seconds in Dallas"---in the office of attorney Jamie Silverberg, who at that time was representing the film's owners, the LMH Company. At the time I was a Senior Analyst on the ARRB staff, and was conducting an official ARRB examination of the LMH company's holdings. On December 30, 1999 the LMH Company transferred both the copyright to the Zapruder film, and reportedly, all of its film holdings, to the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas. (After obtaining a windfall profit of 16 million dollars, plus interest, from the U.S. government---in just compensation for the taking of the film by the Review Board---the LMH company had decided it was time to get rid of the troublesome political albatross around its neck.)

On January 26, 2000 the Dallas Morning News published an article about the LMH Company's donation to the Museum, which indicated all of the associated film items had been physically transferred to the museum "nine days ago," and which further stated: "Gary Mack, the Museum's Archivist, was all but whistling Tuesday as he examined what may be the gem of the bunch---oversized transparencies of each Zapruder film frame believed to have been made in 1963 or 1964." It seems reasonable to conclude that this statement by the article's author can only have referred to the same LIFE magazine transparencies which I had discovered in the office of Jamie Silverberg on April 10, 1997. In November of 2010, in response to a question about the whereabouts of the LIFE magazine transparencies made by a visiting researcher, Megan Bryant---the Sixth Floor Museum's Director of Collections and Intellectual Property---said that the Museum did NOT POSSESS the LIFE magazine transparencies. When she was asked a follow-on question by the same person about the January 2000 article in the Dallas Morning News, she stated that the article had been in error. WHAT IS GOING ON HERE? I present the details of this mystery below. Read it ALL...