The Origins of the Zapruder Film

JFKFacts interviewed LIFE Magazine's Richard Stolley in 2014

[The following article was first published in JFK Facts in 2014]

A 26-second home movie taken of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963, has become one of the most famous pieces of film ever. There are countless versions on YouTube, viewed by tens of millions of people.

Where did this amazing imagery come from? Is it an authentic depiction of the assassination of a U.S. president?

To answer such questions, I sought out a man who could answer them better than almost anyone: Richard Stolley, a former editor at LIFE Magazine, the immensely popular photographic magazine of the 1960s.

Stolley was LIFE’s Los Angeles bureau chief on Nov. 22, 1963, and he rushed to Dallas as soon as he heard the news of JFK’s assassination. Once in Dallas, Stolley got a tip from LIFE stringer Patsy Swank, who’d gleaned it from another reporter (who reportedly got it from a policeman), that someone named Zapruder had captured the assassination on film.

With the help of the Dallas phone book, Stolley found the home number for Abraham Zapruder, the Dallas businessman who had taken the film on his lunch break, and called it every 15 minutes until Zapruder finally answered late Friday night. He asked Stolley to meet him at his office the following morning. Over the course of the weekend, Stolley negotiated a $150,000-deal with Zapruder to purchase all the rights to the film on behalf of LIFE.

Stolley is now retired and living in Santa Fe. I spoke to him over the phone in September 2014.

[Editor’s note: Stolley died in 2021.]