Did Stolley take with him both the original and Zapruder's only copy? No.

[David G. Healy]

Richard Stolley is apparently still alive, living and writing in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

JFK assassination: The man behind the film

Abraham Zapruder's home move has generated countless conspiracy theories. But who was he?

Richard B. Stolley | For The New Mexican

Posted: Saturday, November 22, 2008 - 11/23/08

Richard B. Stolley

http://www.santafe.com/articles/author/richard-b-stolley/

http://www.santafenewmexican.com/Local News/23-Zapruder

Forty-five years ago Saturday, he took what is probably the most famous home movie in history . Almost anyone who was alive on Nov. 22, 1963, remembers exactly where he or she was when first hearing about the event his film captured in such grisly detail.

Yet today Abraham Zapruder has returned to the obscurity from which he was catapulted with six seconds of 8 mm film documenting from start to bloody finish the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

On the anniversary of that tragedy, the ferocious debate over who shot the president and why shows few signs of abating. So it is interesting to consider the Dallas businessman, then 58, who in many ways is responsible for igniting the controversy over the possibility of a plot to murder the president. Without the Zapruder film, the conspiracy theorists would have precious little to work with.

He was born in Russia, educated at a Hebrew school and came to New York with his mother and sister when he was a teenager. His father had preceded them. A brother started the trip but, as Zapruder described it much later, was pulled off the train and killed by anti-Jewish thugs. Zapruder says he was spared himself because he had blond hair.

He landed a job in the garment district as a pattern cutter, worked up to head of crew and was lured to Dallas in 1941 as production chief of a dress factory there. With a partner, he ultimately started his own line, Jennifer Juniors, the name borrowed from the movie star, Jennifer Jones.

It was a thriving business, $2 million gross, and Mr. Z, as everyone called him, was a stern but popular boss. On most work days, he and Erwin Schwartz, the son of his original partner, wandered over to Sanger's Department Store in the afternoon for a banana split or ice cream soda. Mr. Z rarely got mad, but when he did — at Erwin or a worker or a salesman — he would walk across the street and sit on a park bench until he cooled down.

Zapruder was perhaps 5 feet, 9 inches, a trifle plump, bespectacled, balding and a fastidious dresser who favored white shirts and bow ties. A sociable man, he loved telling stories, sometimes in a Jewish dialect that would be considered politically incorrect today — tales about Russia, New York, business, whatever, while he puffed on a cigar (and drank sparingly). Schwartz suspected that his partner may have made up some of the stories, "but I enjoyed them and I believed them."

Late in life, Zapruder took up golf, and he and Schwartz waged putting contests on the office rug. At stake was a $1 bet. Zapruder played the piano fairly well, mostly light classics, and sang, as his lawyer Sam Passman recalled, "badly." He and his wife, Lillian, had a son and a daughter, and Zapruder loved to shoot home movies of them and later on, of his grandchildren, his friends, his employees. He was a real 8 mm buff.

It was natural, then, for him to take his camera to nearby Dealy Plaza that November morning for a memento of the president he had voted for, and greatly admired as someone who "had gotten the country on the right track."

That day changed him forever, his friends say. "Just remember that we've only seen the film," one of them pointed out. "He saw the actual murder." For a while Zapruder had nightmares, jerking awake when his sleeping eye came upon frame 313, the tiny speck of film that records the horrifying head wound. He wept while testifying before the Warren Commission that investigated the assassination. "I'm sorry," he told the commission. "I'm ashamed of myself really, but I couldn't help it." His wife, Lillian, acknowledged, "He was extremely emotional about the whole thing."

He became an unwilling celebrity. As many as 10 sacks of mail arrived daily, addressed simply to "Abraham Zapruder, Dallas, Texas." Some letters called him a fool for contributing $25,000 to the family of the Dallas police officer killed by Lee Harvey Oswald. That amount was the first of six annual payments from LIFE Magazine, which had bought the film the day after the assassination (and in 1975 returned it to the Zapruder family for $1). When he and his wife traveled, the Zapruder name was sometimes recognized on hotel registers. He hated the notoriety.

He had little use for the army of conspiracy theorists the assassination spawned. After agreeing to see an early conspiracy author, Mark Lane, who wrote Rush to Judgment, one of the first anti-Warren Report books, Zapruder got so upset over Lane's questions that he asked the writer to leave his office. Until Zapruder's death from cancer in 1970, he believed, as did the Warren Report, that Kennedy was murdered by "a crackpot, a nut" — in short by Oswald acting alone.

Although a shrewd businessman, he recoiled from being seen as profiting from the president's death. He asked LIFE to keep the amount it paid him confidential. In 1999, his name was splashed on front pages again when the federal government agreed to pay his family $16 million for possession of the fragile piece of film. It is fair to speculate on how Zapruder himself might have reacted to such a payoff.

In return for a new camera, Zapruder gave his historic camera to Bell & Howell, which donated it to the National Archives. But he rarely used the new one in the final years of his life. Mr. Z's enthusiasm for home movies ended on Nov. 22, 1963.

Richard B. Stolley, senior editorial adviser at Time Inc., was the LIFE reporter who obtained the Zapruder film for his magazine in 1963, 45 years ago today. He now lives in Santa Fe with his wife, Lise Hilboldt, and son.

Stolley was appointed to the job on February 1, 1993, upon his retirement as Editorial Director, the second highest editorial management position in the company. From June 1995 to March 1996, he also held a dual job as Executive Producer of Extra, a Time Warner daily syndicated television show.

He was the editor of three photographic histories: the best-selling LIFE: Our Century in Pictures, in October 1999, a companion volume, LIFE: Century of Change, America in Pictures in 1900-2000, in October 2000, and the best-selling LIFE: World War 2, in October 2001, all published by Little, Brown. In 2002, Stolley wrote the text for Sinatra: An Intimate Portrait of a Very Good Year, published by Stewart, Tabori and Chang.

Stolley has been a reporter, writer, bureau chief, senior editor and managing editor at Time Inc. since 1953. He worked for 19 years on the weekly Life magazine and rose to assistant managing editor. During his career there, he served as chief of four bureaus in the U.S. and Europe. Most memorable among the stories he covered was the death of President John F. Kennedy during which Stolley discovered and obtained for Life the famous Zapruder film of the assassination.

Stolley was the editor in charge of the final issue, "The Year in Pictures 1972," after Life announced it was suspending publication in December of that year.

In 1973 Stolley became the founding managing editor of People, joining the magazine in its planning stages, and remained in that position for eight years. People began publication in March 1974 with a circulation of one million and became profitable after an unprecedented 18 months. Described as the most successful magazine in publishing history, People now has a weekly circulation of 3,600,000.

In 1982 Stolley moved over to the managing editorship of the monthly Life. During the next three years, Life won two National Magazine Awards, the first in 1983 for general excellence among magazines with a circulation of more than one million and the second in 1985 for photography.

In 1987-88 Stolley's assignment was director of special projects with responsibility for coordinating creative ideas among the magazine, books and video divisions of Time Inc. He became Editorial Director on January 1, 1989.

In 1996, Stolley was named to the American Society of Magazine Editors newly inaugurated Hall of Fame, which cited his founding of People with these words: "In pioneering personality-driven journalism, he left an indelible mark on the entire magazine industry by creating a form and format that just about every other magazine editor has drawn from and adapted."

In 1997, Stolley received the Henry Johnson Fisher Award for Lifetime Achievement in magazines, the most prestigious award the industry bestows, from the Magazine Publishers of America. Later that same year, he was among the first group of Northwestern University-educated journalists named by the Medill School of Journalism to its new Hall of Achievement.

Stolley has written articles for People, Life, Real Simple, Sports Illustrated, Fortune, Money, Entertainment Weekly, Esquire, New York, Columbia, Vanity Fair and The New York Times. He was the editor of the book PEOPLE Celebrates People: The Best of 20 Unforgettable Years, published in 1994, and again in 1996 in a revised edition. He also wrote the introductions to A Hollywood Farewell: The Death and Funeral of Marilyn Monroe, by Leigh A. Wiener, published in 1990, and to LIFE: Man in Space: An Illustrated History from Sputnik to Columbia, published in 2003, and the foreword to LIFE: Platinum Anniversary Collection, 70 Years of Extraordinary Photography..

He was born October 3, 1928 in Pekin, Illinois, and while in high school, he worked for two years as sports editor of the Pekin Daily Times. He served two years in the Navy after World War II aboard the light cruiser U.S.S. Dayton. In 1952 he received a bachelor's degree from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, and one year later, a master's degree. During two summers while in college, he reported and wrote for the Peekskill, NY, Evening Star. After graduation, he worked briefly for the Chicago Sun-Times, then became a reporter for Life.

Stolley is past president of the Overseas Press Club and of the American Society of Magazine Editors, a member of the boards of the National Parkinson Foundation in Miami, FL, and the Lensic Performing Arts Center in Santa Fe, NM. In 2004, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws by Hartwick College in Oneonta, NY, in 1975 an honorary Doctor of Laws by Villa Maria College in Erie, PA, and in 1994 the Alumni Medal from Northwestern University.

http://oascentral.santafenewmexican.com/Re...86873414151636c?

word-for-word.... I'd say the article was more about Stolley than Zapruder!

[William Kelly]

Richard Stolley is apparently still alive, living and writing in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

JFK assassination: The man behind the film

Abraham Zapruder's home move has generated countless conspiracy theories. But who was he?

Richard B. Stolley | For The New Mexican

Posted: Saturday, November 22, 2008 - 11/23/08

Richard B. Stolley

http://www.santafe.com/articles/author/richard-b-stolley/

http://www.santafenewmexican.com/Local News/23-Zapruder

Forty-five years ago Saturday, he took what is probably the most famous home movie in history . Almost anyone who was alive on Nov. 22, 1963, remembers exactly where he or she was when first hearing about the event his film captured in such grisly detail.

Yet today Abraham Zapruder has returned to the obscurity from which he was catapulted with six seconds of 8 mm film documenting from start to bloody finish the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

On the anniversary of that tragedy, the ferocious debate over who shot the president and why shows few signs of abating. So it is interesting to consider the Dallas businessman, then 58, who in many ways is responsible for igniting the controversy over the possibility of a plot to murder the president. Without the Zapruder film, the conspiracy theorists would have precious little to work with.

He was born in Russia, educated at a Hebrew school and came to New York with his mother and sister when he was a teenager. His father had preceded them. A brother started the trip but, as Zapruder described it much later, was pulled off the train and killed by anti-Jewish thugs. Zapruder says he was spared himself because he had blond hair.

He landed a job in the garment district as a pattern cutter, worked up to head of crew and was lured to Dallas in 1941 as production chief of a dress factory there. With a partner, he ultimately started his own line, Jennifer Juniors, the name borrowed from the movie star, Jennifer Jones.

It was a thriving business, $2 million gross, and Mr. Z, as everyone called him, was a stern but popular boss. On most work days, he and Erwin Schwartz, the son of his original partner, wandered over to Sanger's Department Store in the afternoon for a banana split or ice cream soda. Mr. Z rarely got mad, but when he did — at Erwin or a worker or a salesman — he would walk across the street and sit on a park bench until he cooled down.

Zapruder was perhaps 5 feet, 9 inches, a trifle plump, bespectacled, balding and a fastidious dresser who favored white shirts and bow ties. A sociable man, he loved telling stories, sometimes in a Jewish dialect that would be considered politically incorrect today — tales about Russia, New York, business, whatever, while he puffed on a cigar (and drank sparingly). Schwartz suspected that his partner may have made up some of the stories, "but I enjoyed them and I believed them."

Late in life, Zapruder took up golf, and he and Schwartz waged putting contests on the office rug. At stake was a $1 bet. Zapruder played the piano fairly well, mostly light classics, and sang, as his lawyer Sam Passman recalled, "badly." He and his wife, Lillian, had a son and a daughter, and Zapruder loved to shoot home movies of them and later on, of his grandchildren, his friends, his employees. He was a real 8 mm buff.

It was natural, then, for him to take his camera to nearby Dealy Plaza that November morning for a memento of the president he had voted for, and greatly admired as someone who "had gotten the country on the right track."

That day changed him forever, his friends say. "Just remember that we've only seen the film," one of them pointed out. "He saw the actual murder." For a while Zapruder had nightmares, jerking awake when his sleeping eye came upon frame 313, the tiny speck of film that records the horrifying head wound. He wept while testifying before the Warren Commission that investigated the assassination. "I'm sorry," he told the commission. "I'm ashamed of myself really, but I couldn't help it." His wife, Lillian, acknowledged, "He was extremely emotional about the whole thing."

He became an unwilling celebrity. As many as 10 sacks of mail arrived daily, addressed simply to "Abraham Zapruder, Dallas, Texas." Some letters called him a fool for contributing $25,000 to the family of the Dallas police officer killed by Lee Harvey Oswald. That amount was the first of six annual payments from LIFE Magazine, which had bought the film the day after the assassination (and in 1975 returned it to the Zapruder family for $1). When he and his wife traveled, the Zapruder name was sometimes recognized on hotel registers. He hated the notoriety.

He had little use for the army of conspiracy theorists the assassination spawned. After agreeing to see an early conspiracy author, Mark Lane, who wrote Rush to Judgment, one of the first anti-Warren Report books, Zapruder got so upset over Lane's questions that he asked the writer to leave his office. Until Zapruder's death from cancer in 1970, he believed, as did the Warren Report, that Kennedy was murdered by "a crackpot, a nut" — in short by Oswald acting alone.

Although a shrewd businessman, he recoiled from being seen as profiting from the president's death. He asked LIFE to keep the amount it paid him confidential. In 1999, his name was splashed on front pages again when the federal government agreed to pay his family $16 million for possession of the fragile piece of film. It is fair to speculate on how Zapruder himself might have reacted to such a payoff.

In return for a new camera, Zapruder gave his historic camera to Bell & Howell, which donated it to the National Archives. But he rarely used the new one in the final years of his life. Mr. Z's enthusiasm for home movies ended on Nov. 22, 1963.

Richard B. Stolley, senior editorial adviser at Time Inc., was the LIFE reporter who obtained the Zapruder film for his magazine in 1963, 45 years ago today. He now lives in Santa Fe with his wife, Lise Hilboldt, and son.

Stolley was appointed to the job on February 1, 1993, upon his retirement as Editorial Director, the second highest editorial management position in the company. From June 1995 to March 1996, he also held a dual job as Executive Producer of Extra, a Time Warner daily syndicated television show.

He was the editor of three photographic histories: the best-selling LIFE: Our Century in Pictures, in October 1999, a companion volume, LIFE: Century of Change, America in Pictures in 1900-2000, in October 2000, and the best-selling LIFE: World War 2, in October 2001, all published by Little, Brown. In 2002, Stolley wrote the text for Sinatra: An Intimate Portrait of a Very Good Year, published by Stewart, Tabori and Chang.

Stolley has been a reporter, writer, bureau chief, senior editor and managing editor at Time Inc. since 1953. He worked for 19 years on the weekly Life magazine and rose to assistant managing editor. During his career there, he served as chief of four bureaus in the U.S. and Europe. Most memorable among the stories he covered was the death of President John F. Kennedy during which Stolley discovered and obtained for Life the famous Zapruder film of the assassination.

Stolley was the editor in charge of the final issue, "The Year in Pictures 1972," after Life announced it was suspending publication in December of that year.

In 1973 Stolley became the founding managing editor of People, joining the magazine in its planning stages, and remained in that position for eight years. People began publication in March 1974 with a circulation of one million and became profitable after an unprecedented 18 months. Described as the most successful magazine in publishing history, People now has a weekly circulation of 3,600,000.

In 1982 Stolley moved over to the managing editorship of the monthly Life. During the next three years, Life won two National Magazine Awards, the first in 1983 for general excellence among magazines with a circulation of more than one million and the second in 1985 for photography.

In 1987-88 Stolley's assignment was director of special projects with responsibility for coordinating creative ideas among the magazine, books and video divisions of Time Inc. He became Editorial Director on January 1, 1989.

In 1996, Stolley was named to the American Society of Magazine Editors newly inaugurated Hall of Fame, which cited his founding of People with these words: "In pioneering personality-driven journalism, he left an indelible mark on the entire magazine industry by creating a form and format that just about every other magazine editor has drawn from and adapted."

In 1997, Stolley received the Henry Johnson Fisher Award for Lifetime Achievement in magazines, the most prestigious award the industry bestows, from the Magazine Publishers of America. Later that same year, he was among the first group of Northwestern University-educated journalists named by the Medill School of Journalism to its new Hall of Achievement.

Stolley has written articles for People, Life, Real Simple, Sports Illustrated, Fortune, Money, Entertainment Weekly, Esquire, New York, Columbia, Vanity Fair and The New York Times. He was the editor of the book PEOPLE Celebrates People: The Best of 20 Unforgettable Years, published in 1994, and again in 1996 in a revised edition. He also wrote the introductions to A Hollywood Farewell: The Death and Funeral of Marilyn Monroe, by Leigh A. Wiener, published in 1990, and to LIFE: Man in Space: An Illustrated History from Sputnik to Columbia, published in 2003, and the foreword to LIFE: Platinum Anniversary Collection, 70 Years of Extraordinary Photography..

He was born October 3, 1928 in Pekin, Illinois, and while in high school, he worked for two years as sports editor of the Pekin Daily Times. He served two years in the Navy after World War II aboard the light cruiser U.S.S. Dayton. In 1952 he received a bachelor's degree from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, and one year later, a master's degree. During two summers while in college, he reported and wrote for the Peekskill, NY, Evening Star. After graduation, he worked briefly for the Chicago Sun-Times, then became a reporter for Life.

Stolley is past president of the Overseas Press Club and of the American Society of Magazine Editors, a member of the boards of the National Parkinson Foundation in Miami, FL, and the Lensic Performing Arts Center in Santa Fe, NM. In 2004, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws by Hartwick College in Oneonta, NY, in 1975 an honorary Doctor of Laws by Villa Maria College in Erie, PA, and in 1994 the Alumni Medal from Northwestern University.

http://oascentral.santafenewmexican.com/Re...86873414151636c?

word-for-word.... I'd say the article was more about Stolley than Zapruder!

Hi David,

The profile of Stolley, after his article, is what the Santa Fe newspaper posted. I guess he's retired there and writes for the local paper in his spare time to keep sharp. Maybe somebody should contact him and ask him a few questions.

BK

[Guest Tom Scully]

June, 2009 Video of Stolley. http://www.youtube.com/user/SPPC1#p/a/u/1/IbtUaL9VZv4

He retired in 2005 as founding editor of People mag. I think there is no chance of getting

useful answers from such an entrenched, media establishment fossil.

[William Kelly]

June, 2009 Video of Stolley. http://www.youtube.com/user/SPPC1#p/a/u/1/IbtUaL9VZv4

He retired in 2005 as founding editor of People mag. I think there is no chance of getting

useful answers from such an entrenched, media establishment fossil.

Hi Tom,

I agree, but he was one of the few Lifers who were there - Richard Stolley, Tommy Thompson, Holland McCombs and Patsy Swank. They set up shop at the Adolphis where the Secret Service and the WHCA also had set up bases of operation, across the street from the Carousel Club.

Stolley could possibly tell us how the original Z-film was "couriered" to Chicago - who the courier was, and what they did with it there - how the two cuts were accidently edited, and whether the original was ever out of the hands of Life - if they lent it to the Secret Service or NPIC.

He also knew Zapruder pesonally, and Schwartz, as the son of Z's partner, Schwarts is also probably still alive.

BK

[Michael Hogan]

http://www.zapruderandstolley.com/