--- title: Kennedy's Assassination: How LIFE Brought the Zapruder Film to Light description: Legendary editor Dick Stolley recalls how he tracked down and purchased the Zapruder film of JFK's assassination for LIFE magazine in 1963. canonical: https://time.com/3878268/kennedy-assassination-how-life-brought-the-zapruder-film-to-light/ author: Ben Cosgrove article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2013-10-25T00:16:45.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:42:59.671Z og:title: Kennedy's Assassination: How LIFE Brought the Zapruder Film to Light og:description: Legendary editor Dick Stolley recalls how he tracked down and purchased the Zapruder film of JFK's assassination for LIFE magazine in 1963. og:url: https://time.com/3878268/kennedy-assassination-how-life-brought-the-zapruder-film-to-light/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt70c6f9dfd019d0c4/69884ade35ba6f2c01c0cb6e/131111-jfk-zapruder-film-still-feat1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1493 og:image:height: 840 og:image:alt: JFK Assassination, Zapruder Film Still_feat og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Kennedy's Assassination: How LIFE Brought the Zapruder Film to Light twitter:description: Legendary editor Dick Stolley recalls how he tracked down and purchased the Zapruder film of JFK's assassination for LIFE magazine in 1963. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt70c6f9dfd019d0c4/69884ade35ba6f2c01c0cb6e/131111-jfk-zapruder-film-still-feat1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # JFK's Assassination: How LIFE Brought the Zapruder Film to Light (24 Oct 2013) ## Video: Kennedy's Assassination: How LIFE Brought the Zapruder Film to Light [Watch (HLS stream): Kennedy's Assassination: How LIFE Brought the Zapruder Film to Light](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/L87Zsshe.m3u8) (8:34)  _Published 2013-11-13. Former LIFE editor Richard Stolley shares the stranger-than-fiction tale of how he purchased Abraham Zapruder's film of JFK's murder -- "the most infamous home movie in American history" -- for LIFE magazine in 1963._ by [Ben Cosgrove](https://time.com/author/ben-cosgrove/) ## Ben Cosgrove Oct 25, 2013 12:16 AM UTC  Film still from Abraham Zapruder's home movie of JFK's assassination in Dallas, Nov. 22, 1963\. (SEE VIDEO BELOW.) Film still from Abraham Zapruder's home movie of JFK's assassination in Dallas, Nov. 22, 1963\. (SEE VIDEO BELOW.)Zapruder Film © 1967 (renewed 1995) The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza by [Ben Cosgrove](https://time.com/author/ben-cosgrove/) ## Ben Cosgrove Oct 25, 2013 12:16 AM UTC On the 50th anniversary of the day in 1964 when the Warren Commission delivered its still-controversial findings about JFK’s assassination to President Lyndon Johnson, LIFE.com presents the story of how editor Richard Stolley flew to Dallas from Los Angeles within hours of the murder; how he tracked down a 58-year-old amateur-film buff named Abraham Zapruder; how he purchased Zapruder’s home movie of the assassination for LIFE magazine—and what all of that ultimately came to mean for LIFE, for Zapruder, for Stolley himself and for the nation, then and now. \[Watch a video about Stolley’s grim adventures in Dallas\] It’s unlikely that any 26 seconds of celluloid have ever been discussed and dissected as thoroughly as the chilling scene that Zapruder captured that day in Dallas, in a movie known ever after as “the Zapruder film.” The jittery color sequence showing JFK’s motorcade moving through the sunlit Dallas streets—leading up to the utterly shocking instant when a rifle bullet slams into the president’s head—is still, five decades later, one of the 20th century’s indispensable historical records. Having flown from L.A. that afternoon, Stolley was in his hotel in Dallas just hours after the president was shot. “I got a phone call from a LIFE freelancer in Dallas named Patsy Swank,” Stolley recently told TIME producer Vaughn Wallace, “and the news she had was absolutely electrifying. She said that a businessman had taken an eight-millimeter camera out to Dealey Plaza and photographed the assassination. I said, ‘What’s his name?’ She said, ‘\[The reporter who told her the news\] didn’t spell it out, but I’ll tell you how he pronounced it. It was _Zapruder_.’ “I picked up the Dallas phone book and literally ran my finger down the Z’s, and it jumped out at me—the name spelled exactly the way Patsy had pronounced it. _Zapruder_, comma, _Abraham_.” --- [\[Buy the LIFE book, _The Day Kennedy Died_\]](http://subscription-assets.timeinc.com/prod/assets/themes/magazines/SUBS/templates/velocity/site/li-kennedyhclandingpage2013/lp.html) [\[See photos from JFK and Jackie’s 1953 wedding\]](http://life.time.com/history/when-jfk-and-jackie-wed-life-photos-from-newport-september-1953/#1) [\[See photos from JFK’s funeral at Arlington\]](http://life.time.com/history/jfk-photos-from-his-funeral-at-arlington-cemetery-november-1963/#1) ---  Film still from Abraham Zapruder's home movie of JFK's assassination in Dallas, Nov. 22, 1963\. (SEE VIDEO BELOW.) 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