ou’re the one that makes the beautiful movies.”
That’s what Abraham Zapruder’s assistant, Lillian Rogers, told him on the morning of November 22, 1963. It was meant as a gentle retort. Zapruder had left his movie camera at home, thinking that the crowds lined up for President Kennedy’s motorcade would be so thick and jostling he wouldn’t have a chance to get the sort of footage that would live up to his amateur but fastidious filmmaking standards. He told Rogers she should use her own camera instead. But Rogers and several other colleagues at Jennifer Juniors, the Dallas knockoff-dress-making business that Zapruder owned, convinced him it would be a shame to miss the opportunity to film the president as he passed by.
So Zapruder drove home and got his camera and returned by 11:30. It was a Bell and Howell, loaded with what was known as double 8-millimeter color film. It took silent movies; sound was still a rare feature for nonprofessional cameras. It was powered by a hand-cranked winding mechanism, which advanced the film at approximately eighteen frames per second.
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