DALLAS — New color video footage showing President John F. Kennedy’s arrival in Dallas the day he was assassinated is the best home movie ever made of the event, the curator of the Dallas JFK museum said.
The short clip, shot on 8mm film by a 15-year- old student, provides a rare, high-quality color close-up of John and Jackie Kennedy as they arrived in Dallas. The Sixth Floor Museum put the film on display for public viewing on Presidents Day.
Kennedy was killed Nov. 22, 1963, as his motorcade made its way through downtown Dallas. The footage shot earlier that day by William Ward Warren mainly shows Air Force One and Air Force Two arriving, and briefly features the Kennedys making their way through the crowd at the airport.
“Viewing this footage makes you feel as though you’re standing next to Warren as he’s filming it on that very day,” museum curator Gary Mack said.
Warren, now 61 and the owner of a freight brokerage business, said he transferred the footage to a VCR tape about 15 years ago but largely forgot about it. “Only recently did I feel like things like this just seem to disappear, so I called the museum to see if they had any interest in it,” he said.
