Reel Value: Is It A Home Movie Or National Treasure?
   
The Government Plans to Buy Zapruders' Famous Film,
   
But Not for $30 Million 
   
By Ellen Joan Pollock 

05/20/1999 

The Wall Street Journal 
 

What is art? If it does indeed lie in the eye of the beholder, that could
spell trouble for three arbitrators charged with attaching a value to the
Zapruder film.

Copies of the home movie -- which for 26 horrifying seconds documents the
assassination of President Kennedy -- are in stock at neighborhood video
stores for $19.98. But what is at stake here is the original 8mm film, now
being coddled in a temperature- and light-controlled environment at a
National Archives complex in College Park, Md.

The Assassination Records Review Board, created by Congress, ruled about
two years ago that the government should purchase the original footage
from the Zapruder family.

But there's a problem. When it comes to price, the Zapruders and the
government are $29 million apart. Experts have been summoned. Affidavits
have been filed. And filed. The Zapruder family experts say the Film --
they always capitalize the word in their submissions to the arbitrators --
is worth between $25 million and $40 million, though they have agreed to a
cap of $30 million. The government says the film -- note the lower case --
is worth no more than $1 million. The government doesn't want the
copyright.

Experts obsess over the condition of some of the film's sprocket holes and
the possibility that it has shrunk 0.5%. But most of all they disagree
about the film's value. The Zapruders and their lawyers argue that their
celluloid is not merely a historical artifact, but also a work of artistic
merit that warrants the price of a masterpiece, along the lines of, say,
Vincent van Gogh's "Sunflowers," to which one of the Zapruder family's
experts compares it favorably. "Sunflowers" sold for $40 million in 1987.

So while an expert for the government calls it a "small coil of plastic
film," Steve Johnson, an expert for the family, puts it this way in his
affidavit: "The colors are beautiful. The ever-familiar hues of the
tragedy -- the pink of the First Lady's outfit, the red of the wounds, the
green of the grass, the bluish-black of the Presidential limousine --
would not have been better if selected by Warhol or Matisse."

After performing what he calls an "exhaustive search for an object
comparable to the Zapruder Film," Mr. Johnson, who has appraised
audiovisual material donated to the Bush Presidential Library and the
Smithsonian, zeroed in on Leonardo da Vinci's Codex Leicester. That
manuscript documents Leonardo's experiments with water. Bill Gates bought
it in 1994 for $30.8 million.

Another Zapruder expert, Sylvia Leonard Wolf, compares the film favorably
to Andy Warhol's "Orange Marilyn," a silkscreen of Ms. Monroe, who Ms.
Wolf points out is rumored to have had a romance with President Kennedy.
That work sold at Sotheby's last year for $17.3 million. "This painting
also shares with the Zapruder Film the additional element of fascination
with violence and tragedy," explains Ms. Wolf, who says in her affidavit
that she has appraised the art collections of George Soros, Paul Simon and
Mayflower Madam Sydney Biddle Barrows.

Of course, the government's experts see it all quite differently. "This
26-second spool of film does not belong in any market encompassing Fine
Arts," government expert John Staszyn says in an affidavit. "Turning a
tragedy into a monetary source has negative aspects."

Another appraiser for the government, C.C.M. Associates, compares the
Zapruder film to footage of the assassination of King Alexander of
Yugoslavia in France in 1934. That film, shot by two newsreel cameramen,
"sent shockwaves around the world," reports C.C.M. Nevertheless, it adds,
"Newsreel coverage of historic moments like King Alexander's death is
nowhere regarded as `fine art.'" There have been lots of assassination
attempts caught on camera, C.C.M. points out, including those on Hitler
and Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Ford and Reagan. Many are available
from stock-footage film libraries for fees ranging from $16.66 a second to
$180 a second, "in those very rare instances where such material is used
in commercially sponsored TV entertainment programs or in theatrical
movies."

C.C.M.'s assessment provoked a retort from Zapruder family lawyer Robert
Bennett, fresh from his stint representing President Clinton in the Paula
Jones matter. "Put simply, in the eyes of today's collectors, and with
apologies to Lloyd Bentsen, King Alexander was no John Kennedy," he says
in a brief.  Lawyers for both sides say they prefer to let their
submissions to the arbitrators do their talking for them. The arbitration
takes place next week in Washington.

Some facts are undisputed. Both sides agree that the film was shot by
Abraham Zapruder , a dress manufacturer in Dallas who died in 1970. With
his Bell & Howell camera in hand, Mr. Zapruder climbed on a concrete block
near the famous grassy knoll in Dealey Plaza to film the president's
motorcade. He got more than he bargained for. In his affidavit, Mr.
Zapruder 's son, Henry, a Washington lawyer, says he got a call from his
father. "He was crying. He said that the president was dead," says the
younger Mr. Zapruder . When he told his father that he had heard that the
president was on his way to the hospital, his father reported that there
was no way he could have survived. For the rest of his life, he says, his
father had difficulty looking through a motion-picture camera lens because
it reminded him of that day.

The senior Mr. Zapruder sold the film to Life magazine the day after the
assassination. The price tag was $150,000. He didn't take other bids from
the hordes of other reporters knocking at his door. But in 1975 Life sold
it back to the family, which by then consisted of Mr. Zapruder 's widow,
Henry and his sister, for $1.

Since then, the Zapruder family has had to cull through up to 150 requests
a year from people who want to use the film, ranging from researchers with
sketchy credentials to film director Oliver Stone, who used a piece of the
film in his 1991 movie, "JFK."

Last year, the family licensed the film to MPI Home Video in Orland Park,
Ill., which released it commercially. "We had been confronted over the
years with complaints that the format in which we made the film available
was inadequate and inferior," says Mr. Zapruder in his affidavit. "We
thought the revenues from the sale of the video would help us finance the
cost of dealing with the United States." MPI says that 130,000 tapes have
been sold. According to a person familiar with the family, the Zapruders
have netted less than $300,000 from the video.

One of the government's experts thought the sales and earning history of
the film was quite a bit more significant than its artistic merit. C.C.M.
used the consumer price index to calculate its worth, using the $150,000
figure and came up with a value of $784,065. C.C.M. decided that almost
all the other factors that might increase the value further apply to the
copyright, not the original.

C.C.M. also looked at what it calls the "earning history" of the film. It
estimates that the "total net income to the Zapruder family" until 1998
"was probably no greater than $993,637, or an average of $28,594 a year."
The appraisers also point out that after Mr. Zapruder 's widow died in
1993, the estate put a value of $512,500 on the copyright. Finally, the
appraisers point out that "the camera original no longer plays a direct
role in generating income for the copyright holder."

That kind of analysis provoked yet another round of affidavits from the
Zapruder experts. Ms. Wolf calls the film's frames "pleasing to the eye,"
and its colors "rich and vibrant."

Mr. Johnson did an in-depth comparison of frame 182 of the film to "The
Steerage," a 1907 photograph by Alfred Stieglitz. "To the modern viewer,
even this single image from the Zapruder Film has far more dramatic
emotive power than `The Steerage,'" he says.

Expert Beth Gates Warren goes on to describe how, if the film was sold
publicly, major auction houses would have vied for the right to sell it.
In her affidavit, she envisions a "lavishly illustrated catalog" that
"might include interviews with people close to the event, such as Walter
Cronkite and Dan Rather." She suggests that the film might travel the
world prior to the auction and that "a selection of images from the Film
could be enlarged and displayed in a tasteful, artistic manner."

But C.C.M. insists that the price the film would bring at auction is
unknowable, and notes that "Abraham Zapruder 's reputation was established
as a dress manufacturer, not as a practitioner of fine photography."
Meanwhile Mr. Staszyn, in his rebuttal affidavit for the government,
points out that "the individual frames are not enjoyable. Who are the
collectors of the macabre? In this appraiser's experience this audience is
not large."

That is disputed by Zapruder expert Jerry Patterson, who points out that
even the medical instruments used on President Lincoln after he was shot
have been purchased. Many collectors have "proudly purchased objects of
national historical importance and objects associated with tragic events,"
he says.

But C.C.M. may have the last word. In its affidavit, it posed the key
question: "Is there an equivalency between the Zapruder camera original
and works that are judged to be fine art?" the appraisers ask.
"Ultimately, Art resides mainly in the eye of the beholder, and we are not
likely to resolve the complexity of a topic that has challenged the best
thinking of scholars since the time of Plato and Aristotle."


[END]