Ambling to the well of an atypically posh federal courtroom last week, the recognizable, stout figure declared, “I’m Robert Bennett and I represent the Zapruder family.”
For several years the prime subject of attorney Bennett’s labors had been the merits, and ultimate monetary value, of a claim of hotel-room sex harassment. It was leveled against a rather famous and slow-paying client, President Clinton.
That’s behind him, with an $850,000 settlement with Paula Corbin Jones in which the president admitted zilch. So Bennett, whose wife is an artist, now must mull some of the finer things in life, as well as Mark McGwire’s 70th home run, as he duels over one of the nation’s seminal moments.
Well, not necessarily the moment itself. Or maybe it is. You might have been a tad confused as he and two dutiful government attorneys sparred in front of three amiable arbitrators over the value of 26 seconds worth of 8-mm film.
It’s the Zapruder film, namely the footage taken by the late Dallas dress manufacturer Abraham Zapruder near the grassy knoll in Dealey Plaza as President John Kennedy was assassinated.
Zapruder quickly profited by selling his rare footage to Life magazine for $150,000. Life ultimately sold it back for $1. But along the way the government took possession of the original in its investigation and, for more than two decades, the film has been in a cold, dark niche at the National Archives.
The family agreed to it being taken but retained ownership and copyright. So if you buy a $19.98 version at a Blockbuster, or watch a small portion in Oliver Stone’s “JFK,” the family has profited, if not gotten rich off it, having netted about $300,000 over the video licensed to MPI Home Video of Orland Park, Ill.
But an entity known as the Assassination Records Review Board, which is a creation of Congress, decided two years ago that the government should pay the Zapruders for the film, which presumably will always remain at the archives in College Park, Md. It is in dandy shape, its colors vibrant. As one who has inspected it, I can attest that a frame-by-frame perusal is gripping.
But what is the original worth?
The parties agreed to arbitration. In doing so the government arguably was seeking a certain cover. Lest they cut a potentially handsome deal with Henry Zapruder, Abraham’s son and a Washington attorney himself, and rankle taxpayers, they’d let a three-judge panel decide.
The family picked Kenneth Feinberg, an attorney who arbitrated the mega-Agent Orange litigation, while the government took former U.S. Solicitor General Walter Dellinger. Feinberg and Dellinger then chose as presiding arbitrator former federal Judge Arlin Adams.
For two days last week, the trio listened to wildly conflicting claims prompting dramatically different valuations. The government, which had previously offered a $3 million settlement, is now placing the film’s value at $1 million. The Zapruders say $30 million.
A government expert, John Staszyn, argued that since this is not “fine art,” one can’t compare it to famous paintings and auctions at which Monets or Van Goghs have gone for gargantuan sums. And since the essence of the film is so gruesome, its value is diminished.
“It’s not visually pretty,” he testified last week. “You have half this man’s head flying in the air.”
Wondered Bennett: “Is not the Vatican treasury filled with priceless art of a man nailed to the cross, bleeding?”
“But that has to do with religion,” responded Staszyn.
Bennett mentioned that the baseball hit by McGwire for his 70th home run last year went at auction for a stunning $3 million. So Staszyn would value the Zapruder film at just one-third of that?
“Baseball is a highly collectible field,” Staszyn responded.
So the Zapruder side believes that one must bring into play the art market and the mercurial collectibles field–$3 million for a baseball!–in considering the film. One must look at the stunning auction of Kennedy artifacts held two years ago in New York, which netted more than $700,000 each for a briefcase and his golf clubs, not to mention $500,000 for JFK’s humidor and $211,000 for the late Jacqueline Onassis’ fake pearls.
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In addition, two bigtime appraisers, formerly with the famous auction houses Sotheby’s and Christie’s, made reference to the 1994 purchase by Bill Gates of a 72-page Leonardo da Vinci manuscript, known as the Codex Hammer. The price: $30.8 million.
In response the government underscored that there was simply no precedent for original film being so auctioned.
Think of all the famous moments you’ve seen, whether the Wright Brothers’ flight at Kitty Hawk, the landing in France of Charles Lindbergh, Neil Armstrong striding onto the moon, whatever.
As the government’s lawyers, Kirk Manhardt and Leslie Batchelor, underscored, we have not traditionally seen original film, or original tape, as being worth much, especially in a world where reproduction is so simple. The importance is the content of the film, they asserted, not the actual physical stripe of celluloid.
But Beth Gates-Warren, a hotshot appraiser for the Zapruders, waxed nearly poetic about the original’s colors and how there’d be a race among auction houses to sell it, if the chance arose. She envisions fancy cocktail table books using frames from the film and high-minded, accompanying commentary about the event.
Perhaps. But you couldn’t show it long publicly because light would ruin the film. And it’s not as if you can look at the film, as one might an original da Vinci, and shout, “That was done by the hands of Leonardo!” To the extent that there is some special aura, it has something to do with what many Americans might see as the Kennedy “magic.”
Could it fetch a gigantic price in the collectibles market that can include baseballs and the dresses of famous actresses? The government says “no,” the Zapruders say “yes.” Bennett, in deriding the government argument that the film essentially is just a piece of celluloid, contended that by such standards the Shroud of Turin would be merely a rag.
The family ultimately wants what it believes an auction would fetch, even though it would likely never partake in such an event, lest it be tagged sleazy. So it wants to retain a certain high-mindedness, by letting the film remain in the National Archives but be enriched as if craven sellers at Sotheby’s or Christie’s.
And the general reality is that beauty wins over historical significance. Consider the auction of two daguerreotypes at a 1996 Sotheby’s sale.
One, the earliest known portrait of John Brown, the abolitionist, went to the National Portrait Gallery for $115,000, while one of Frederick Douglass went to the Art Institute of Chicago for $185,000.
The Art Institute’s Douglass is much more beautiful than the Portrait Gallery’s Brown, though the latter is a far more significant historical document.
And, still, the government really does seem to be low-balling. The collectibles market has gone so wacky in such a short time, one just knows that if this were put up for bid, there would be some well-heeled soul who’d fork over tons, even if he’d stick it in his basement.
I thus sympathized with Bennett when he stood before the panel and drolly envisioned “a tobacco lawyer, who are the only ones with that sort of money, saying, `I want to have the most important piece of criminal evidence in the history of the United States.’ “
After recalling how he, then a Georgetown University law student, broke down the day Kennedy was assassinated, Bennett contended, “If I had the kind of money Bill Gates has, I might buy it.”
That was a tad theatrical. But it still had a certain resonance because there are so many big-bucks citizens willing to spend mightily.
The two sides will file final briefs within two weeks, then a quick decision will follow. My early line: Double the McGwire take and give the Zapruders around $6 million to $8 million.
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James Warren and Michael Tackett of the Tribune’s Washington bureau are hosts of “Unconventional Wisdom” at 7:05 p.m. Sunday on WGN-AM 720.