I've been fascinated for a while by the specter of the 'Other' film. While I think much of Costella's work has probably been superceded by Doug Horne's work on the film and the possibility that the 'Other' film is/was the original Zapruder -- the anomalies with today's extant film do have to be addressed.

I saw that interview with Marrs and Reymond some time ago...if the guy hasn't come forward with the video, it ends up sounding like another specious claim. The more so if he wrote a book with Billy Sol Estes...

Wouldn't it be nice if somebody digitally tranferred this 'other' film anonymously to YouTube in time for the 50th....

Hi! I'd like to comment on Jim DeEugenio's remarks about LBJ and Mac Wallace's involvement in the assassination. Jim said a third fingerprint expert from up north looked at the cardboard box fingerprint and couldnt match it to white. I saw that guy on The Men Who Killed Kennedy '03. He was with Texas DPS or Austin police in austin. he swore up and down, with 22-point match, that the fingerprint was Mac (Malcom) Wallace fingerprint. Jim seemed not to know or not to believe that, which puzzles me. i feel there is ample evidence of the meeting at Clint murchesons' house the night before.. Jim discounts madeline brown and the kitchen worker interiewed on MWKK '03 , the

heinrich said:

@harryashburn -

You probably ought to start a new thread for a comment like that. But since it's posted: DiEugenio has a strong command of the facts, but sometimes he seems to work from instinct. For example, on that same show you're talking about it sounded like he even pooh-poohs the idea of LBJ and Madeleine Brown having an affair. But -- if you've ever seen the photo of the supposed offspring, he's the spitting image of LBJ.

Goes to show you that, unfortunately, the subjective aspect can creep in no matter who the expert is. But all that being said: I myself doubt whether there was such a meeting of all those big-wigs. Sounds like too likely a story to me. But I don't doubt the LBJ/Madeleine Brown affair.

Since this has devolved into a
discussion of what Jim D finds plausible, I will just mention that what
most annoys me is his problem with the Zapruder alterations. Though I
doubt that it was a complete fabrication as Costella suggests, I think
it's obvious that, at the very least, the sign was altered (enlarged,
moved, whatever) and that the Life Magazine cover shot was some kind of
composite merging a sharp foreground frame with a sharp background
frame. Some people seem to forget that before computer paint programs
arrived, the art of photographic manipulation was already well
developed, viz. the Hitler dancing in front of the train sequence.
Removing the car stop would have been more difficult, but, from what I
can see, most of the slowing down remains, so that only a few seconds
need to have been removed. The very fact that the car was stationary
would have made it fairly easy to pull this off. Costella points out
that many of the background figures were peculiarly stationary.

As
for the pre-assassination party, that does sound a bit hard to believe,
but then again, never underestimate the arrogance of the powerful.

I like Doug Horne's perspective on the photographic evidence. In fact, the only volume I actually bought was the one on photographic alteration, since I was an industrial photographer/printer for many years. The only real complaint I can muster is his use of italics and underlining in the same work, which is a definite literary faux pas. Underlining was used with typewriters because they had no italics font. And he uses both to excess. At some point, emphasis loses its effect when one uses too much of it.

I think, if one had to pick out the most important assumption made by Costella that led him down the wrong track, it was that the Life cover was a single frame and not an assembled image.

What interests me about the Marrs interview is that the purported differences from the current version of the film are just those that would have been easiest to sanitize: Snip out some frames turning the corner; enlarge/add the sign; cut out the limousine stop with minor alterations of the background to make it look fluid; and do a bit of aerial imaging to get a sharp foreground with a sharp background. I'm not saying this has in any way been proved, but it just seems to hang together, in my view. If the interview is a lie, it is such a subtle and well thought out lie that one would have to applaud its creator for his restraint.

[I should point out, as an afterthought, that the Life cover image would not necessarily have been done in some darkened room at some secret CIA photographic facility, at least not before the creation of the revised Zapruder film. It could easily have been done right out in the open at the printing plant. This kind of assembly was common in the printing industry before the arrival of computers. For example, every time you see a photograph in an advertisement in an old magazine with type running across the photograph, that was assembled by a retoucher, the gravure equivalent of an offset stripper. The photographic positive, with which the final photographic stage was made, was done by flashing a series of negative layers, constructed by the retoucher, onto a single sheet of film.

Assuming that the sign was simply layed over an original image that had no sign, or it was a larger version of one that was already there, this too could have been accomplished just as easily in the printing process. None of this was rocket science. I assure you none of the folks I met working in a gravure printing plant knew anything about rockets. Only later on would it have been necessary to alter the film in a way that mimicked the printing alterations, and they had years to do this. So I'm not sure any of Horne's midnight scurrying about would have even been necessary. All that would have been necessary was the cooperation of Henry Luce and a few compliant printers unwilling to see their families murdered in their beds by government agents.]

Edit, 2012-09-22: In case it wasn't obvious from what I wrote, all of the printing manipulations were done at full size, that is, the size at which the images were actually printed.

..ok..but why  would Robt. Groden lie? he sez a few frames (assumingly damaged) were clipped from the film.  who is more familiar with the phsical film strip itself?  thank you.