The final glimpses of JFK: His last hours as seen by members of the crowd in Texas
In JFK: The Final Hours, people who saw the president's last speeches, motorcade, handshake, and other everyday acts describe a man on the verge of becoming a legend
By DAILY MAIL REPORTER
Published: 00:12 EDT, 25 September 2013 | Updated: 14:41 EDT, 25 September 2013
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Instead of examining the immediate aftermath of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, a forthcoming documentary will shed new light on the tragedy by exploring the hours that preceded the president's death.
JFK: The Final Hours, which airs November 8 at 8pm, portrays the president not as the legend he's become but as the man he was before his murder. First-hand accounts from people who were among the last to see him alive describe their remarkable brushes with history.
Among those first-hand accounts in the National Geographic Channel film, is that of narrator Bill Paxton who, at 8-years-old, was in the crowd in Fort Worth where Kennedy gave one of his last public speeches just three hours before his death.
New take: A new National Geographic documentary called JFK: The Final Hours documents the man who JFK was in the day leading up to his death instead of the legend he became because of it
‘I remember thinking it was like seeing a movie star,' says the Emmy nominated actor. ‘There stood a man at the peak of his life and his career, but little did he or any of us know that in three hours he would be murdered in cold blood.'
Another account comes from Clint Hill, the Secret Service agent who leapt on to the bumper of the Kennedy's limo after the fatal shots rang out.
Hill recalls the beginnings of an ‘ordinary' political tour that was transformed into a personal and national nightmare.
Buell Frazier, the man who gave assassin Lee Harvey Oswald a ride to work as he carried what he claimed were curtain rods, describes his uncomfortably close encounter with the killer on the day he changed history.
Legend: In the hours leading up to his assassination, JFK briefly entered the lives of countless Texans. By letting them speak through interviews and photos, the film portrays the man behind the legend
Three hours to live: President and Mrs Kennedy greet supporters in Fort Worth before heading to Dallas, Texas. The crowds were much bigger than anyone had imagined. The consequences were fatal.
Corkie Friedman, the first lady of Fort Worth at the time, tells of the moment JFK complimented her earrings on the morning he died, causing her to nearly faint.
Friedman shows the fated earrings, and they are among a trove of objects in the film that have become historical footnotes thanks to their role in Kennedy's last day.
Oblivious: Vice President Lyndon Johnson smiles with First Lady Jackie Kennedy while Lady Bird Johnson looks on at the Texas Hotel breakfast, just hours before the November 22, 1963 assassination of the president
Video source JFK Presidential Library and Museum
The objects include the white Lincoln in which Kennedy rode the morning before he died, the 5-ton SX limousine in which Kennedy died, the president's now-restored Air Force One that carried his corpse, and the wedding band that Lee Harvey Oswald removed the morning before he became history's most infamous assassin.
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One inspiration for the two-hour film's unique take on the 1963 assassination comes from Jacqueline Kennedy, who said in an interview following her husband's death: ‘Now, he is a legend when he would have preferred to be a man.'
The film will also premiere on the National Geographic Channel internationally in 171 countries and 48 languages.
Last drive: Like a gauntlet, all these people witnessed JFK's Ft. Worth motorcade, his last before taking off for Dallas, where he was assassinated