WBBM Channel 2 - Noonbreak - "Valenti's JFK Remembrance" (1978)

Here's an interview segment from Noonbreak on WBBM Channel 2. In this clip, Bob Wallace interviews Jack Valenti, President of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), on the occasion of the 15th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Valenti was part of the Presidential detail that was in Dallas on the day of the assassination of President Kennedy on November 22nd 1963, and in its aftermath became part of President Lyndon B. Johnson's staff as Assistant to the President.

This was raw, unedited footage from the original master tape, so there were no photo stills, film footage, or lower-third super text inserted (except a notice put on here early on); in addition, color bars (with 683 Hz tone) are seen in the first second, while the tone continues to be heard for the next three seconds as Valenti does small talk.

Includes:

Color bars and tone

Jack Valenti muttering something about J. Edward Day, Postmaster General from 1961 to 1963, before the sound fades out for 21 seconds ("Sound Returns in a Few Seconds" super a new addition) prior to tape break

Two-shot of Bob Wallace and Jack, in which they get straight the name of the organization of which he is president, followed by countdown to start of interview

Bob starts off the interview by mentioning Valenti's close association with LBJ and his being in Dallas on the day of the Kennedy assassination. Valenti was eight cars behind the Presidential motorcade when the shots rang out in Dallas (he notes that the crowd was friendly), after which the motorcade route became "a freeway"; he learned at the Trade Mart that Kennedy and Texas Governor John B. Connally had been shot, and then commandeered a deputy sheriff's car to Parkland Hospital where the President died. Valenti mentions such names as Evelyn Lincoln (JFK's secretary), Cliff Carter (a Johnson aide), Lem Johns (a Secret Service agent who later became chief of White House detail) and Congressman Albert Thomas in the course of this interview in which he gives his account of the aftermath of the assassination. A break in the tape signals the end of Part 1.

In Part 2, Valenti recalls the confusion around Air Force One in the wake of the Kennedy assassination, with Secret Service not knowing if it was a repeat of the 1865 assassination of President Abraham Lincoln (and the attempts on the lives of Edwin Stanton and William Seward); and the events leading up to the swearing in of LBJ aboard the plane by Judge Sarah T. Hughes (with Jacqueline Kennedy, still in her blood-stained pink dress, by LBJ's side). In this part, Valenti mentions such names as then-Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach (who ultimately replaced Robert F. Kennedy as Attorney General), Congressman Jack Brooks and Congressman Thomas (again). (He also refers to the Dallas police chief but does not mention his name - Jesse Curry.) Another tape break.

In Part 3, Valenti recounts the grief from both the Kennedy and Johnson camps in the immediate aftermath of JFK's assassination; he charts the supposed hostility between them to William Manchester's books, and insists that, in fact, there was no such hostility. Here, he mentions Larry O'Brien (special assistant to the President under JFK who stayed on in LBJ's administration, was Democratic National Committee chairman at the time of the 1972 Watergate break-in, and later became NBA commissioner), Kenneth O'Donnell (longtime aide to JFK), General Godfrey McHugh, Robert S. McNamara (Secretary of Defense under both Kennedy and Johnson), Walter Jenkins (who became Johnson's top adviser) and Bill Moyers (future public TV mainstay who ultimately replaced Jenkins). He maintains Johnson, after the assassination, "was invariably courteous, warm [and] understanding" and that Kennedy had "always treated him with respect and understanding" and decreed that no one speak ill of Kennedy in his presence. (In a fit of irony, as brought up towards the end of the interview, Valenti later flew on the Air Force One that carried LBJ's body from Washington back to Texas after his death in 1973 - the very same plane that had carried JFK's body from Dallas to Washington nearly a decade before.)

FuzzyMemories FunFact: Bruce DuMont was the Executive Producer of Noonbreak during this time.

This aired on local Chicago TV on Wednesday, November 22nd 1978 during the 12:00pm to 12:30pm timeframe.

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