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A haunting home film has recently surfaced in the media that depicts never-before-seen images of a 1963 home movie directed by Jacqueline Kennedy in which JFK acted out his own assassination.

The long-lost home movie made by the president and first lady on the last weekend of the summer before his death is now being revisited by critics after two attempts this year on the life of Donald Trump.

Available on the website of the John F. Kennedy Library the silent picture, some 16 minutes long, was shot on the weekend of September 21 and 22. The footage depicts scenes of Kennedy, his family, and a few friends at various locations around Newport, Rhode Island, including Hammersmith Farm, the childhood home of first lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy.

In one of the film’s poignant scenes, JFK sits in the captain’s chair on the deck of the presidential yacht, the Honey Fitz, reading the palms of Anita Fay, wife of JFK’s wartime companion and Navy undersecretary, Paul “Red” Fay. Kennedy then shows the pair his hands, which he interprets as lifelines. What did he see? What exactly did he say?

Remarkably, the home movie has not seen the light of day until now, and the fact that the president would be assassinated two months later gives it an eerie feeling.

Details of the film recently became public after Paul Landis, the First Lady’s Secret Service agent, released a memoir, The Final Witness, which also includes the revelation that JFK had discovered an intact bullet in the presidential limo on the day of his assassination.

Chief photographer’s mate Robert L. Knudsen, a sailor posted to the White House, was requested by Jackie Kennedy to photograph the presidential party on the Honey Fitz and then follow them back to Hammersmith Farm, along with the Secret Service, to chronicle a fake assassination of JFK as part of a handmade espionage thriller she and the president had planned.

The first lady had made an unusual request, and explained that she and the president were making a humorous short film—a kind of spy movie. And she asked if the agents wouldn’t mind participating.

According to Landis, Jackie instructed the agents to rush up to the main home and respond as if they had just heard bullets. Landis claims the agents entered the residence and discovered the president lying on the floor in the entryway, splattered with ketchup. Jackie sat up on the staircase, directing the activity from the same position where she and JFK were photographed on their wedding day.

Everyone understood it was a prank and thought it odd but typical of the mischievous, playful atmosphere the first couple sanctioned when outside of public view. Everyone applauded and laughed when the filming was complete, completely unaware that life would imitate art in the near future.

According to a fascinatingly detailed Vanity Fair article about the film, Kennedy had always wanted to write his own espionage books.

JFK’s fascination with 007 creator Ian Fleming began in 1954 when he read Casino Royale while recovering from back surgery. Throughout the 1960 campaign, he had secret meetings with Fleming. A year later, when Time-Life Magazine reported on the new president’s reading habits, Kennedy commended Fleming’s work.

“Like many of the world’s leaders,” Times wrote, “he has a weakness for detective stories, especially those of British author Ian Fleming and his fictitious undercover man, James Bond.”

Looking back, watchers can not help but see the film as a prophecy. “I wondered if it was a premonition he had or a quirk of fate.”

[source:vanityfair]