Breaking Walls

On Friday November 22nd, 1963, New York’s Village Voice co-founder Dan Wolf’s office was swarmed with people. Journalist Jerry Tallmer later remembered being there, talking and grieving, when in burst Jean Shepherd, excited and full of fire.

Shep said, “Wouldn’t you know! Wouldn’t you know! It was a Fair Play for Cuba guy who did it!” Lee Harvey Oswald had connections with the Fair Play for Cuba group, an organization protesting the U.S.’ treatment of Communist Cuba under Fidel Castro.

Although Shepherd was a noted liberal, the idea that Oswald wasn’t some right-wing fascist, but a nutcase of the left excited Shep, and Shep was mad. Commentator Barry Farber remembered that Shep was incensed that he couldn’t get on the air. He said, “for crying out loud, we finally have something to talk about and they took us off the air.”

On Monday, November 25th, 1963 at 11:15PM, Jean Shepherd was finally able to sign on for WOR. What follows is a sober, serious commentary on the state of the United States and what John Kennedy meant to Jean Shepherd.

This is the full forty-five minute broadcast.

On Monday, November 25th, 1963, John F. Kennedy was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. NBC Radio was on hand with press coverage of the event.

Millions of viewers watched the funeral on live TV. Present were foreign dignitaries from ninety-two countries, including eight heads of state and ten prime ministers. In addition to President Johnson, former Presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower were in attendance, as was Prince Philip, the husband of Queen Elizabeth II; and Anastas Mikoyan, First Deputy Prime Minister of the USSR.

The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Boston, Richard Cardinal Cushing, delivered the funeral mass at St. Matthew's Cathedral.

For only the third time in history, telephone service in the US was halted for one minute at noon, Eastern time. Las Vegas closed all of its casinos for only the third time in its history.

Three hours later, graveside services were held for Lee Harvey Oswald at the Rose Hill Cemetery near Fort Worth, Texas. The only people allowed were Oswald's wife, mother, brother, and two daughters. After a Lutheran minister from Dallas reconsidered appearing for the service, the Reverend Louis Saunders appeared on behalf of the Fort Worth Council of Churches, telling newsmen, "We do not want it said a man can be buried in Fort Worth without a minister."

Oswald was buried in a family plot that had been owned for several years by his mother. Six reporters were pallbearers.

Abraham Zapruder sold all rights to his famed eight millimeter film of the Kennedy assassination to LIFE Magazine for One-hundred-fifty-thousand dollars, to be paid in twenty-five-thousand dollar yearly installments. Two days later, Zapruder donated the first full payment to the widow of officer J.D. Tippit.

On Saturday November 23rd, 1963, with the country in a state of shock and mourning, Music Director Erich Leinsdorf led the Boston Symphony orchestra in the compositions of Gluck, Wagner, and Beethoven.

John Kennedy was the grandchild of former famous Boston mayor John “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald. The concert was given at Symphony Hall in honor of the slain son of Boston.

Elsewhere, numerous famous people gave statements on the assassination.

The next morning, Sunday November 24th, despite being surrounded by a crowd of police officers at the Dallas Police headquarters, Lee Harvey Oswald was shot and mortally wounded by nightclub owner Jack Ruby on live TV while being transported to the Dallas County jail.

Ruby shot Oswald in the abdomen, at point blank range, with a .38 caliber revolver. The shooting took place at 11:21 a.m. local time. Oswald was taken into surgery at Parkland Memorial Hospital. He died at 1:07 p.m., never to face trial.

That Sunday, thousands of people around the world went to Sunday mass in memory of the fallen President. Later an LP called That Day With God was produced with excerpts from several of these inspirational expressions. It included Pope Paul VI, The Archbishop of Canterbury and Richard Cardinal Cushing. I’ll let Henry Fonda read the last one.

All regularly scheduled network programming from every radio and TV station around the country was immediately suspended. This audio comes from shortly after 2PM eastern time from ABC.

Right after the shooting, witness Howard Brennan notified the police that he was sitting across the street from the Texas School Book Depository, watching the President’s motorcade go by. He heard a shot come from above and looked up to see a man with a rifle fire another shot from the southeast corner window on the sixth floor. He said he had seen the same man minutes earlier looking through the window.

Brennan gave a description of the shooter, and Dallas police subsequently broadcast descriptions at Dallas time 12:45., 12:48, and 12:55 p.m.

At 12:45 fifteen minutes after President Kennedy was shot, Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit received a radio order to drive to the central Oak Cliff area as part of a concentration of police around the center of the city.

At 12:54, Tippit radioed that he moved as directed. By then, several messages had been broadcast describing a suspect in Kennedy’s shooting as a five-foot-ten, slender white male.

At roughly 1:10, Tippit was driving slowly eastward on East 10th street past the intersection at Patton Avenue when he pulled alongside a man who resembled the police description.

Although conspiracy theorists dispute this, officially the man was twenty-four year-old Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald walked over to Tippit's car and exchanged words with him through an open window. Tippit opened his car door and walked toward the front of the car. Oswald drew a handgun and fired five shots in rapid succession. Tippit was shot in the chest and head, dying almost instantly.

His body was transported from the scene of the shooting by ambulance to Methodist Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 1:25 p.m.

Meanwhile, Johnny Brewer, a nearby shoe store manager later testified that he saw Oswald ducking into the entrance alcove of his store. Suspicious, Brewer watched Oswald continue up the street and slip without paying into the nearby Texas Theatre. He alerted the theater's ticket clerk, who telephoned the police at about 1:40 p.m.

As police arrived, the house lights were brought up and Brewer pointed out Oswald sitting near the rear of the theater. Police Officer Nick McDonald testified that he was the first to reach Oswald and that Oswald seemed ready to surrender saying, "Well, it is all over now."

McDonald said that Oswald pulled out a pistol tucked into the front of his pants, then pointed the pistol at him, and pulled the trigger. McDonald stated that the pistol did not fire because the pistol's hammer came down on the webbing between the thumb and index finger as he grabbed it. McDonald also said that Oswald struck him, but that he struck back and Oswald was disarmed.

As he was led from the theater, Oswald shouted he was a victim of police brutality.

Soon after his arrest, Oswald encountered reporters, declared, "I didn't shoot anybody. They've taken me in because I lived in the Soviet Union. I'm just a patsy!"

This is audio from an arranged press meeting later that day. The voice you’ll hear is that of Lee Harvey Oswald.

Oswald was formally arraigned for the murder of Officer Tippit at 7:10 p.m. By early the next morning, he had been arraigned for the assassination of President Kennedy.

At 2:38 p.m. Dallas time on Friday the 22nd aboard Air Force One, Lyndon Baines Johnson took the oath of office as the 36th President of the United States. Standing next to him as he took the oath were both his wife and Jacqueline Kennedy.

On Friday, November 22nd, 1963, President Kennedy awoke at 7:30AM. He ate a light breakfast with Jackie before going out by himself to the square in front of his hotel to address a crowd of a few thousand people.

Someone shouted, “where’s Jackie?”

He pointed to their eighth floor suite and replied "Mrs Kennedy is organizing herself, It takes her a little longer, but of course she looks better than we do when she does it."

The First Couple, together with Vice President Johnson and Texas Governor Connaly then took a short flight to Dallas. At 11:55 the President's motorcade left Love Field in Dallas. Thirty-five minutes later, history changed forever.

This is soundcheck audio from the collection of Gordon Skene. On the morning of Friday, November 22nd, 1963 Gordon was twelve years old and home from school, recovering from an operation. Out of boredom he switched on his parent’s tape recorder and tuned to KNX, CBS’ affiliate in Los Angeles.

On the air was Arthur Godfrey Time, talking from Miami, Florida with journalist Morris McLemore and commentator Gabriel Heater.

Longtime CBS journalist and host Andy Rooney remembered Godfrey’s influence.

In the late 1930s, a red-head from New York with a slight southern drawl named Arthur Godfrey was making a name for himself, hosting an all-night CBS show in Washington, DC on WJSV. He spent the overnight air-time playing records and chatting.

Audiences were drawn to Godfrey’s informal approach. In April of 1941, CBS picked up the emcee for a national broadcast. The next October 4th, he began announcing for Fred Allen’s Texaco Star Theater.

Unfortunately Allen and Godfrey didn’t mix well on-air. Allen dropped him after six weeks. Godfrey continued to appear on CBS special broadcasts. His star catapulted when he was a tearful reporter at Franklin D. Roosevelt’s funeral in April of 1945. CBS gave him a new morning show.

Arthur Godfrey Time debuted less than two weeks later on April 30th.

Unfortunately Godfrey’s popularity nosedived on October 19th, 1953. After years of working both himself and his supporting cast to the bone, he’d begun to treat them like children. Godfrey had a falling out with singer Julius LaRosa, firing him live on the air. Many felt Godfrey was jealous of his popularity.

Once the show signed off for the day, Godfrey fired his bandleader Archie Bleyer. When Ed Sullivan invited LaRosa on his Toast of the Town TV show, Godfrey called Sullivan a dope. The reporters covering the story were “a bunch of jerks.”

Rather than back off, Godfrey fired the rest of his cast and continued broadcasting, but the press, the public, and Godfrey never forgot or forgave what happened.

His problems continued. He lost his pilot's license after buzzing an airport tower. One by one his shows folded. Then he got lung cancer and later, pronouncing himself cured, devoted much of his time to the fight against the disease. He professed to be writing a book that would tell “the whole story” of his incredible life and claimed to be working out a new deal for a TV show. In the end CBS, and William Paley, who never liked Godfrey, but liked his ratings, refused to put him on TV.

Godfrey continued his network radio show until 1972, when he finally quit. In his seventies, he still talked occasionally about coming back, but he died March 16th, 1983, in New York city.

While this exact recording isn’t the original that Gordon Skene air checked, he later said about recording that morning, “Why was I doing it? I have no idea, and to this day I couldn’t tell you exactly what made me pick this day and this hour to hit the record button.”

Suddenly, it all became very serious. What follows here is a living nightmare, now sixty years old, and not a moment of it is dated by time.

On the morning of Thursday, November 21st, 1963 President Kennedy had breakfast with his children. He said goodbye to his daughter Caroline when she left for school at 9:15.

President Kennedy arrived at his office for the last time at 9:55. The President left the White House for the last time at 10:50AM. He flew to Andrews Air Force Base where he and the First Lady departed for San Antonio Texas. John Jr accompanied them to the airport.

Once in Texas, he was at the dedication of the Aerospace Medical Health Center, Brooks Air Force Base. He then went to Houston. There he made brief remarks to the League of United Latin American Citizens at the Rice Hotel. He then addressed a dinner in honor of Representative Albert Thomas. Some of that speech was just heard.

The President and First Lady then traveled to Fort Worth where they stayed at the Texas Hotel. He had speeches set for Fort Worth and Dallas the next day.

In world news, Robert Stroud, “the birdman of Alcatraz” died while incarcerated in Springfield, Missouri.

In Japan’s general election, the Liberal Democratic Party retained a majority in the Shugiin (SHOO GEEN), or House of Representatives.

While India began its space program with the launching of a rocket at the far south end of the Indian subcontinent.

And by the time the President went to sleep, it was the 22nd in the UK. That day, The Beatles released their second studio album, With The Beatles. Produced by George Martin, it featured eight original compositions and six covers.

The famous black and white portrait on the cover, with Ringo underneath John, George, and Paul, was widely copied afterwards.

On November 19th, 1963, nine days before Thanksgiving, President Kennedy received a turkey from the Poultry and Egg Board. The President always looked forward to New England Thanksgivings.

That same day, in the concluding event for the three-day centennial celebration of the Gettysburg Address, former U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower addressed the crowd at the rededication for the Gettysburg National Cemetery.

He told the audience, "My friends, Lincoln reminded his hearers that they had no power to dedicate this ground. So we, today, have no power to rededicate it. But with the playing of Taps, the soldier's farewell, we can share the grief of every family who has heard that a son or father or sweetheart has fallen. If we can do this, we will begin to do our part to solve the unfinished business of which Lincoln spoke."

That evening, Jean Shepherd signed on talking family folk stories and poking fun at WOR.

The next day, at the UN General Assembly, the Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination was adopted, while the deathbed wish of author Aldous Huxley was honored by his wife Laura. She injected him with two-hundred micrograms of LSD. Huxley would die two days later.

On Sunday, November 17th, 1963, Frank McGee signed on for NBC’s Monitor with a look at Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg address. Lincoln’s famous speech was about to celebrate its one-hundredth anniversary.

Meanwhile, President Kennedy was in Florida, unofficially on the 1964 campaign trail.

On Saturday November 16th, President Kennedy traveled to Cape Canaveral where he inspected the Saturn Control Center and watched a Polaris missile test launch.

The next morning he and Special Assistant Dave Powers went to Sunday Mass at St. Ann’s Church in Palm Beach.

On the day of this special broadcast, the President began his day at MacDill Air Force Base.

Photos from this trip, which would be the President’s last to Florida, which had voted Republican in the previous two Presidential elections, show Kennedy smiling brightly, as did fellow Americans, especially those who shook his hand or lined the roads alongside the twenty-eight mile path his motorcade took in Tampa Bay.

When Kennedy traveled to Miami, he addressed a democrat crowd at the airport.

That same day, a fire killed twenty-six people at the Surfside Hotel in Atlantic City, New Jersey. During the offseason the hotel served as a convalescent home for elderly people. Ten bodies were never recovered and only two of the other fifteen could be identified.

A former mental patient and convicted arsonist would be arrested for the crime. He confessed he poured gasoline into the hotel's boiler and set it ablaze. However, an Atlantic City grand jury did not find probable cause to return an indictment.

That evening, NBC-TV’s Huntley–Brinkley Report featured a four-minute news feature on The Beatles. It was the group’s first appearance on American TV.

James Scully here. I wanted to let you know that I’m doing a webinar this Wednesday, November 8th, 2023 at 5:30PM with the New York Adventure Club on the CBS Talent Raids of 1949 and how they drastically changed the broadcasting landscape just as TV was about to boom.

Included here in the show notes is a link where you can buy tickets, which are only $10 — https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-cbs-talent-raids-a-rebalance-of-network-power-in-early-tv-webinar-registration-735611121667?aff=oddtdtcreator. I'll also send anyone who buys tix the PDF presentation deck after the webinar (if they want it).

On Saturday November 9th, fans rioted at Roosevelt Field Raceway in Long Island, battling police and setting fires. At least fifteen were hurt and the head of security died of a heart attack during the riot.

Sunday November 10th was the evening before Veteran’s Day. On NBC, Frank McGee signed on for Monitor with a salute to the holiday. Andrew Pearson had correspondence from Vietnam, while President Kennedy spent much of the weekend in New York City.

On this same day, Black Muslim activist Malcolm X delivered what would become a widely re-quoted speech to the Northern Negro Leadership Conference at the King Solomon Baptist Church in Detroit.

His message was one of revolution. He heavily criticized civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr., who he said sold out and added that the March on Washington was "nothing but a circus, with clowns and all... white and black clowns."

The next morning President Kennedy and his family flew to the white house. The President and John Jr. went to Arlington National Cemetery to take part in Veterans Day Ceremonies.

Meanwhile, The first interplanetary probe in the Soviet Union's Zond program, Kosmos 21, failed to escape Earth orbit after rocket misfire and a failure of proper altitude control.

On November 12th, The President met with Portuguese and Uruguayan Ambassadors before hosting an off the record meeting on Cuba that included Robert Kennedy, Dean Rusk and Robert McNamara. He also signed off on National Security Memorandum 271, a then-secret memo to NASA Administrator James E. Webb, telling him "to assume personally the initiative and central responsibility" to develop specific technical proposals "for broader cooperation between the U.S. and the USSR in outer space, including cooperation in lunar landing programs."

On Wednesday, November 13th, at 11:15PM, Jean Shepherd signed on from WOR talking about protests, intellectuals, and angry demagogues.

Two days after this broadcast, on Friday November 15th, 1963, seven days before President Kennedy's scheduled visit to Dallas, Democratic Party leader Baxton Bryant sent an angry telegram to President Kennedy complaining that Democratic supporters were being shut out of the planned November 22nd luncheon by Dallas Republicans who were in control of the Dallas Citizens Council. The plea was for the President to do something or face a boycott by his most loyal supporters.

A motorcade from Dallas Love Field to downtown Dallas was arranged for the Kennedys after another Bryant complaint.

That evening, the President flew to Palm Beach, Florida.