JFK Motorcade Post-Shooting 8mm Film (Carpenter)

November 22, 1963

President John F. Kennedy's motorcade entered Dealey Plaza in Dallas at 12:30 p.m. Central time on Friday, November 22, 1963. Shots fired from the Texas School Book Depository struck the president and wounded Texas Governor John Connally, who recovered.

Secret Service agent Clint Hill, riding on the running board of the follow-up car, jumped onto the back of the presidential limousine. When Mrs. Kennedy climbed onto the trunk, he guided her back into the seat and placed his body above the president and Mrs. Kennedy as the car accelerated. The motorcade left Dealey Plaza by the Stemmons Freeway for Parkland Memorial Hospital, where President Kennedy was pronounced dead at 1:00 p.m., about 30 minutes after he was shot.

At 2:38 p.m., Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as president aboard Air Force One. Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested that afternoon and was himself shot two days later. The Warren Commission presented its report on September 24, 1964.

A truck driver with a home-movie camera

Dale Carpenter Sr. was a local truck driver who went out to see the president that day with an 8mm color home-movie camera. He first filmed on Lemmon Avenue, earlier on the motorcade route, before the shooting.

He missed the president's car. His film opens one car behind it, on the Secret Service follow-up car carrying Clint Hill, and on the vice president's car. Carpenter kept filming as the rest of the motorcade passed, recording about 40 seconds in all.

After the shooting, he filmed again. From the side of North Stemmons Freeway he caught just over 10 seconds of the limousine and its escort racing toward Parkland, reportedly at about 80 miles per hour, with Clint Hill on the back of the car over the president and Mrs. Kennedy and a brief flash of Mrs. Kennedy's pink suit.

From a milk crate to Boston

Carpenter died in 1991, at 77. The reel stayed with the family, stored in a milk crate with other family home movies. His grandson, James Gates, came across it and projected it onto his bedroom wall. 'That was shocking,' he said of seeing the freeway footage. Reports place that discovery around 2010.

Before deciding to sell, Gates contacted Clint Hill. Still images from the film were released publicly, but the freeway sequence itself was not.

The film was offered in a Boston auction that ran from September 4 to 28, 2024. On September 28 it sold for $137,500 to a buyer who asked to remain anonymous. The copyright passed with the film, subject to a licensing agreement for a planned documentary about Clint Hill. An executive of the auction house said the footage 'provides a gripping sense of urgency and heartbreak.'

What the film adds to the record

The best-known film of that day is Abraham Zapruder's: 486 frames, 26.6 seconds, shot on a Bell and Howell home-movie camera in Dealey Plaza. Other bystanders, including Charles Bronson, Marie Muchmore and Orville Nix, also filmed the motorcade.

Carpenter's film captures a segment immediately following the events Zapruder recorded. Until it surfaced, only three still photographs were known to show the limousine on North Stemmons Freeway, and no moving footage of the drive to Parkland was thought to exist.

Its two parts are easy to tell apart: the first, longer sequence on Lemmon Avenue shows the motorcade at parade speed before the shooting; the second, about 10 seconds long, shows the same cars at high speed with an agent on the back of the limousine. The reel also contains unrelated family scenes.

Amateur film as history

Home movies became some of the most important evidence of the assassination. Zapruder sold rights to his film to Life magazine for $150,000; after the 1992 Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act the government took the original, and an arbitration panel awarded his heirs $16 million in 1999. The Library of Congress added the Zapruder film to the National Film Registry in 1994, and the family gave its copyright to the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas.

Carpenter's film is far smaller in scope, but it fills a gap of a few seconds between the shooting and the hospital, showing the response of the agents in the minutes after.

Clint Hill, the agent at the center of the freeway footage, went on to protect Presidents Johnson, Nixon and Ford, retired in 1975 and died on February 21, 2025, at 93.

The numbers

Shooting

12:30 p.m. CST, Dealey Plaza, November 22, 1963

Pronounced dead

1:00 p.m., Parkland Memorial Hospital

Johnson sworn in

2:38 p.m., aboard Air Force One

Carpenter film

About 40 seconds before the shooting; just over 10 seconds after

Zapruder film

486 frames, 26.6 seconds

Timeline

1. Nov 22, 1963

   Dale Carpenter Sr. films the motorcade on Lemmon Avenue, then the limousine on North Stemmons Freeway after the shooting.

2. Nov 22, 1963

   President Kennedy is pronounced dead at Parkland Memorial Hospital at 1:00 p.m.

3. Nov 23, 1963

   Abraham Zapruder sells print rights to his film to Life magazine.

4. Sep 24, 1964

   The Warren Commission presents its report.

5. Mar 6, 1975

   The Zapruder film is first broadcast on national television.

6. 1991

   Dale Carpenter Sr. dies at 77; the film stays with his family.

7. 1999

   The Zapruder heirs are awarded $16 million for the original film.

8. 2010

   Around this year, grandson James Gates finds the reel in a milk crate and projects it at home.

9. Sep 4, 2024

   The film goes up for auction in Boston.

10. Sep 28, 2024

    The film sells for $137,500, with copyright, to an anonymous buyer.

11. Feb 21, 2025

    Clint Hill, seen in the freeway footage, dies at 93.

The world in 1963

• Apr 3, 1963

  The Birmingham campaign against segregation begins.

• Jun 11, 1963

  President Kennedy delivers his Civil Rights Address.

• Jun 12, 1963

  Medgar Evers is assassinated in Jackson, Mississippi.

• Jun 26, 1963

  Kennedy gives his 'Ich bin ein Berliner' speech in West Berlin.

• Aug 5, 1963

  The United States, Britain and the Soviet Union sign a nuclear test ban treaty.

• Aug 28, 1963

  Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his 'I Have a Dream' speech at the Lincoln Memorial.

• Sep 15, 1963

  The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham kills four children.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, JFK Motorcade Post-Shooting 8mm Film (Carpenter) is number 100 of 100 in the memorabilia entries of the FLOAT 100. 100 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (108 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• Carpenter missed the president's car the first time; his film opens on the car behind it, carrying Clint Hill.
• The reel sat for decades in a milk crate with ordinary family home movies.
• James Gates contacted Clint Hill before putting the film up for sale.
• The freeway sequence lasts just over 10 seconds.
• Before this film surfaced, the drive on Stemmons Freeway was known only from three still photographs.
• The buyer received the copyright, subject to a licensing agreement for a documentary about Clint Hill.