John F. Kennedy: How TV is remembering his assassination 60 years later

   Anyone old enough to remember Walter Cronkite's first words on Nov. 22, 1963 (" … In Dallas, Texas, three shots were fired at President Kennedy's motorcade…") hardly needs to be reminded of what happened that day. The years pile up and the anniversaries fly by but those memories — as sharp and lacerating as the moment they were formed — haven't gone anywhere.

This year brings the 60th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, and it's déjà vu all over again. 

Every decennial arrives with lots of JFK-related TV programming, so little wonder some of us still approach the day — and the TV — with a mixture of dread and anticipation. I just sat through eight hours of John F. Kennedy from one network (History's "Kennedy"), three hours on another (Nat Geo's "JFK: One Day in America") and 90 minutes on a streamer (Paramount+'s "JFK: What the Doctors Saw").

It's been an immersive, wall-to-wall, I-am-there-again experience, but all these hours notwithstanding, something is different this time — there will be so much less on TV than any decennial that's come before.

Just three major series honoring the anniversary have been announced so far (there likely will be more). Compare that to the 50th, when at least 15 special program "events" across a dozen networks had been unveiled by this point. 

There are a few reasons why. The obvious one is that a 60th lacks the symbolic or symmetric heft of a 50th. In addition, you can now get whatever you want whenever you want at that all-you-can-eat buffet known as the internet. Put "JFK assassination documentary" in your YouTube search bar and be prepared to be overwhelmed by hundreds of films, long and short, the vast majority of which have been posted during the past decade.

The point is, if you are interested in the JFK assassination, you don't have to wait every 10 years to sate your curiosity. You don't have to wait 10 minutes.

GENERATIONAL SHIFT

But a more subtle shift has taken place these past 10 years, say observers — a generational one, where those old enough to remember have indeed grown older. That too will be reflected in what you're about to see on TV this month. 

    "I'm 91 years old now," says Clint Hill, at the opening of  "One Day In America," which is based on the recollections of the "last surviving witnesses." (Hill was assigned to Jacqueline Kennedy's Secret Service detail.) "There are a few of us left, but very few."

    Hill is slumped in a chair, and intubated. His eyes are rheumy, his speech halting. It's a profoundly moving image but can anyone born in the last 30 or even 40 years even begin to understand this specific emotion — much less experience it — just by looking at Hill in this twilight moment?   

FASCINATION FADING?

Or, for that matter, really even care? 

"I don't know that the Kennedy assassination is going to have the same fascination for the generations that haven't lived through it," says David Nasaw, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Distinguished Professor of History at CUNY and author of the 2012 Joseph Kennedy biography, "The Patriarch." "I am amazed constantly at how little smart students know about the past." 

Nasaw, a Roslyn native who appears in History's "Kennedy" adds that "as the people who lived through this are no longer here, it will be more and more difficult to reconstruct those moments from the past to get them to pay attention to it." 

Carolyn Payne, executive producer of National Geographic Content, explained (via email) that this is why "One Day in America" focused on Hill and others like him: "There are only a handful of living witnesses left with comprehensive knowledge of what happened that day and those folks are now in their 80s and 90s."

But Payne conceded that "after 60 years, this moment in history may be starting to hold less of a prominent memory, especially for younger generations who did not experience it." That "partly" explains why there is less on TV marking this 60th, she says. 

    It's easy to see that a profound shift, and a dissociative one, has taken place since the 50th anniversary. To most people born in (say) the early 1950s, memories of that day haven't aged a bit but they certainly have. They're in their 70s now, while the earliest boomers (born 1946) are pushing 80. 

JFK'S LEGACY IS STILL POWERFUL

Could anyone born after Nov. 22, 1963, have the same emotional investment in yet one more TV documentary about a long-ago tragedy as they do?   

Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, and author of 2013's "The Kennedy Half-Century: The Presidency, Assassination, and Lasting Legacy of John F. Kennedy," concedes that the assassination is "receding into history" but insists that "there is still a great curiosity about President Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy and everything else that happened in that awful decade."

He says he sees that fascination in his own students' "very young eyes — some of them so young they don't remember George W. Bush."

    "I don't think Kennedy will ever have the fate of quite a few other presidents who have receded so much that they're now just part of a list that you see on Presidents Day. That mystique will last for a very long time because he was so charismatic and consequential. You could see him and Jackie walking down the street right now and fitting in. He's permanently a modern man, Jackie permanently a modern woman." 

HERE'S WHAT TO EXPECT ON TV

JFK: ONE DAY IN AMERICA

(Disney+, Hulu)

Like NatGeo's acclaimed "9/11: One Day in America," this three-parter reconstructs the long-ago day through the memories of those who experienced it. Here it's Hill, Paul Landis, another Secret Service agent; Peggy Simpson, an AP reporter; Dallas police officer Rusty Robbins; Ruth Paine, who was with accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald's wife, Marina, during the shooting; and many others. 

BOTTOM LINE NatGeo calls this visually "immersive," and that's about right, but the better part of "One Day" is the emotional immersion. Melancholy spreads over these hours, and a sadness at times too deep for words.

JFK: WHAT THE DOCTORS SAW

(Paramount+)

Several doctors and residents, who were in Parkland Hospital's Trauma Room 1 60 years ago, are interviewed here for the first time (per Paramount) and they directly contradict the Warren Commission's finding. Each says they believe to this day that Kennedy's neck wound and fatal head wound came from bullets shot from in front of the limousine, and not from the Texas School Book Depository.

BOTTOM LINE "What Doctors Saw '' doesn't go beyond basic testimony offered here — no full-blown conspiracy theorizing or wild chases down rabbit holes. It's just the facts, or recollections, and those happen to be sharp and unwavering — that the attending doctors still believe there was a shooter in front, not behind. It's a powerful and disturbing film, also convincing. 

KENNEDY

(History Channel, Nov. 18-20 at 8 p.m.) 

At eight hours, this is TV's full-on JFK experience of the 60th anniversary, with interviews from prominent historians — including Nasaw, Sabato and David M. Kennedy (no relation), as well as JFK aides, family members and other politicians. This really does begin at the beginning, covering JFK's father's influence, Kennedy's early success as a writer ("Why England Slept"), the sinking of PT 109 (Aug. 1, 1943), his first Congressional victory (1946), the move to the Senate (1953), and then to White House (1961). 

 BOTTOM LINE Not much new here but what's excellent is the sheer spread of his life story told particularly well (Peter Coyote of Ken Burns fame narrates.) Best are the hours covering PT 109, and the Cuban missile crisis.    

JFK REVISITED: THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

(Prime Video; Paramount+)

"JFK Revisited: Down the Rabbit Hole" might be a better name, because director Oliver Stone once again takes viewers to some places he's been before, and we have too. Based on "Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba, and the Garrison Case," by James DiEugenio, this assembles witnesses and experts who once against cast doubt on "the single bullet theory" — the Warren Commission's so-called "magic bullet" that was presumed to have hit JFK and Texas Gov. John Connally in multiple places; and this also raises significant questions about its "chain of evidence." 

BOTTOM LINE While this came out in 2021, it's worth checking out now (or again), if only because Stone has done such a thoroughly watchable (and intermittently convincing) job of trashing the Warren Commission finding, with lots of help.