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2019The Darnell film at the 6th floor museum
The Darnell film at the 6th floor museum
Click picture to enlarge.
During and shortly after the recent Lancer conference I was in contact with two individuals, who would try to get in touch with Stephen Fagin of the 6th Floor Museum and ask about the Jimmy Darnell film. It was the late Gary Mack who mentioned a first generation copy in the museum’s possession from 2008. His last mention was shortly before he passed away in 2015. You can read more about this in the huge post I made a couple of years ago.
To some the answer to proving, as in cherry on top, that Prayer Man is actually Lee Harvey Oswald lies in the Darnell film, to me not a chance in hell unless there happens to be a sharp frame in the roughly 5 seconds of that particular film sequence. The film, and especially the happenings on the stairs, offer some value in those frames. Some of the detail has been washed out and is too blurry to actually identify all people on those steps. S some individuals could be recognised with a better copy, but when it comes to ID-ing Lee Oswald being there on the first step below the landing is doubtful.
Alan Dale asked Stephen Fagin after a talk during the Lancer Conference in Nov. 2018 about whether the 6th Floor Museum had a copy of the Darnell film and if so when could scholars get access to it?
This then got the reply: “Funny as you mention this we are about to give access to a digital 2K copy of the Darnell film in our reading room”. That is partial good news, its existence has been acknowledged, but 2K is not 4K which it should have been. Since this film could give a lot of info on T.S.B.D. employees I would have not spared any money to get the best optimal result from the 16 mm film.
Stu Wexler had one of his friends go there and I asked Scott Reid to pay the Museum a visit as he happened to be in Dallas at that time. Sadly neither could give me anything conclusive and on top of that Scott managed to tell me that he could only stop and start the movie, not zoom in nor go for a slow motion setting either, so overall that was not very helpful.
The big let down is the fact that the film can only be seen in the Reading Room inside the 6th floor museum, you have to physically be there. Copies cannot be made for copyright reasons. I have asked whether it would be possible to get some still copies and that might still be possible, the powers that be will need to give their consent before this happens, whenever that may be. Will keep you posted.
