Details

Subject(s)

• Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald) 1917-1963—Assassination [Browse]
• United States—History—1961-1969 [Browse]

Related name

• MacNeil, Robert, 1931-2024 [Browse]

Summary note

420 photographs with accompanying text recapture the fads, fashions, foods, and people of America in 1963.

Notes

Includes index.

Action note

Committed to retain in perpetuity — ReCAP Shared Collection (HUL)

Contents

• Introduction By Robert MacNeil
• JANUARY
• Kennedy used a rocking chair to encourage the image of a relaxed and approachable executive
• President Kennedy tossed the coin in the Orange Bowl stadium in Miami as Alabama and Oklahoma faced off on January 1
• Johnny Carson came into his own that year as host of NBC's highly profitable Tonight Show
• Ads, without any health warning, encouraging people to smoke cigarettes-to be a manly man, a beautiful woman, a regular guy-were everywhere in 1963
• "Bond, James Bond."
• President and Mrs. Kennedy, Vice-President and Mrs. Johnson before a White House dinner saluting ranking officials from the Executive and Judiciary branches of government
• A Peace Corps volunteer with her young charges at a nursery school in Santiago, Chile
• On January 7, first-class postage jumped to 5 cents from 4 cents, the rate since 1959
• The Beverly Hillbillies was in its second year and still a smash hit
• January 1, poet Robert Frost at 88, a photograph taken a month before his death
• Baseball great Roger Hornsby (left, shown here with legendary manager John McGraw in 1927) died in January
• The Dual Ghia was Volkswagen's attempt to sell an underpowered and eccentrically designed "sports" car
• A helicopter damaged in battle near the Vietnam hamlet of Ap Bac
• The bodies of seven Americans killed in Vietnam were sent home
• Army Captain Kenneth Good, shown here with a Vietnamese peasant, was later shot by a Vietcong soldier
• Before Wendy's, Taco Bell, Roy Rogers, The Kentucky Colonel, The King of Burgers, before even McDonald's, there was that familiar and friendly orange roof and the twenty-eight flavors of ice cream
• Rudy Vallee and Robert Morse continued to play the leads in the long-running musical comedy How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, another play that inherited the vogue for long jocular titles
• The President and the First Lady, accompanied by French Cultural Minister André Malraux and his wife, arrive at the National Gallery to view the Mona Lisa
• Young visitors to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., got a glimpse of the Mona Lisa's mysterious smile
• The president closed his State of the Union message with these words: "We are not lulled by the momentary calm of the sea or the somewhat clearer skies above. We know the turbulence that lies below, and the storms that are beyond the horizon this year. But now the winds of change appear to be blowing more strongly than ever, in the world of communism as well as our own. For 175 years we have sailed with those winds at our back, and with the tides of human freedom in our favor. We steer our ship with hope, as Thomas Jefferson said, 'leaving Fear astern.'" --
• Senate Democratic leader Mike Mansfield on the steps of the Capitol with a group of Senators-elect
• West German Chancellor Konrad Adenhauer (left) and French President Charles de Gaulle after signing a treaty of cooperation between their countries on January 22
• "Car Chuting" had a few months of popularity among New England college students
• Joan Baez was one of the most popular interpreters of new folk songs
• SILENT SPRING Rachel Carson [book cover]: This was one of the first books to alert the public to the pollution of the American landscape
• Harvey Gantt left the Registrars Office of Clemson College, Clemson, South Carolina, after enrolling as a student in the previously all-white school
• IMPERIAL 1963 AMERICA'S MOST CAREFULLY BUILT CAR: This cover of Chrysler's promotional brochure top-of-the-line Imperial emphasized a headlight design that would win no awards and would soon be a memory --
• FEBRUARY
• Flu victims crowded the waiting room of the Memphis hospital in February in a scene replayed in many hospitals and clinics as a flu epidemic swept across the nation
• A youngish, slim Raymond Burr starred in the enormously successful Perry Mason
• At his February 7 press conference President Kennedy assured Americans that all Soviet missiles were out of Cuba
• This aerial reconnaissance photograph was made public by the Defense Department in early February to prove that the Soviets had dismantled their ballistic missile sites in Cuba
• Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique
• This copy line for Maidenform was one of the most repeated-and presumably successful-of the period
• Even slim, trim, young women wore girdles
• Fan magazines were not as lurid as they would later become but even the first family was accorded the cavalier gossip treatment usually reserved for movie stars
• Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Edward Albee's bombshell of a play, continued its run on Broadway, closing in May 1964 after 600 performances
• This is how the February issue of Vogue illustrated recommendations for undergarments and hairdryers
• Edward L. Schempp (left) nad his wife, Donna (third from right), the Pennsylvania Unitarian couple who challenged a state law requiring the reading of Bible verses in public schools, are shown in front of the U.S. Supreme Court building with other family members
• Harvard students attempted to set a pancake-eating record on February 27
• Centerfielder Willie Mays signed with the New York Mets for $100,000, putting him in select company with Joe DiMaggio, Stan Musial, and Ted Williams
• Even Americans who hated to cook tuned in to watch The French Chef, an appealingly informal cooking school of the air that instructor Julia Child said was designed to "take the mystery and falderol out of French cooking"
• UPI correspondent Merriman Smith asked the final question at the president's February 27 press conference, held in the auditorium of the State Department Building
• A tank and soldiers of the new Iraqi revolutionary regime that overthrew Premier Kerim Kassen's government in February
• The three-stage Delta rocket ready for launch on February 6
• Vice-President Lyndon Johnson attended the inauguration of Juan Bosh, the Dominican Republic's first constitutionally elected president in thirty-four years
• Elizabeth Taylor sat on husband Eddie Fisher's lap while Richard Burton-who may have known something Eddie didn't-looked on
• "Too bad! In all other respects, he's as good a Secret Service man as she could ask for." [drawing caption]
• Jack Benny with wife Mary Livingston and daughter Joan backstage at the Ziegfeld Theatre after the entertainer's one-man show opened on Broadway, February 27
• Marshall University students dribbled a basketball 58 miles as part of West Virginia's centennial celebration
• Robert Kennedy and friend took a break during a 50 mile hike undertaken by administration official's to help publicize the president's program for national physical fitness
• What's so special about "Lilies of the Field"? The most significant element in this story of an itinerant black workman and a group of German nuns in New Mexico was its optimistic attitude that everyone can come to understand everyone else. Sidney Poitier won his Academy Award. The picture was nominated as best of the year --
• MARCH
• Former Vice-President Richard Nixon played the piano on the Jack Paar Show on March 3
• Striking printers picketing the New York Daily News read early editions of the New York Post, which broke with the other eight New York dailies and resumed publication on March 4
• The Chiffons' new album included the cuts "One Fine Day" and "He's So Fine"
• The last of the prisoners to be held at Alcatraz-the federal prison for the nation's toughest criminals-walked in handcuffs down the cellblock during their removal from the deteriorating institution, which was closed in March 1963
• THE REIVERS A Reminiscence Faulkner's novel was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in March
• These villagers were among the lucky ones who escaped the volcanic eruptions on Bali, Indonesia, that took 11,000 lives in early April
• Iraqi's President Abdel Salem Aref (right) met with Abdul Hakim Amer, vice-president of the United Arab Republic, shortly after its creation
• Pictured here are the original Project Mercury astronauts and the new trainees selected to join them in the upcoming Gemini and Appollo [sic] projects
• National League second baseman Pete Rose won the Rookie of the Year award
• A MacDonald's [sic] hamburger cost fifteen cents
• Flatten, Sand Fleas, oil on canvas by Roy Lichtenstein
• Featherweight champion Davey Moore (right) died while fighting Cuba's Sugar Ramos on March 21
• Andy Warhol's Marilyn Monroe
• "You're stupid. I like that in a woman." [drawing caption]
• New York socialite, Hope Cooke, 22, wed Palden Thondup Namgyal, 39, the Crown Prince of the Indian protectorate of Sikkim, in a March 20 ceremony held in a Buddhist monastery in the Himalayas
• Pizza in a box meant you had to make and bake it using the manufacturer's dough mix, canned sauce and Italian-style cheese
• Lucille Ball doubled as president of the production company Desilu and star of her weekly program Here's Lucy, successor to The Lucy Show
• Paul Newman, as the sexually arrogant ne'er-do-well who has a bad influence on everyone, became a certified sex object with this movie based on Larry McMurtry's novel Horsemen Pass By
• These Chase Manhattan ads featured people who looked like real parents and were always manacled to these gigantic eggs
• On March 28, Greenwood, Miss., policeman James Switzer held the leash as his police dog, Tiger, growled at a group of blacks who were on their way to register to vote
• The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and his family on March 17, the day after his son, five-year-old Martin Luther King III, was denied admission to a private school in Atlanta --
• On March 22, President Kennedy was greeted by an enthusiastic crowd in San Jose, Costa Rica, as he toured the El Bosque housing development
• THE GUNS OF AUGUST The Pulitzer Prize committee bestowed its nonfiction award on Barbara Tuchman for her account of the beginning of World War I
• "Printemps" was Elizabeth Arden's name for a new line of cosmetics
• In need of novel amusements to work off excess energy, fraternities at the University of Florida took to races carrying coeds perched on small cars
• APRIL
• The New York newspaper strike that began on December 8, 1962, ended on April 1
• Fellini's 81/2 received Academy Award nominations as best foreign film and for its direction and script
• Leading the pack in the homestretch at the 78th running of the $75,000-added Futurity Stakes at Aqueduct Race Track was Captain's Gig, ridden by Willie Shoemaker
• President Kennedy illustrating a point during his April 3 news conference, when he confirmed that 4,000 Soviet troops had left Cuba
• Police in Greenwood, Miss., arrested comedian Dick Gregory and other blacks during a voter registration drive on April 2 and 3
• The civil rights movement succeeded because the majority of Americans came to believe it was morally right
• In the Fire Next Time, James Baldwin told-actually predicted-a lot of things about race relations in America that most of the population did not want to hear
• The Kennedy family, especially Jacqueline, graced the cover of practically every magazine published in 1963
• Jack Nicklaus putted out a winner on the 18th hole in the final round of the Masters Golf tournament in Augusta, Ga., on April 7
• On April 9, Winston Churchill became the first honorary citizen of the United States
• Kennedy threw the ceremonial first pitch to open the major league baseball season on April 8
• 1963 would be Whitey Ford's second best season
• On April 10 the nuclear submarine Thresher disappeared 200 miles off Boston while on post-overhaul testing in the Atlantic
• The experimental Chevrolet XP-700 Corvette was unveiled in Detroit on April 9
• Billboard TOP LP'S
• On April 28, Tony awards were given to (left to right) Zero Mostel for his role in the musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Vivian Leigh for her leading part in the musical Tovarich, and Uta Hagen and Arthur Hill for their performances in the drama Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
• Hollywood's Oscars were something to smile about. From left, Gregory Peck, best actor (To Kill a Mockingbird); Patty Duke, best supporting actress (The Miracle Worker); Joan Crawford, accepting for Anne Bancroft, best actress (The Miracle Worker); and Ed Begley, best supporting actor (Sweet Bird of Youth)
• Three Flags by Jasper Johns --
• With ministers Ralph Abernathy (left) and Martin Luther King, Jr., in the lead, about 1,000 black demonstrators marched through downtown Birmingham on April 12, as part of a major campaign to attack discrimination in shops, restaurants, and employment
• King was led into a paddy wagon following the April 12 demonstration
• The Reverend A.D. King of Birmingham, Ala., Martin Luther King's brother, was taken away by police on April 14
• Pictures such as this aroused sympathy for civil rights demonstrators and rallied public opinion against segregation policies
• The Boston Celtics' Bill Russell received an elbow from Gene Wiley of the Los Angeles Lakers as Russell went for a basket in the final period of the NBA champion play-off on April 19
• Twilight Zone expanded from a half hour to an hour in January 1963
• Two English actresses (and twins) ornamented the hood of an MG sports sedan at the International Automobile show in New York's Coliseum in April
• Green Bay Packer's halfback, Paul Hornung, (above) and Detroit Lion [sic] lineman, Alex Karras, were suspended indefinitely April 17 by the National Football League for betting on games
• Jacqueline Kennedy, her children and two friends, decorated Easter eggs in the kitchen at Joseph Kennedy's Palm Beach home
• "I notice friend Jack isn't yukking it up the way he used to." [drawing caption]
• New York Yankee catcher Elston Howard would win the American League's Most Valuable Player Award for 1963
• Model for the Boeing Supersonic Commercial Transport plane being developed for NASA --
• MAY
• With the odds 9 to 1 against, Chateaugay was the Kentucky Derby long shot
• New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller and the former Mrs. Margarita Fitler Murphy were married on May 4 at the home of the Governor's brother, Laurance
• Waving his fly whisk, the leader of the Kenya African National Union (KANU), Jomo Kenyatta smiled to the cheers of his followers as the general election got underway on May 5
• The Beach Boys-Brian Wilson, Dennis Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine, and Carl Wilson-rose to the top of the charts in the summer of 1963 with their high-harmonied, melodic album Surfin' USA
• When college students rioted in 1963, it was called "spring fever" and was deemed a normal, if somewhat destructive, activity
• The Birmingham demonstrations against segregation were a turning point in the quest for civil rights
• Demonstrators linked hands to remain on their feet in the face of high-pressure fire hoses used to break up a rally of 3,000 protesters
• Events in Birmingham, Ala. dramatically awakened the nation to the civil rights struggle
• President Kennedy threatened to send federal troops to restore order. Alabama Governor George Wallace challenged him, but the Supreme Court rejected the challenge
• The violence led to negotiations, and on May 10, Martin Luther King, Jr. (far right), and other black leaders announced an agreement to end segregation in 90 days. That night King's motel room and his brother's home were bombed, and blacks responded by setting fires
• An armored police truck was used to disperse rioters who set fires in retaliation for the bombing of Reverend A.D. King's home
• The remains of one of the homes set fire by the rioters
• Malcolm X addressed a Harlem rally in support of the integration efforts in Birmingham
• The famous Kennedy smile belied the pressure on the president and Attorney General to act decisively on Civil Rights issues in light of the on-going crisis in Birmingham
• ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S "The Birds" - This curious work, which begins as light comedy and ends as apocalyptic allegory, did not become an instant classic
• Is it true...blondes have more fun? Nobody seemed to be able (or willing) to answer this question about hair color, so Clairol kept asking it for years
• "Mind you, I haven't anything against Caroline personally." [drawing caption]
• The 1963 Ford Fairlane 500 station wagon made up in utility what it lacked in appeal to the imagination
• James Hoffa, president of the Teamsters Union, was released on $10,000 bail to ensure his appearance before a Nashville grand jury investigating jury tampering and misuse of union funds
• Ken Brown's powerful drama of the peacetime U.S. Army in Japan, The Brig, was perhaps the most important new play of the year
• On May 30, Parnelli Jones smiled after he won the 500-mile race at the Indianapolis Speedway
• Their experiments with the "consciousness expanding" drug LSD attracted notoriety for Harvard faculty members Richard Alpert (left) and Timothy Leary and earned them dismissal from the university in May
• At Yale that year only those who had spent spring vacation in Bermuda were allowed to wear madras
• On May 16, astronaut Gordon Cooper thrilled the nation with the longest space flight (34 hours 20 minutes) to date and a hair-raising ending
• Gordon Cooper received a hero's welcome with the traditional New York "ticker tape" parade up Broadway from the financial district to City Hall --
• JUNE
• Pope John Paul XXIII, who died on June 3 during the fifth year of his reign, had led efforts for Christian unity and urged the Roman Catholic Church to devote its attention to achieving world peace
• The June cover of Life
• The Rambler came with the "Twin-Stick Floor Shift" and "Instant Overtake."
• Night club comedian Lennie Bruce, shown here making a V sign after U.S. authorities failed to turn up drugs during a search at New York's Idlewild Airport in April, was declared a narcotics addict by a Los Angeles Superior Court Judge in June and ordered confined to a California rehabilitation center
• The International Air Show in Paris the week of June 7 featured a scale model of the Concorde, the Anglo-French supersonic airline
• My Three Sons was a highly successful sitcom for film star Fred MacMurray
• Lionel Bart's Oliver was the musical hit of the Broadway season
• In a major policy address on June 10 at American University in Washington, D.C., the president announced that the U.S. would not hold any further nuclear tests in the atmosphere as long as other nuclear powers agreed to honor such a ban
• Flames devour Quang Doc, a Buddhist monk who burned to death in Saigon on June 11 after putting a match to his gasoline-soaked robes
• Alabama Governor Geoge Wallace tried to stop black registration at the University of Alabama, defying Deputy U.S. Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach
• Vivian Malone left the Foster Auditorium on June 11, after registering at the University of Alabama
• June 11, Medgar Evers, leader of the Mississippi NAACP, was shot outside his home in Jackson, Miss.
• Bob Hayes set a world record of 9.1 seconds for the 100-yard dash at the AAU international competition in June
• BYE BYE BIRDIE - The movie was even sillier than the Broadway show, but both were box office successes
• The scandal that titillated the world and rocked the British government: War Minister John Profumo confessed to having an affair with ravishing model, Christine Keeler
• Members of the U.S. Supreme Court-the "Warren Court" (left to right, seated): Tom C. Clark, Hugo L. Black, Chief Justice Earl Warren, William O. Douglas, John M. Harlan; (standing): Byron R. White, William J. Brennan, Jr., Potter Stewart, and Arthur J. Goldberg. White and Goldberg were appointed by President Kennedy
• The June issue of Playboy featured a photo spread of Jayne Mansfield
• This year saw the experimental development of the miniature integrated circuit, or chip, that would make possible the third generation of computers
• Each month-sometimes it seemed like each week-brought a new fad...-- President Kennedy was greeted by a huge and ecstatic crowd in front of the West Berlin city hall on June 26
• "Madison Avenue!" [drawing caption]
• "For those who think young" was the key line around which all Pepsi ads were built --
• President Kennedy rode through the streets of Cork, Ireland, on June 28, during his two-day visit
• The American Way of Death - Jessica Mitford told the public about all the untoward things that went on in funeral homes and why it cost so much to bury someone
• Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev greeted Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, at a Red Square ceremony
• Stan Musial would retire at the end of the season
• Cleopatra, starring offstage lovers Elizabeth Taylor (in the title role) and Richard Burton (as Anthony), premiered at New York City's Rivoli theater in June
• JULY
• Chuck McKinley of San Antonio defeated Fred Stolle of Australia 9-7, 6-1, 6-4 at the men's singles tennis championship at Wimbledon on July 5. He became the first American to win Wimbledon in eight years. Roy Emerson-the number-one seed-lost in the semi-final round to Wilheim Burgert. Margaret Smith won the women's title
• For many people the name Hoover was synonymous with vacuum cleaners, and the latest model did not actually look that different from the traditional one
• Petticoat Junction was based on the premise that stupidity was both virtuous and rewarding
• Newly crowned Pope Paul VI and America's first Catholic president during a meeting on July 2
• "How do you tell if there's an elephant in your refrigerator?"
• The Group was about what happened to a bunch of young women who attended Vassar together
• The comedian and clown Red Skelton was the CBS Tuesday-night mainstay, a position he first occupied in 1953 and maintained until 1970
• Coke still came in that oddly shaped bottle
• ZIP (Zone Improvement Program) codes, which allowed mail to be scanned and routed electronically, helped speed up mail delivery
• Some people thought the Nash Metropolitan cute
• The president watched naval maneuvers from the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk
• "You say you're only a housewife, and I say what do you mean, 'only'?" [drawing caption]
• The pattern of a suburban development as seen from the air
• As this Hertz ad demonstrates, clothing was more formal in 1963. Many women felt underdressed in public without hats, gloves and stockings
• President Kennedy and his cabinet
• David Brinkley and Chet Huntley were coanchormen on NBC's The Huntley-Brinkley Report
• That Jan and Dean did not progress beyond the short-lived surfer music vogue, as did the Beach Boys, may have something to do with their selection of tunes
• At 22, Bob Dylan was already one of the top folk music singer-composers in 1963
• The British government announced on July 1 that Kim Philby (pictured here during a 1955 press conference) was a Soviet agent and the "third man" in the Burgess-Maclean spy case
• The title song for Days of Wine and Roses was almost as popular as the movie
• Budweiser, like other nationally distributed beers, was considered a "premium" brew
• This mob scene was evidence of the Kennedy charisma
• Volkswagen was far and away the best-selling import
• A silkscreen by Andy Warhol entitled Campbell's Soup
• On July 22 heavyweight champion Sonny Liston clobbered Floyd Patterson, knocking him out two minutes and six seconds into the first round --
• AUGUST
• Household appliances were made in America and bore familiar names like General Electric, Westinghouse, Philico
• On August 7 the UN Security Council voted an embargo of all arms and military equipment to South Africa because of that country's racial segregation policies
• Caroline Kennedy scratched an itchy nose with her father's hand on the way to visit Mrs. Kennedy in the Massachusetts hospital where the first lady was recovering
• Escorted by her husband, Jackie Kennedy left the hospital a week after the premature birth of Patrick Bouvier on August 7
• Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev raised his glass to the signing of the limited Test Ban Treaty between the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain in Moscow on August 5
• Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb was, historically, the most important movie of the year
• The first family photograph after Mrs. Kennedy returned from Otis Air Force Base Hospital
• The president and his daughter aboard a yacht off Cape Cod
• False Start painted by Jasper Johns
• Another era ended on August 31 with the death of French painter Georges Braque in Paris
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, based on Ken Kesey's novel of the same title, opened to poor reviews
• If this bathing suit from the pages of Vogue was ever intended to actually enter the water, it was unlikely that the event would have been observed at the public beach or local swimming pool - August 5, 1963, the first anniversary of actress Marilyn Monroe's death, was marked by a bouquet of red roses from Joe DiMaggio
• Pick-up trucks were strictly utility vehicles bought to do a job
• Stevie Wonder was only 12 in 1963 and the term "little" always preceded his name
• Playwright Clifford Odets died of cancer at the age of 57 on August 14
• The winsome Susannah York, High Griffith and a young talented Albert Finney in a scene from Tom Jones
• The Ed Sullivan Show (originally titled Toast of the Town) was a Sunday-night habit in millions of homes
• In Linsdale, England, on August 16, these men were photographed leaving court after being charged with complicity in what came to be called the Great Mail Train Robbery
• Solzhenitsyn's novel was the first piece of Soviet literature by an outright dissident to achieve best-selling status in the West --
• James Meredith, the first black to graduate from the University of Mississippi, accepted his diploma from the university's chancellor on August 18
• Senator Barry Goldwater attended the unveiling of the new Lockheed C141 Starlifter in Marietta, Georgia, on August 22
• The Thunderbird, while not the classic design of the late fifties, was still a symbol of America's muscular road culture: powerful, enormously wasteful of gasoline, overweight, and overpowered-but still a machine of no small wonder
• More than 200,000 people marched for civil rights in the largest demonstration ever held in Washington, D.C.
• Chatting together inside the Lincoln Memorial as they waited to speak to the large crowd were Burt Lancaster, Harry Belafonte, and Charlton Heston
• Martin Luther King told the throng gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial of his dreams for all America's people
• John Lewis, chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, spoke at the Lincoln Memorial
• The president conferred with the March leaders after the rally had ended --
• SEPTEMBER
• In colorful mob language, Joseph Valachi, a convicted Mafia killer, gave Senate investigators lurid details about the workings of the Vito Genovese branch of the Cosa Nostra
• Peter Paul and Mary IN THE WIND This album, released in early fall, would reach the number two position on the charts, right behind The Singing Nun
• Sylvia Plath was only a cult figure and not yet a legend when The Bell Jar appeared
• James Farmer, national director of the Congress of Racial Equity, after desegregation demonstrations in Plaquemine, Louisiana
• Does she...or doesn't she? Another great (i.e. commercially successful) ad line, widely misinterpreted-to the amazement of the ad agency
• If you were brought up on soup for lunch-most likely Campbell's-it didn't matter whether you became a 'yippie' or a 'yuppie,' the taste, smell and sense of security stayed with you forever
• The Kennedy and Fitzgerald clans gathered at the Hyannis compound in early September to celebrate the seventy-fifth birthday of patriarch Joseph P. Kennedy
• At 10 A.M. on September 15, Sunday school classes were just ending at the 16th Street Baptist Church when a bomb exploded with the force of 16 sticks of dynamite
• The casket carrying one of the four girls was taken for burial on September 18
• Relatives of one of the girls killed in the Birmingham church bombing
• Having no faith in Alabama's ability to squelch escalating racial violence in Birmingham, the Reverend Martin Luther King said that the U.S. Army ought to "take over this city and run it."
• On September 17 the president and Vice-President Johnson met in the Oval Office to discuss Johnson's five-nation goodwill tour of Europe
• In 1963 Richard Chamberlain was was of the early television personalities (as opposed to trained actors like Raymond Massey)
• President Kennedy (followed by UN Secretary General U Thant) leaving the UN after his speech calling for joint US-Soviet space operations to eliminate the immense expenditure of duplicate projects
• At the annual pageant Donna Axum of Arkansas was crowned Miss America in 1964. The 1963 reigning Miss was Jacquelyn Jeanne Mayer of Ohio
• The arrival in Vietnam of a contingent of American military advisers
• Maxwell Taylor, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, met with President Kennedy on September 23, before leaving on a fact-finding tour of South Vietnam
• Two U.S. soldiers guarded a downed H-21 army helicopter while others inflated a life raft in a flooded rice paddy on the Ben Cat area northwest of Saigon, Vietnam
• It is unlikely that PT 109 would have ever seen the silver screen had it not been based on the true-life adventures of President-to-be, John Kennedy, while he was in the Navy during World War II
• Many private universities did not become co-educational until the early 1970s and those that were had strict rules about fraternizing with the opposite sex
• Fall fashion forecasters predicted that Pablo Picasso's art would find favor with college girls, that is, if it could become worn
• As written by Eugene Burdick and William J. Lederer, The Ugly American was a book that despite (or perhaps because of) its melodramatic and simplistic message was the kind of best seller people thought better of themselves for having read. Even Marlon Brando could not save the movie, which had the distinction in 1962-1963 of making anti-communism boring
• Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour an Introduction J.D. Salinger's novel was a best seller, as were The Shoes of the Fisherman by Morris West, Caravans by James Michener, Elizabeth Appleton by John O'Hara, Godmother and the Priests by Taylor Caldwell, The Glass Blowers by Daphne du Maurier, and The Sand Pebbles by Richard McKenna
• The president in a pensive mood
• The president and an unidentified partner enjoy a round of golf in spite of the ever constant presence of the Secret Service --
• OCTOBER
• On October 6, outfielder Ron Fairly leaped into the air after the Dodgers won the World Series by beating the New York Yankees in four straight games
• A crowd of Oregonians greeted Governor Nelson Rockefeller on October 11 as he arrived to speak at a Western Republican conference, also attended by Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater
• The Studebaker Avanti was designed by Jim Lowry
• Edith Piaf, French cabaret and music hall idol, who gained international fame with her songs of tragic love, died in October at the age of 47
• Jim Brown of the Cleveland Browns on a Fall Sunday
• The second Vatican Ecumenical Council convened by Pope John XXIII in 1962, continued to meet in the fall of 1963
• In October, President Kennedy signed a document formally ratifying a nuclear test ban treaty with Britain and the Soviet Union
• Ernest Borgnine, Joe Flynn, and Tim Conway starred in McHale's Navy, one of the more potent items in the military-comedy vogue of the early to mid-sixties
• First lady Jacqueline Kennedy got a big welcome from her husband and children when she flew home on October 17 from a Mediterranean vacation aboard the yacht of Aritstole Onassis
• "You understand, it isn't that I have any objection to Kennedy's as such." [drawing caption]
• Space was high on everyone's agenda
• There were no easy answers. Gen. Maxwell Taylor stood by as Defense Secretary Robert McNamara pointed to a map of South Vietnam
• A U.S. military adviser gave chocolate to a little girl in a village in South Vietnam's Mekong Delta
• A U.S. military adviser instructs a South Vietnamese soldier
• An American soldier keeps armed watch from an airborne helicopter carrying South Vietnamese troops into battle 300 miles south of Saigon
• Vietcong guerrillas, carrying camouflaged weapons, were shown on the advance in this photo
• A U.S. military adviser and a South Vietnamese officer inspected a rifle captured from Vietcong troops in Quan Lung area fighting
• Sweaters built for two were a short-lived fad
• The multi-talented French writer, artist, and film-maker Jean Cocteau-shown here in 1958 displaying a piece from a pottery collection he designed-died in October at the age of 74
• The most famous family in America was also the most photogenic
• The fashion of attaching wallet photographs to a head scarf came and went in October
• In Dallas on October 27, UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson was rudely heckled while giving a speech and then spat upon and hit with a sign as he left the auditorium
• Robert Redford and Elizabeth Ashley starred in Neil Simon's comedy Barefoot in the Park
• These disparate magazines-mass circulation ones like Look and The Saturday Evening Post or radical and literary ones like Ramparts and Evergreen Review all shared the same fate: they went out of business --
• At the main Woolworth's in downtown Atlanta on October 20, an estimated one-hundred blacks sat at counters reserved for white diners, saying they would not move until served
• Martin Luther King threatened the city of Birmingham, Alabama, with the largest demonstration in history if it did not accede to desegregation plans
• Only about 10 percent of households with television had it in color
• The funny things that greed does to people was the running gag that propelled three hours of frantic chases and violent slapstick of It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World
• Mercury built an advertising campaign-not to mention an automobile-around the dubious notion that there was something irresistible about a power-operated rear window that slanted in rather than out
• The president would take time out from his duties to play with his son
• Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem was an important book, even if few seemed to know exactly what it was supposed to mean --Billboard HOT 100
• Robert Rauschenberg's painting entitled Factum II
• Colleen Dewhurst in The Ballad of the Sad Café, the Edward Albee play based on Carson McCullers' short novel, opened on October 30 at the Martin Beck Theater
• Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito, the only communist head of state invited to the White House during the Kennedy administration --
• NOVEMBER
• South Vietnam's president, Ngo Dinh Diem, holding a cane and surrounded by advisers, is shown in this photo, taken the previous August
• The bodies of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu, in disguise as priests, lay in an armored personnel carrier shortly after they were slain in the November 2 coup
• Rebel soldiers stood near an armored vehicle, wrecked in the November 2 attack on the presidential palace in Saigon which ousted the Diem regime
• Madame Ngo Dinh Nhu was in the U.S. to promote backing for her brother-in-law, South Vietnam's Ngo Dinh Diem, when he was overthrown in a military coup
• The TV series, Route 66 starred Glenn Corbett (left) and Martin Milner
• Charade opened at the close of the year
• Tegrin did for psoriasis what Listerine did for "halitosis."
• Femme au Chapeau by Roy Lichtenstein
• On a weekend retreat in Virginia, JFK encouraged the White House photographer to take this picture saying, "Keep shooting. You're about to see a president eaten by a horse."
• As the first family watched from the balcony on November 13, pipers, drummers, and dancers of Britain's Black Watch Royal Highland Regiment performed on the South Lawn
• John-John displayed Kennedy vigor during a Veterans Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery
• Caroline Kennedy. Her sixth birthday would be November 27
• President Kennedy launched the Christmas Seal campaign by accepting the first seals from advice columnist Ann Landers, honorary chairman of the campaign
• The key selling point for Smirnoff vodka was that it "leaves you breathless," from which you might infer that you could have two martinis at lunch and not return to the office stinking of gin
• Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara (left) and General Maxwell D. Taylor, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, arrived in Honolulu on November 20 for a meeting with Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge to discuss U.S. policy in Vietnam following Diem's death
• The Kennedy administration's program to provide economic aid to Latin America was known as the Alliance for Progress
• In November, New York City Health Commissioner George James displayed dental-decay photographs to support his case for fluoridating the city's water supply
• This Vogue model was meant to show off the aerodynamic possibilities of the costume rather than the car
• The Beatles were Britain's most popular band
• On November 19, marking the 100th anniversary of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, former president Dwight Eisenhower turned to Pennsylvania Governor William Scranton before rededicating the Gettysburg Cemetery
• At Cape Canaveral, Werner von Braun explained the Saturn IV system to the president
• President and Mrs. Kennedy hosted a White House reception for the Supreme Court
• America's largest selling 2nd car - In 1963, Honda meant motor scooters-not cars, not motorcycles but motor scooters
• Hours before he left for Texas, the president met with the press. The selection of the site for the meeting, under a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, would turn out to be sadly prophetic
• President and Mrs. Kennedy with Texas Governor John Connally and his wife Nellie, immediately after the presidential party arrived in San Antonio to begin the ill-fated three day tour of the state
• Jacqueline Kennedy received an enthusiastic reception in Houston from the League of Latin American Citizens because the First Lady spoke to them in Spanish
• Governor John Connally, Vice-President Lyndon Johnson and President Kennedy attended a prayer breakfast at the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce the morning of November 22nd
• Kennedy's visit to Texas was planned for political purposes
• The Confederate flags waved by these Kennedy fans underscored the conservatism in the Texas Democratic Party that Kennedy had to confront
• Kennedy's political opponents in Texas weren't going to make his trip easy, as this November 22 Dallas Morning Herald advertisement shows
• On the morning of November 22, the greeting at Dallas' Love Field included a bouquet of roses for the First Lady
• The president's motorcade, which began at Love Field at 11:50 A.M., was scheduled to follow an eleven mile route through downtown Dallas
• Kennedy must have been impressed by the crowds that lined Dallas streets as his limousine traveled en route to the Trade Mart where the president was scheduled to speak
• Moments before --
• Everything happened in six seconds, the space of eight heartbeats: The president was shot in the neck and fell forward
• Secret Service Agent Clint Hill leaped into the back of the presidential limousine, assisted by Mrs. Kennedy
• President Kennedy was rushed to Parkland Hospital
• Spectators hugged the ground and newsreel cameramen filmed as the president was rushed to Parkland Hospital at 70 mph
• They just wanted to see the president, but suddenly found themselves protecting their children from bullets that might still be coming
• A crowd, including reporters, converged on the grassy knoll believing it to be the direction from which the shots that struck the president were fired
• The roses given to Mrs. Kennedy when she arrived in Dallas were left on the seat of the limousine in which President Kennedy was shot
• Kennedy on the way to Parkland Hospital
• The scene of confusion at Parkland Hospital
• Outside the hospital, an unidentified woman cried as she learned of the president's death
• John F. Kennedy's burial transit certificate
• One of Lyndon Johnson's first acts as president was to console Mrs. Kennedy
• The casket that contained the body of the late John F. Kennedy was moved to a Navy ambulance from Air Force One after arriving at Andrews Air Force Base
• Mrs. John F. Kennedy-her stockings still blood stained-entered the ambulance carrying the body of her slain husband
• After landing at Andrews Air Force Base in Washington, D.C. the new president, Lyndon Baines Johnson, spoke to reporters: "This is a sad time for all people. We have suffered a loss that cannot be weighed. For me it is a deep personal tragedy. I know the world shares the sorry that Mrs. Kennedy and her family bear. I will do my best. That is all I can do. I ask for your help-and God's." He was accompanied by Mrs. Kennedy
• A military honor guard marched in front of the ambulance that carried the casket of John F. Kennedy as it was returned to the White House at 4:30 A.M.
• Attorney General Robert Kennedy being comforted by two of his children at their home in McLean, Virginia, after being told of the assassination
• Rose Kennedy, the late president's mother, attended a memorial mass for her son at St. Francis Xavier Church in Hyannis, Massachusetts, the day after the assassination
• The spot on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository from which Lee Harvey Oswald shot the president
• Lee Harvey Oswald, 24, was captured by the Dallas police at a movie theater at 1 p.m. the day of the assassination
• Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit, 39, was shot three times and killed by Lee Harvey Oswald
• The affidavit charging Oswald with the murder of John F. Kennedy
• The Italian-made 6.5 mm Carcano carbine with which Oswald killed Kennedy
• Lee Harvey Oswald was born in 1939
• Oswald's wife, Marina (holding baby), and mother, Marguerite Oswald, were interrogated by reporters at a Dallas police station on November 22, after being questioned by the police --
• A Harvard student cried on the steps of Memorial Church in Harvard Yard during services for the late president, who graduated from Harvard in 1940
• Editorial cartoonist Herblock expressed the nation's sadness and anger
• In New York City and across the country, stores closed in remembrance of JFK
• In Tokyo, the Japanese prayed for Kennedy
• A London Bobby read about Kennedy's death in the London Daily Sketch on November 22
• Russians read about Kennedy's assassination
• In Africa, members of the Kenya African National Union displayed signs of sympathy outside the American Consulate General
• Mourners braved the rain outside the White House to pay tribute to President Kennedy
• Paying their final respects at the White House were, among many others-former presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, and Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin
• John Fitzgerald Kennedy's body rested in the East Room of the White House as the nation mourned his loss
• The late president's famous rocking chair being moved from the White House
• Jacqueline Kennedy and her children waited at the White House for the start of the procession to the Capitol
• To the Capitol
• The Kennedy Family followed the casket into the Capitol, where the president lay in state
• Senator Mike Mansfield, Chief Justice Earl Warren and House Speaker John McCormack gave eulogies at the Capitol Rotunda, while the late president's family listened in sorrow
• Jacqueline Kennedy held the hands of her children Caroline and John Junior, after ceremonies in the Capitol
• Standing four abreast in a line that stretched three miles, grieving citizens waited outside the Capitol to pay last respects to President Kennedy
• Dallas, November 24, 11:20 A.M.: The moment before Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald in the stomach at the Dallas city jail
• Jack Ruby, Oswald's killer, was arraigned on murder charges
• The caisson left the Capitol
• A military honor guard carried Kennedy's casket down the Capitol steps to begin the final procession on November 25
• His hooves beating a nervous tap on the pavement, the riderless horse danced skittishly behind the casket along the procession route
• The caisson bearing the President's body traveled along Pennsylvania Avenue past the White House --
• Jacqueline Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Edward Kennedy left the White House to walk behind the caisson bearing the coffin of the president
• Foreign dignitaries left the White House as the funeral procession continued to St. Matthew's Cathedral
• The funeral procession along Connecticut Avenue en route to the church
• The casket leaving St. Matthew's
• John F. Kennedy, Jr. saluted his father
• A sailor wept as the caisson bearing Kennedy's body passed him en route to Arlington Cemetery
• The horse-drawn caisson entered the last part of its journey as it crossed Arlington Memorial Bridge
• Military pallbearers lifted the late president's coffin from the caisson at the graveside
• Majestic in her sorrow, Jacqueline Kennedy listened to the eulogies for her husband at Arlington Cemetery
• Turning from the graveside, Jacqueline Kennedy cradled the flag that draped her late husband's coffin
• Surrounded by branches of evergreen decorated with a rosary, the Eternal Flame, lit by Jacqueline Kennedy at the end of the funeral ceremony, burned in memory of the president
• The family portrait taken in Hyannis the summer of 1962 combines the ideal with the real. It is the way they were, the way we best like to remember them
• Kennedy's obvious affection and concern for his own children confirmed for people that he shared with them a common hope for the future
• The rapt crowd that listened to the nominee's acceptance speech at the 1960 Democratic Convention in Los Angeles was an early witness to the merging of words and images that would find, in three brief years, an almost magical welcome from America and the world
• The president's physical appearance was for many the best evidence that the torch had indeed passed to a new generation
• INDEX
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• INDEX OF INTERVIEWEES
• PHOTO CREDITS.

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ISBN

0881844330 :

LCCN

^^^88018885^

OCLC

18070368

RCP

H - S

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