the lines he loved to hear

 

Theodore White

Natalie Portman as Jacqueline Kennedy; Billy Crudup as Theodore White, in the 2016 film, Jackie

In the 1991 film JFK, in an early scene somebody comes in and says, "The president's been shot in Dallas" and New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison (played by Kevin Costner) and the other people in his office go down to a bar-and-grill where "they've got a television set" to see what's going on.

Most of the patrons watch the screen and take in the information in stunned silence, but over by the bar there are a few surly characters growling that it's really great that Kennedy got shot, they hate him, etc.

        The Head Growler is Ed Asner (Mr. Grant in The Mary Tyler Moore Show) - he is portraying Guy Banister, a real person who had established his own private detective agency at 531 Lafayette Street in New Orleans.

After the news comes through and the crowd learns that Last Rites have been given -- President Kennedy has died -- Banister sneers drunkenly and says, "Good!  Ha!  Camelot in smithereens!"

That's an error because the "Camelot" image had not been applied to the Kennedy presidency yet.  That idea was created one week after the assassination, when Jacqueline Kennedy met with journalist Theodore White at Hyannis Port and gave an interview.

        She brought the Camelot idea, and boy, did it stick! - for almost 60 years now.

"At night," she told White, "before we'd go to sleep, Jack liked to play some records; and the song he loved most came at the very end of this record.  The lines he loved to hear were:

Don't let it be forgot

That once there was a spot

For one brief shining moment

That was known as Camelot."

____________________________

So on the day of the murder, November 22, 1963, the Camelot idea was not out there yet, it would not have been available to the likes of Mr. Guy Banister, for him to make "smithereens" out of it.

        But the people writing the screenplay for JFK may not have known that, or they may have known, but thought it was poetic license to use it the way they did, to express the attitudes of a character in the movie and also "ring a bell" with viewers who are pretty well familiar with the 'Camelot' nickname for the Kennedy years.

        That's more important, maybe, for this type of movie, than to be accurate about when the "Camelot myth" was created.

In fact, ironically, 53 years after the assassination and 25 years after Oliver Stone's JFK came out -- a whole movie was made, directed by Pablo Larrain, telling the story just of that Jackie Kennedy -Teddy White interview:  the 2016 film Jackie.

        Or -- the movie isn't only about the interview -- but it uses the interview as a  framework within which to express the things that happened, and how Mrs. Kennedy felt about them, and handled them.

It's very good -- real intense.

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