The thousand words

The pictures you see each Friday in the "Around the Dial" feature capture people in the act of watching, and reacting to, television. The pictures usually illustrate enjoyment, amusement, occasionally rapt concentration. I was in the process of coming up with the picture I used last Friday when I came across a photo that was so striking, not just in its composition but in its ability to tell multiple stories at once, that I thought it deserved a mention of its own.


I don't think I need to identify the occasion, do I? The photograph, taken by Philadelphia Bulletin photographer Jack Rosen, is entitled "Announcement of Death of John F. Kennedy, Sears Roebuck Store, Levittown PA," Look at the amount of detail in this single picture. We know it's in a department store, based on the variety of merchandise: organs in front of a bank of television sets. On those television sets: the picture on the left is of Walter Cronkite at CBS, having just read the flash that President Kennedy is dead. In the middle, ABC is showing a slide with Kennedy's picture and the caption "1917-1963". And on the right, NBC's Frank McGee is talking via telephone with Robert MacNeil in Dallas, who has just relayed the news from press secretary Malcolm Kilduff. The other sets are all tuned to Cronkite; perhaps these three, the easiest to reach, reflect people seeking the most up-to-date information, or maybe it was someone hoping desperately to hear that it was all just a bad dream.

It's an extraordinary moment, don't you think? For all the times we've been able to watch this footage, over and over again, have we ever seen it synchronized like this, capturing the fateful announcement as it is being made?

As extraordinary as that, though, is the reaction of the woman sitting on the organ bench. I don't know how old she is, if she's a young mother, if it's just her hair that is fashionably short, giving her a youthful appearance. I prefer to think of her as a young woman, out running errands on a Friday afternoon when her attention is captured by the bulletins. She's turned away from the TV, a instinctive, convulsive gesture, burying her face in her left hand while her right arm is held tightly against her purse. Surely there must be others standing around, watching the news, and yet the picture frames her perfectly in that second, absolutely and utterly alone and grief-stricken, reeling from a hammer blow. The photo captures that moment and freezes it forever.

There are so many pictures of the remarkable things that happened that weekend, and it would have been difficult to deny the Pulitzer to Bob Jackson for his picture capturing Ruby shooting Oswald. For my money, though, the picture of this lone woman encapsulates everything: the event, the scope, the nation's reaction. Will there ever be such a universal feeling again?

A thousand words? More like a million, or 200 million, if you ask me. TV