(Jack) Ruby on Tuesday

My colleague Danny Fingerothhas had a full career that includes a long stint as  editor of the Spider-Mancomics line for Marvel Comics. He’s also a writer, having produced several volumeson Stan Lee and his Marvel-ous Universe. But Danny’s most recent publicationleaves the comic book world behind, as he takes on a long-time fascination withJack Ruby, the man who shot Lee Harvey Oswald on national television, therebyupending the American justice system and prompting decades of conspiracytheories to flourish. 

 Danny seems to knoweverything there is to know about Ruby, his family, and his sad little life.You can’t fault him for a lack of details, about (for instance) Ruby’s patheticforays into show biz as the owner of a Dallas nightspot. (Danny calls him, witha nod to Arthur Miller, “the Willy Loman of strip-club operators.”)  Frankly, all those tidbits about unruly dogsand patrons thrown down staircases can get a bit much. The very strongest partsof his book are its preface and its conclusion. The preface comments sagelyregarding the impact of the JFK assassination and its aftermath on the era’syoung children, like Danny himself. For little boys like him, what washappening on the living-room TV on that Dallas weekend was not so differentfrom what they were used to seeing on the era's popular crime shows, like The Untouchables.

 Danny speaks of television,but I was personally struck by the role played by motion pictures in Ruby’sstory. Certainly, he himself was starstruck, and even had showbiz aspirationsvia a nightclub act he promoted, featuring Little Daddy, a song-and-dance kid.Regarding Ruby’s tangled motives to go after Oswald, who was then in policecustody, Danny wonders, “Was he starring in some movie in his head that only hecould see?”

  Then too, movies continue to be part of thepublic’s memories of what happened on a Dallas weekend in November 1963. LeeHarvey Oswald, President John F. Kennedy’s assassin (or was he?) was arrestedby Dallas police while seated in the Texas Theatre, watching a flick called Waris Hell. Then there’s the infamous Zapruder home-movie footage of theassassination, which has long been studied for the possibility that it explodesthe lone-gunman conclusion of the Warren Commission. And of course we can’tforget all the commercial movies inspired by aspects of the Kennedyassassination, particularly Oliver Stone’s conspiracy-focused JFK (1991).Ruby is portrayed in that film, and Danny’s book ends with a listing of otherplaces that Ruby and his associates have ended up in American pop culture(including a Stephen King bestseller). I had no idea that Danny Aiello starredin a 1992 film, simply called Ruby, which totally falsifies history byturning Oswald’s bungling killer into a slick criminal mastermind. As recentlyas the summer of 2020, the second season of Netflix’s The Umbrella Academyfound itself set in Dallas, circa November 1963, with Ruby (and his beloveddachshunds) prominently—and accurately—pictured.

Even Ruby’s Dallas rabbi,Hillel Silverman, got the showbiz treatment. Silverman, who spent many hourscounseling Ruby in his jail cell before decamping for Los Angeles, playedhimself in a 1978 made-for-TV movie, Ruby and Oswald, directed by StanLee’s cousin, veteran filmmaker Mel Stuart.  (Danny thinks the world shouldknow that Rabbi Silverman—having gone Hollywood all the way—produced an actor-son,Jonathan, who starred in Weekend at Bernie's.)

 And what is Danny’sconclusion about the importance of this odd and troubled man? “He certainlyimpacted history, helped change the way we view the very notions of justice andeven our concept of agreed-upon truth. Whether he was a lone nut or part of a conspiracy,the repercussions of his actions will be with us forever.” 

                                                    Danny Fingeroth and his book