Fifty-six years ago is a long time. I don't know what percentage of the population wasn't even born then, but my guess it is probably over 60%.
William McKinley was assassinated in Buffalo, NY in 1901. Add 56 years to that, and you've got 1957. There were the old guys who hung out at the family flower shop who were old enough to remember the McKinley assassination, as well as JFK's.
There was a 1951 movie on Turner the other day, 'The Tall Target,' starring Adolphe Menjou, Dick Powell, and a very young Ruby Dee. It is a story about a fictional NYC sergeant who has infiltrated a gang of plotting assassins who are looking to keep President-Elect Lincoln from taking the oath of office for his first term in 1861. The plan is to get to President Lincoln, coming to Washington on The Night Flyer Express, and aiming for his head as he makes a scheduled stop for a speech in Baltimore. The assassination conspiracy is true and was known as the Baltimore Plot. The police sergeant upsets their plans.
The movie gives a name to the police sergeant played by Dick Powell: John Kennedy. Remember, the movie is 1951. Alan Pinkerton, the founder of the Pinkerton Detective Agency has learned of the plot to assassinate the president and thwarts it by having Lincoln cancel a speech-making appearance in Baltimore, Maryland, a state that has already succeeded from the Union, and of course the state that produced John Wilkes Booth, who did assassinate Lincoln in 1865.
Only in the final scene when Lincoln looks out of the train window and laments "did ever any president come to his inauguration so like a thief in the night," did I remember that sometime, a long time ago I saw the movie before the other day on Turner.
When JFK was assassinated there were all kinds of crazy connections being juxtaposed with his assassination and Lincoln's. It was no different that immediately following 9/11 words of Edgar Cayce—The Sleeping Prophet— were being pumped through the Internet as proof that all this was predicted.
Well, the post-9/11 utterings proved to be hooey. I can only remember a few of the match-ups after Kennedy was shot: Did you realize that Lincoln was shot in Ford's theater, and Kennedy was shot in a Lincoln? [car] Get it? Ford's a car; so is a Lincoln.
Lincoln was inaugurated in 1861 and JFK was inaugurated in 1961—100 years later. Can't argue with the math.
But never as high school students do I remember anyone making a comparison to 'The Tall Target' and that a NYC police sergeant named John Kennedy was portrayed as saving the day and thwarting the assassination of President-Elect Lincoln.
It turns out there was a somewhat famous John Kennedy who became a NYC police superintendent in 1863 and who was in charge of quelling the NYC Draft Riots during the Civil War.
Screenwriters. The original prophets.
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