Tears well in his eyes. He removes his glasses. And Walter Cronkite speaks: “From Dallas, Texas, the flash apparently official. President Kennedy died at 1 p.m. Central Standard time, two o’clock Eastern Standard time, some 38 minutes ago.”
That was, of course, the afternoon of Nov. 22, 1963, a very long time ago but nevertheless a day as fresh as yesterday in so many minds, filled as they are by images of Cronkite on TV, and, later, the funeral procession on TV, John Kennedy Jr. in short pants saluting his father’s coffin on TV, Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald on TV.
So it makes some sort of poignant sense that the Museum of Broadcast Communications will be the setting for a bold and provocative play about the assassination of our 35th president.
It is titled “Assassination Theater” and it is the creation of Hillel Levin, who says, with the conviction that only a confident man can have, “I don’t expect people to know a lot when they walk in, but by the end of 90 minutes I hope that they know everything they want to know.”
JFK conspiracy theories have been floating around even before JFK was buried. There have been, by various estimates, some 40,000 books written about JFK and published since his death, not all about the murder.
The appetite for things JFK seems insatiable and transcends generations. The reasons are complex. Surely it has something to do with the fact that, for all of their human failings and frailties, Jack and Jackie Kennedy were otherworldly in their beauty and style, and they remain so in their continuing capacity to captivate and to haunt. (See also: James Dean, Marilyn Monroe.)
There are also all those so-called unanswered questions that surround his death, the assassination and its aftermath, coming at us with the visceral immediacy of television and remaining locked somehow in our collective memory, our national DNA. It seems to many that the fact that Oswald killed Kennedy is indisputable. But Ruby’s bullet unintentionally started the series of questions — among them, was Oswald a lone gunman or, as he mysteriously claimed after his capture, “a patsy”? — that continue to fuel the JFK conspiracy industry.
One of the most visible elements of that was Oliver Stone’s 1991 film “JFK.” It starred Kevin Costner as Jim Garrison, the New Orleans District Attorney who, believing there was more to the Kennedy assassination than the official story, waged a colorful if unsuccessful battle for the truth.
And there have been many pointing fingers, everywhere. Recently we’ve had such books as “The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ,” “CIA Rogues and the Killing of the Kennedys: How and Why U.S. Agents Conspired to Assassinate JFK and RFK” and “They Killed Our President: 63 Reasons to Believe There Was a Conspiracy to Assassinate JFK,” written by that eminent historian/wrestler/governor Jesse Ventura.
Levin is no crackpot, no conspiracy crazy. His life has been devoted to the hard facts of journalism.
Born and raised in Connecticut, he has been executive editor for Metropolitan Detroit magazine, editor of Chicago magazine and written for many other publications. His books include a couple in the early 1980s about maverick car designer/criminal John DeLorean; and “When Corruption Was King” (with Bob Cooley in 2004) and “In with the Devil” (with James Keene in 2010).
In 2007 he published a story in Playboy magazine, “Boosting the Big Tuna,” which detailed the true story of a crew of robbers who were murdered after the what-the-hell-were-you-guys-thinking? burglary of the home of Chicago mob boss Tony “Big Tuna” Accardo in 1978.
Hollywood called. The story became — in the tangled web that is Hollywood — a movie titled “Idol’s Eye,” which was to star Robert De Niro and Robert Pattinson and be shot here.
“But it’s now in limbo between battling producers,” says Levin.
There was another call to Levin, this one from Zechariah Shelton, one of the two FBI agents who had been charged with investigating those murders and searching Accardo’s house: “That was a good story,” he told Levin. “Now, I think you have to do the real story of the mob.”
“And what would that be?” asked Levin.
“How the mob murdered JFK,” said Shelton.
That and subsequent conversations with Shelton led to “How the Outfit Killed JFK,” Levin’s 2011 article in Playboy.
“I started thinking that this might make a book,” says Levin.
While he was thus contemplating, he attended the 16th Street Theater in Berwyn and watched his friend, the artist/actor/writer Tony Fitzpatrick, perform in what would eventually become a theatrical trilogy based largely on Fitzpatrick’s non-fiction work.
“That was the seed for me,” says Levin. “Seeing Tony’s show and talking with him and with Ann Filmer (16th Street’s artistic director, who artfully shaped Fitzpatrick’s work for the stage). That’s what really opened up the potential of theater as a means to tell this story.
“I love theater, how immersive it can be. And I think theater is a very good metaphor for what happened that day” Kennedy was killed.
And so he got to work. With the aid of a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign, “Assassination Theater” came to life as, in Levin words, “a theatrical investigation.” It had one, and only one, performance, last August as a benefit for the Historical Society of Oak Park and River Forest. It played to a packed house of some 300, which included then-potential, now-real investors. It was a staged reading, not a full-blown production, but Levin says “the reaction was great. That’s what encouraged me to go on.”
One of those in the audience that night was Bruce DuMont, founder and president of the Museum of Broadcast Communications, who had been intrigued hearing Levin interviewed a few days before on a local radio show.
DuMont loved the reading and proposed his museum as a future home for the play.
There is no formal theater space in the MBC building but its location, 360 N. State St., in the shadow of Marina City, is within easy walking distance of thousands of hotel rooms that are filled with thousands of people, many of them tourists. If they eagerly partake of such local diversions as the “Untouchable Tours,” would they not be drawn to this play? Is JFK no more compelling than AGC (Alphonse Gabriel Capone)? That is one reason why the show’s title has taken on an appendage: “Chicago’s Role in the Crime of the Century.”
It begins its ambitious 13-week run on Aug. 11 (www.assassinationtheater.com) in a second-floor MBC space that has been transformed into a theater setting with 180 seats and, for the multimedia experience, three video screens, four projectors and an enhanced sound system.
It is being directed by Kevin Christopher Fox with a cast four: Michael Joseph Mitchell plays Levin and Mark Ulrich plays Shelton; Ryan Kitley and Martin Yurek each play a variety of characters, some with very recognizable names: J. Edgar Hoover, Lyndon Johnson, Bobby Kennedy, Ruby — and some not so familiar.
Levin says that in his many years of research he has uncovered — and you will see — “incontrovertible proof” that the Chicago mob orchestrated the killing of JFK and also manipulated Ruby, about whom the play holds “new and shocking revelations.” All the information he has collected will be available online, to be consulted after you’ve seen the show.
Levin’s play will tell you who he believes shot JFK, and so it would be unfair to give away too much now. But do know that the person who killed Kennedy was not, as some conspiracy theorists have bizarrely argued through the decades, Jackie Kennedy or Joe DiMaggio.
But perhaps you already knew that.
“After Hours With Rick Kogan” airs 9-11 p.m. Sundays on WGN-AM 720.
Twitter @rickkogan
