Background
Nix was born in Texas, the son of Myrtle (née Mabra) and James Allan Nix.
Nix was born in Texas, the son of Myrtle (née Mabra) and James Allan Nix.
His filming of the event, capturing only the last few seconds of the drama, is considered nearly as important as the Abraham Zapruder film. He was reported to have only a fourth grade education and later worked as an air conditioning engineer working for the General Services Administration in Dallas. On November 22, 1963, Nix walked from his office in the Terminal Annex building located on the south side of Dealey Plaza to the northwest corner of the intersection of Main Street and Houston Street with a Keystone Auto-Zoom Model K-810 8 mm movie camera.
Nix filmed the presidential limousine and motorcade as it entered the Plaza, then quickly moved 20 to 60 feet west of Houston Street to the south curb of Main Street where he captured the last part of the assassination and the grassy knoll in the background.
Shortly after the motorcade had left Dealey Plaza, he filmed people running from Main Street to Elm Street. Orville Nix"s film is darker than the others, because he used Type A indoor film, and did not have the proper filter to correct this.
The Nix film was obtained as a result of a notice that the Federal Bureau of Investigation gave to film processing plants in the Dallas area, that the Federal Bureau of Investigation would be interested in obtaining or knowing about any film they processed relating to the assassination. When Nix heard about this from his processor, he delivered the film to the Federal Bureau of Investigation office in Dallas on December 1, 1963.
lieutenant was returned to him three days later.
United Press International purchased the copyright for $5,000 and took possession of the original film from Nix on December 6, 1963. Reese Schonfeld, a United Press International executive and later the founding president of Cable News Network, stewarded the film for United Press International. United Press International distributed frame enlargements to its news subscribers the following day. The original was examined by the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978.
When United Press International returned the copyright and all its copies to the Nix family in 1992, the original film was missing.
In 2002, the Nix family assigned the copyright of the film to the Dallas County Historical Foundation, which operates the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza. Nix was interviewed in 1966 by investigator Mark Lane for his documentary Rush to Judgment.
In a filmed interview undertaken by Lane, he also stated that the film he received back was not identical to the one that he shot. He told Lane that at the time of the assassination, he believed that the shots came from behind the fence on the grassy knoll, but was later told that conclusive proof existed that shots only came from the Texas School Book Depository and that he was convinced by this.
He was also interviewed by Columbia Broadcasting System News in 1967 for a television documentary on the Kennedy assassination.
In 2015, Nix"s granddaughter Gayle Nix Jackson was said to be suing the United States government for the return of the film. She was also seeking $10m in compensation. Ms Nix Jackson said that "it was incomprehensible authorities would lose an important piece of historical evidence.
I can understand little clerical issues.
I don"t understand the loss of evidence like this."
On January 17, 1972, Nix died in Dallas at the age of 60. He is buried in Edgewood Cemetery in Lancaster, Texas.