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Frank StantonFrank Stanton
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Session:         Page of 755

Stanton:

His weight loss was just emphasized. He was wearing a very light suit. He looked like he had a -- on camera, he looked like he had a two-day growth of beard. He did not look well. After that short interval -- and I've made it sound like it was longer than it was -- I then went out to be prepared to meet the Kennedy entourage.

Kennedy's people -- the Secret Service wanted to bring him in the same door that Nixon had used. So we brought him in the same way. And he jumped out of the car: he was tan, he was wearing a blue serge suit, a blue shirt. He was just full of beans and looked wonderful. He came in to the studio -- took him in to show him where the things were and so forth.

At that point, Nixon when he saw him jumped up out of his chair to shake hands with him, and the mike was right above his head, and it sounded like somebody had taken a mallet and hit a pumpkin. It was a terrible thing to have had happen on the top of the knee, then to get hit on the top of the head. Jack Kennedy was in fine fettle, said hello to everybody, went down, spoke to everybody on the floor. He really did a job on the staff and everybody in the studio.

I went back in the control room and Bobby went back in the control room to see how it looked too. Jack was sitting with his legs crossed, and he was wearing socks that just came to his ankle, and -- it was a navy suit and black hose -- the bare leg just was awful. And somebody in the control room -- well, we all almost said it at the same time: you know, somebody ought to tell the senator to change his socks. And Bobby got somebody immediately to go take their socks off and give them to him so that he was covered.





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