Photo credit: Kris Tripplaar
On the anniversary of President Kennedy’s 107th birthday, MPA Chairman and CEO Charles Rivkin and producer George Stevens Jr., hosted a special screening of “JOHN F. KENNEDY: YEARS OF LIGHTNING, DAY OF DRUMS,” followed by an interview between Stevens and Chris Matthews.
“George is a visionary, not only behind this film which he produced and which was extraordinary, but everything from The Kennedy Center to The American Film Institute and so much more,” said Rivkin while introducing the film. “Everybody knows all about George, but allow me to offer a special note of gratitude to Chris Matthews who’s going to conduct an interview afterwards. Chris, of course, taught all of us about hardball, but he got his start the way many of his generation did by answering JFK’s call to service and by joining The Peace Corps.”
Charles Rivkin
“I was sitting upstairs in my office on the eighth floor in this building,” Rivkin added. “There’s a book of personal letters that my father William Rivkin, who was John Kennedy’s US Ambassador to Luxembourg at the time, letters that he wrote home to his family and they’ve been bound into a volume. I never knew my father because he died while serving as Ambassador several years later. But I got to know him through his memoirs and there’s a lot of fascinating nuggets in this book, but one of them recently caught my eye that wanted to share with you. Back in 1964, Bill Rivkin wrote the following: ‘We screened Years of lightning, Day of Drums, and I’m still shaking. This JFK film can only be characterized as magnificent and it was produced by an old friend of mine, George Stevens Jr,’ My father went on to say, in 64, ‘I’m sure we had tears in our eyes for 50 of the 90 minutes that this Greek tragedy unfolded. Never in my lifetime will there be another such man elevating us in spirit and embodying both the idealism and the pragmatism of America’ Now, I’d like to claim that I remember that screening but of course I was two years old, so I’m going to take my father’s word for it. But I was there in the embassy during the screening and I know that this an impactful film. George and I were talking about it earlier. It wasn’t just sent to the Embassy in Luxembourg, it was sent to almost every embassy in the world at the time.”
George Stevens, Jr.
Hubert Humphrey and George Stevens, Jr. were together at a luncheon in Texas when they received the news of President Kennedy’s assassination. The luncheon was in Houston where they were attending a fundraising event for the Democratic Party and it was during this event that they received the tragic news.
“Senator Humphrey – I remember him saying, ‘The President’s really looking forward to running against Barry Goldwater.’ There was lunch for a very small group and I saw the Ambassador get up and go out of the room, didn’t make much of it. And I saw Humphrey go out of the room and Humphrey came back in the room and he stood across from us and he said, ‘The President has been shot in Dallas.’ And he said ‘He’s a young man, I think we have every reason to believe that he’ll be okay.’ And a little time passed and we kind of sat silently at the table. And then Humphrey came back in, looked at us, and he blurted out ‘He’s gone.’ And just burst into tears.”
George Stevens, Jr. and Chris Matthews
George Stevens, Jr. served as the Deputy Director of the United States Information Agency (USIA) during the early 1960s. The USIA was responsible for public diplomacy efforts abroad, promoting American culture, values and policies to international audiences during the Cold War era. Stevens, Jr. played a role in shaping the agency’s initiatives and messaging during his tenure as Deputy Director.
“I remember walking back to the USIA at 1776 Pennsylvania Avenue on that day and trying to figure out everything and what my role was at this time. I had this idea for making the USA’s first feature length film. We had cameramen in many countries abroad with color 35 millimeter film to shoot reactions and to film the four days of the funeral. And that’s sort of the preface to this film.” Thus the film.
