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  • Michelle Trachtenberg Talks Playing Marina Oswald

    Michelle Trachtenberg will play the wife of Lee Harvey Oswald, Marina Oswald, in the upcoming made-for-TV movie Killing Kennedy. She spoke recently with the L.A. Times about researching the part, as well as how it feels to portray the only main figure in the Kennedy assassination scenario who is still alive.

    Marina Oswald was a young Russian bride 50 years ago when Kennedy was assassinated. This meant Michelle had to speak almost entirely in Russian while filming. This didn’t come with the kind of difficulty some actresses would have faced since Trachtenberg grew up in a Russian speaking family in Brooklyn. She knew very little about Marina Oswald, however.

    “When something so monumental happens in American history and the killer becomes so villainized, you don’t realize that he may have had a home life, a wife or children. When I read the script I was floored at how dynamic a person Marina was. I had no idea she was Russian, so of course I related to that immediately. And the fact that she was still alive and she has daughters in their 50s was mind-blowing,” she said during her interview.

    Most anyone in their mid-fifties and older clearly remembers when President John F. Kennedy was killed. But for Michelle Trachtenberg, who is just 28, her only recollection of the tragedy came from history books. This meant some serious research was required in order to wholeheartedly fulfill the role.

    “I read this amazing book called “Marina and Lee.” It was the only book that Marina sat down for after that assassination. It’s out of print, but I was able to order it off of Amazon. It was really thick, like 600 pages,” she said. “I really was able to get an insight into her from that. In this day and age you can Google and YouTube, the last interview she did maybe 20 years ago for the 30th anniversary. She was still defending Lee.”

    Michelle opted not to contact Marina Oswald as part of her research. Instead she relied on the various forms of media to gain insight into what it was like to be Lee Harvey Oswald’s wife.

    Killing Kennedy is just one of several upcoming made-for-TV movies and documentaries that will commemorate the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy’s death. It premieres on Sunday night, November 10th on National Geographic. In addition to Michelle Trachtenberg, the movie also stars Rob Lowe and Ginnifer Goodwin. Hype about the movie is drawing lots of Twitter buzz.

    This role is no doubt one of Michelle Trachtenberg’s more difficult endeavors. It will no doubt serve to raise her from the stereotype of films like Harriet the Spy and TV shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer into a category with serious actors. Playing Marina Oswald is serious business. Tune in Sunday to see her portrayal.

    Photo via Twitter

  • Lee Harvey Oswald: Wedding Band Up For Sale

    Lee Harvey Oswald has remained one of the most fascinating and mysterious people in our history; as the man who fatally shot J.F.K. from a Texas book depository, he was widely hated, yet many are still curious about what made him the man he was before that fateful day.

    Oswald’s wife, Marina, has moved on from that day and built another life with a family, and now she’s putting up at least one significant piece of history for auction: Oswald’s wedding band. Oswald reportedly took it off before leaving the house the day Kennedy was assassinated, and it has sat forgotten in a file of a lawyer who was once under Marina’s employ. Experts believe the ring could fetch as much as $100,000.

    “It gives you such insight into the mind of Lee Harvey Oswald,” said Bobby Livingston of RR Auction.

    The ring is engraved with a sickle and hammer on the inside and will be among several items up for auction from that time period, including Kennedy’s rosary beads and a hat that belonged to Jack Ruby, the man who shot and killed Oswald just after the assassination. The auction is in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of the death of Kennedy.

    A television movie will also be aired in November for the anniversary, a film called “Killing Kennedy” which stars Rob Lowe and Michelle Trachtenberg, who plays Marina.

    “I am so excited for the challenge to portray Marina Oswald, and to do my first role speaking only in Russian,” Trachtenberg said. “I’m the only actor playing someone who is still alive, so I want to stay as true to her as possible. This is a story about JFK’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, and his wife Marina. And it is fascinating.”

    The film airs in November on the National Geographic Channel.

    Image: Wikimedia Commons

  • Oswald Neighboring Grave Mystery Solved

    Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who infamously shot and killed President John F. Kennedy in 1963, has had a mysterious neighbor buried next to him since 1997. The grave inscribed ‘NIck Beef’ has matched Oswald’s in simplicity since it was first put there. Visitors to the Fort Worth, Texas cemetery that is home to one of the most famous murderers of all time, have wondered for years who this Nick Beef was…and now we know: Nick Beef, a.k.a., Patric Abedin, is a happy, healthy, 56-year-old “non-performing performance artist” living in Manhattan. Seriously.

    Patric Abedin was an impressionable six-year-old sitting on a policeman’s shoulders, just steps away from President and Mrs. Kennedy as they visited Dallas the day before Kennedy was killed. Years later, often visiting Oswald’s grave with his mother, Patric’s mom told the young boy, “Never forget that you got to see Kennedy the night before he died.”

    Apparently Abedin took these words to heart; at age 18, after reading that the plot neighboring Oswald’s was still available, Patric bought the land for a mere $17.50 down, and a small sum of $160 to be paid monthly over the course of the next ten months. In 1997, while visiting Texas for his mother’s funeral, he decided to have a small stone labeled with his nickname placed next to Oswald’s. He says he has never had plans to actually be buried there.

    Abedin admits that one of the most pressing questions for people is often, “Why?” The man known as Nick Beef says he has often asked himself the exact same question. Why would anyone want to be remembered as the person so enamored by the infamous monster as to become his neighbor in death? Abedin has a fairly prosaic answer to that question, saying, “It meant something to me in life.” One can’t be sure what, exactly, Patric is referring to in this statement as “it.” Kennedy’s death? Oswald himself? Seeing Kennedy the night before he died? Unless the artist ever decides to elaborate further, those will be questions that he takes to his grave…no pun intended.

    Patric Abedin continues to live in New York, where he moved after leaving Texas, married and fathered two children, later divorcing. He sometimes works as a freelance writer using the name Nick Beef.

  • JFK Assassination: Secret Service Might Have Been Involved

    The JFK assassination is coming up on its 50th anniversary, and as the date approaches several movies and documentaries will be popping up on television. One of the most intriguing is “JFK: The Smoking Gun”, which will debut on ReelzChannel this fall. In it, retired police detective Colin McLaren says he’s gone through four years worth of evidence regarding the shooting and studied ballistics evidence with Bonar Menninger, author of “Mortal Error: The Shot that Killed JFK”. The two of them agree that Secret Service Agent George Hickey–who was riding in the car behind Kennedy’s limo–fired the second shot in retaliation to Oswald’s, but inexperience and the movement of the car made him misfire, striking Kennedy in the head.

    “What we’re saying is that we believe it was a tragic accident in the heat of that moment. We don’t suggest that he was in any way involved in a conspiracy,” McLaren told the Television Critics Association on Sunday. If what he says is true, then Kennedy might likely have survived Oswald’s shot.

    With the aid of modern forensic technology, McLaren and Menninger have delved deep into the events of that day and say they waited decades for several documents from the investigation to be released in the ’90s.

    “Our documentary is going to be the only one that has opened the case forensically and looked at the evidence from the beginning and examined everything that happened that day in Dealey Plaza,” director Michael Prupas said.

    Hickey passed away two years ago, and since Oswald was killed before he could stand trial, Mclaren and Menninger have lost key people who would know what really happened that day. But they insist they aren’t out to initiate a smear campaign against either Hickey or the Secret Service as an organization.

    “I’m sure that [Hickey] suffered greatly from this,” Menninger said. “The fact that he passed on — maybe it’s time to talk about it.”