Conspiracy theorists and lone-assassin advocates perhaps can agree on this point: Lee Harvey Oswald definitely was up to something in the months leading to President John F. Kennedy's assassination in Dallas.
The somethings are the stuff of two new looks at Mr. Oswald and his wife, Marina. NBC's fast-and-loose Fatal Deception : Mrs . LeeHarvey Oswald purports to tell Marina's story for the first time. The network paid her a reported $40,000 to play ball.
Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?, a completely fascinating three-hour Frontline documentary, made do without Marina's cooperation. She declined to be interviewed, but it hardly seems to matter. The program tells her side through author Priscilla McMillan, who interviewed Marina extensively for a book she wrote on the Oswalds' life together. As history, detective story, entertainment or what have you, Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald? is hands-down superior to Fatal Deception. Believe it or not, it also breaks new ground. More on this later.
Fatal Deception , filmed more than a year ago in the Dallas area and Moscow, has been saved to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the assassination. Two relative unknowns to TV audiences, Helena Bonham Carter and Frank Whaley, play the ill-fated Oswalds.
Mr. Whaley, who was 5 months old when President Kennedy died, nonetheless speaks with complete certitude about the railroading of Mr.Oswald .
"I'm not saying he wasn't involved. He was very involved," Mr. Whaley says in a phone interview. "He was a young guy, and he was in way over his head. He thought of himself as a very powerful guy. In fact, he wasn't. He was a patsy. He wanted to be James Bond, but he wasn't. He was a fool is what it boiled down to. But that was his only crime. I think an incredible injustice was done to him."
Mr. Whaley, briefly seen as an Oswald imposter in the Oliver Stone film JFK, calls the Warren Commission findings "a total sham."
"Anyone who tries to make a case of Oswald as the lone gunman is completely out of their mind," he says.
Marina, who has been married to Kenneth Porter since 1965, accompanied the cast to Moscow during filming in August 1992.
"The difficulty I first had with Marina was to get her to trust a Hollywood producer," says Bernard Sofronski, executive producer of FatalDeception . "Why should she? Finally, I think our best moment was in Moscow. I could see this woman stand up straight again and have this weight lifted. Otherwise, she's still an emotionally beaten woman."
In NBC press materials, Mr. Sofronski is quoted as saying that the cast, including Mr. Whaley, first met Marina at a barbecue restaurant in Dallas. Later, according to NBC, Marina invited all of them to her home, where they "sat and talked by her swimming pool, with the Texas mosquitoes thick in the summer night."
Good story. But when asked about it, Mr. Whaley says it never happened.
"As a matter of fact, I was not allowed to meet her in Dallas. She refused to meet me," he says.
He finally met Marina "by chance" in Moscow, and had a cup of coffee with her at his request.
"She's a very strange woman," Mr. Whaley says. "She's been through a lot. But after I met her, she was very open and candid about LeeOswald ."
Fatal Deception doesn't always get its facts right, either. And that's no small matter for a movie that proclaims in advertisements: "Tonight, her (Marina's) story will forever change what you think about the assassination of JFK."
If so, Fatal Deception at least should be able to get its dates straight. But, alas, the review copy of the film has a scene, set in 1978, in which Marina's husband says of their distraught daughter, Rachel, "She's 12 years old."
Problem is, Rachel was born on Oct. 20, 1963. And the film has a pre-assassination scene in which Marina has baby Rachel in her arms.
On Nov. 22, 1963, the film depicts Marina and her best friend, Ruth Paine, watching live television coverage of the assassination as it happens. There was no such coverage, locally or nationally. All of the TV news reports came after-the-fact.
Is this just quibbling? Not when reviewing a film of such pretensions.
Fatal Deception otherwise portrays Mr. Oswald as an odd duck who keeps telling Marina to stay out of his business. He's in the door, out the door. Stable one minute, slapping Marina the next. The film never explains his actions; nor does it show him shooting at the president. He's arrested and jailed and has a fleeting final meeting with Marina.
"Kiss the girls for me," he tells her.
"Ollie, I love you," she replies before collapsing in tears.
The film tries to persuade viewers that federal officials prodded and duped Marina into saying she believed Lee Oswald killed John F. Kennedy. Now she's not at all sure. The film's final words are her narrative plea: "Almost 30 years have gone by in America. And I believe we're all entitled to know the truth."
Films such as this only jumble matters. Fatal Deception earns some style points for its urgent, drum-pounding score and effective use of black-and-white re-creations.
The two lead performances are capable, but the movie ultimately leads nowhere.
See Marina repeatedly at wit's end; see Lee acting very strange and in the company of strangers. Just don't get the idea that seeing is believing.
