Kenneth Latimer Oral History

Object number2012.001.0033

Date04/09/2012

ClassificationsOral Histories

Oral history interview subject Kenneth Latimer

Oral history interviewer Stephen Fagin

ObjectOral history

Credit LineOral History Collection/The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza

MediumBorn digital (.m2ts file)

DimensionsDuration: 62 Minutes

Terms

Collections

DescriptionVideotaped oral history interview with Kenneth Latimer. A founding member of the Dallas Theater Center, Latimer saw President Kennedy's motorcade on November 22, 1963. Latimer later played the title character in the theater center's 1974 production, "Jack Ruby, All-American Boy." Interview conducted at The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza on April 9, 2012 by Stephen Fagin. The interview is one hour and five minutes long.

Curatorial Commentary

Following this oral history, Kenneth Latimer became an active supporter of The Sixth Floor Museum and attended a number of public programs until his passing on May 14, 2018. Later that year, widow Martha Jarmon Latimer donated to the Museum a scrapbook that her late husband compiled about his 1974 performance as Jack Ruby.

In a 2012 retrospective, the Dallas Observer described Jack Ruby, All-American Boy as "a noisy, sexy, audacious three-act, three-ring circus of drama, comedy and satire, a bold and bizarrely fanciful biography of the man who killed the man who killed JFK." Although the play, which premiered at the Dallas Theater Center on April 23, 1974, had a short one-month run of sold-out performances, it was reviewed in Time and The New Yorker. It was also the subject of a four-minute report by Walter Cronkite during his CBS Evening News broadcast on May 14, 1974. - Stephen Fagin, Curator