Dick Russell<\/p>\n
I am shocked and devastated by the tragedy that occurred yesterday. For almost a decade, I\u2019ve worked closely with and been good friends with the Reiners. Rob and I were born the same year, and had both been in high school when President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963. That terrible day would change both our lives.<\/p>\n
I feel I must write about a side of Rob that not many people know about. He was unforgettable, of course, as Meathead in Norman Lear\u2019s classic TV series\u00a0All In the Family<\/em>\u00a0during the 1970s. He went on to make many remarkable films – poignant comedies like\u00a0Stand By Me\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0When Harry Met Sally<\/em>, the powerful drama\u00a0A Few Good Men,\u00a0<\/em>and more. For over thirty years of marriage, Michele was his rock as partner and protector.<\/p>\n Dick Russell\u2019s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n At the same time, Rob\u2019s passionate activism emanated from his love for this country and his deep concern that our democracy was being eroded, especially in recent years. His courage was tactile, as well as his counsel with political figures including Obama and the Clintons. He was a fighter unlike anyone else in Hollywood.<\/p>\n And that all emanated from what happened to JFK in Dallas. He and I shared the belief that until the truth came out about the coup d\u2019etat that changed America, the country could never really move forward. We had been on a downhill slide ever since. When we met in the summer of 2016, he was intent on making a TV series that would expose the perpetrators within the CIA, Mob and Military-Industrial Complex. His company optioned my book\u00a0The Man Who Knew Too Much,\u00a0<\/em>brought talented young scriptwriter David Hoffman into the project, and we began meeting regularly.<\/p>\n I well remember the long lunch we had at Rob\u2019s home in Brentwood, where he began recounting how he became \u201cobsessed\u201d with the Kennedy assassination. After he graduated high school, he saw Mort Sahl at an engagement where all the comedian\/activist was talking about was the coverup by the Warren Commission. Rob went on to read all 26 of the Commission\u2019s volumes of evidence and many of the books. He wanted to end his career with a TV series he thought of titling “A Coup in America.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2016 Rob had recently dined with Robert Kennedy Jr., who urged him to go ahead and told Rob how his father assuredly would have reopened the investigation had he become president in 1968. Then he too had been killed.<\/p>\n Rob asked me to give him a list of names of key people who were still alive and might cooperate. \u201cSometimes people will agree to talk to me, I don\u2019t know why,\u201d he quipped.<\/p>\n By January 2018, we had a \u201cpitch meeting\u201d scheduled with the head of Paramount\u2019s TV movie division. Beforehand Rob and I met for breakfast to talk about some new material I\u2019d come across. When the waitress came for our order, she burst out with: \u201cHi, Meathead!\u201d Rob smiled and graciously extended his hand, then turned to me and said quietly, \u201cWell, that\u2019s the first one of the day.\u201d<\/p>\n The meeting seemed to go well and that spring, along with David Hoffman and a production assistant, we traveled to Dallas to enter a time machine. In Dealey Plaza, we began at the Schoolbook Depository where Lee Harvey Oswald was said to have fired from. One possible escape route for an assassin was the freight elevators, which we learned had been open just as the president\u2019s motorcade passed and from which a killer could have gone out the back. Oswald had maintained he was in the second floor lunchroom.<\/p>\n We stopped outside at the grassy knoll picket fence, then on to view the underpass where a shooter wouldn\u2019t have been visible. The railroad shack where worker Lee Bowers said he\u2019d seen a gunman remained intact. We then had lunch with Buell Frazier, Oswald\u2019s co-worker at the Depository who drove him to and from work as weekends approached. He described the package Oswald carried on the fateful morning, whose size was too small to have held a concealed rifle.<\/p>\n Rob engaged Frazier in small talk about family matters, allowing him space to then open up with a story he\u2019d rarely told. After the assassinaton, he\u2019d gone to a hospital to visit a relative when the police swept in, threw him up against a wall, and arrested him. Frazier was taken to police headquarters and questioned for several hours. Captain Will Fritz, who was also Oswald\u2019s interrogator, even brought in a confession that he tried to force Frazier to sign.<\/p>\n From there we went to Oswald\u2019s rooming house, where a grand-daughter spoke of how Lee loved playing with her younger brother and was her grandma\u2019s favorite boarder. On November 22, she recalled a police vehicle pulling up outside and honking several times, after which Oswald departed. We followed his route to the Texas Theater where he was arrested, today a tourist attraction where a pretty young lady guides visitors.<\/p>\n The next morning, inside a new Sixth Floor Museum in the County Records Building across from the Depository, Rob got into a verbal fight over the curator\u2019s reproduction depicting the tree down below with much smaller branches than existed in 1963, designed to make viewers believe Oswald had an easy opening to shoot through.<\/p>\n It was raining when we arrived at the police headquarters where Oswald was questioned, jailed, and later killed in the basement as he was being transferred. Rob had David and me stand on the spot showing how close Jack Ruby got to him. It felt eerie being down there, more so when we walked up five flights of stairs to the cell where Oswald had been held. The building was going through a multimillion-dollar reconstruction to resemble fifty years earlier and we had to wear hard-hats, gloves and goggles to ascend. The cell, we were told, hadn\u2019t been used since Jack Ruby was put there temporarily after the shooting. Rob and I walked in, standing near the bed beside the small toilet. Stranger still, Ruby had then been housed in the County Records building overlooking Dealey Plaza until he died of cancer in 1967.<\/p>\n In the downstairs entry area where we shed our gear was a list of movies that the prisoners were allowed to watch. One was a Rob Reiner film. I don\u2019t remember which one. Another, he said, was a movie he\u2019d seen the night he met Michele.<\/p>\n Returning to the hotel, we had lunch with Beverly Oliver. She was a cabaret singer who had known Jack Ruby when she was only seventeen. She said she\u2019d seen Oswald in Ruby\u2019s club on several occasions. Ruby had introduced Oswald saying, \u201cThis is Lee, he\u2019s with the CIA.\u201d She didn\u2019t even know what the CIA was. Beverly had been on the grassy knoll during the motorcade, completely traumatized by what she witnessed. The film she\u2019d taken had been confiscated by the FBI two days later.<\/p>\n Before we left, Beverly asked Rob if he could clear up a mystery for her. What was that line in the opening to\u00a0All in the Family<\/em>\u00a0that she could never understand? Rob chuckled and, with a big smile, sang her: \u201cGee, our old La Salle ran great!\u201d This inspired the two of them to do a couple more numbers together, much to the delight of the other diners.<\/p>\n Eventually, the Paramount network committed to the TV series – and then reneged. A couple of years later, Warner Brothers agreed to try for one of their subsidiaries to do it – and nobody would. And this was Rob Reiner! That\u2019s when I realized how afraid Hollywood still was about going against the official lone-gunman narrative.<\/p>\n So Rob ended up enlisting Soledad O\u2019Brien to team with him for a 10-part podcast series with IHeart Radio. David Hoffman scripted it and I was the resident \u201cexpert\u201d – enjoying the opportunity to trade lines with the pros. The podcast\u2019s success – more than nine million downloads – led to a book contract for the three of us to work on together. A zoom call had been scheduled for this afternoon to discuss revisions, after Rob\u2019s latest astute edit.<\/p>\n However, the last communication I had with the Reiners happened this past Friday, when Michele sent an email that began: \u201cGuess who butt dialed me? Beverly Oliver!\u2026.She said she was cleaning her computer. Whatever. She\u2019s 89.\u201d<\/p>\n