Valenti: I Remember Jackie's Eyes

Jacqueline Kennedy's catatonic stare is his most vivid memory of the day John F, Kennedy was shot, Jack Valenti said Thursday, just days before the 40th anniversary of the assassination.

"Her pink blouse was flecked with his blood and also this grotesque gray brain matter," Valenti, president and chief executive officer of the Motion Picture Association, said in a radio interview with Don Imus. "She wouldn't change that blouse.

"If you look at that famous photograph, her eyes are - opaque, unseeing. I thought, 'How does this woman manage to get through..the next hour?'"

Valenti was an aide to Vice President Lyndon Johnson and was riding six cars back in the Dallas motorcade that day.

"I didn't hear the shots," he said, "but all of a sudden the cars went from 6 mph to 60." He said his car went to the Merchandise Mart, where a policeman told him the president and governor had been shot and put him in a car to Parkland Hospital.

Later that day, Valenti said, Johnson summoned him to Air Force One, which he remembers was "thickly crowded with people."

"Lyndon Johnson - a huge man - he beckoned to me," recalls Valenti, who headed the advertising and political consulting agency that handled the Kennedy-Johnson TV campaign ads in Texas in 1960. Johnson told Valenti that he wanted him on his staff. "I had no idea what being on a staff meant," Valenti, now 82, said.

On that day, Valenti remembered, Johnson "was determined to be the coolest cat on the plane, and he was. First, he wasn't leaving Dallas until the coffin of the 35th President was aboard. Second, he wanted to be sworn in on the airplane.

"I couldn't figure out why," Valenti said. "Even Bobby Kennedy was saying to him: 'Get in the air, you're president, it's ceremonial.'"

Now, Valenti said, he knows Johnson wanted a picture of himself being sworn in flashed around the world before he landed at Andrews Air Force base outside Washington, to show that the nation goes on.

"He wanted Mrs. Kennedy to be in the picture," Valenti said.

Valenti who has been Hollywood's chief lobbyist and spokesman for nearly four decades, said he lived at Johnson's home for 11 days before Johnson moved into the White House. "Mrs. Kennedy was in the White House for 11 days 'til Johnson moved in," he said. "In the White House, I lived on the third floor.

"Who are the only two assistants to the president who actually lived at the White House? Answer is Jack Valenti and Harry Hopkins under FDR."

Valenti, a University of Houston graduate and World War II bomber pilot, served Johnson in Washington until 1966 when the president named him to the MPA post he has held ever since. Under his aegis, the Motion Picture Association instituted a new ratings system and has championed copyright protection and self-censorship.

Valenti spoke on Infinity Radio's Imus In The Morning program. Infinity, like CBSNews.com, is part of Viacom.