Fix the Bus

Charade the movie appeared in December of 1963. It contained many similarities with the JFK Assassination. The movie, directed by Stanley Donen and starring Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant was a movie about the CIA, deception, and murder.

The movie begins with the murder of a aman named Charles Lambert. His wife is left to piece together what happened, who killed him, and why. That’s what the movie is about. It’s a whodunit.

And it’s a robbery in progress.

In its essence, one man, posing as a CIA agent, kills Charles Lambert, but then tries to pass the murder off on three other men (Leopold Gideon, James “Tex” Penthollow, and Herman Scobie) while he is searching for the elusive loot which Charles Lambert supposedly had on his person.

This plot is not unsimilar to what happened in the JFK Assassination. A man, JFK, holding wealth (the soul and direction of the nation), was murdered by men posing as legitimate CIA officers. Their dirty deed was then blamed on a man named Lee Oswald.

The plot of the movie Charade was used as a basic platform upon which to model the JFK Assassination.

What is not be commonly known is that the movie Charade began as a novel entitled, The Unsuspecting Wife. It was written by Peter Stone. The entire novel appeared in Redbook in July of 1961 in its entirety.

The man who planned the assassination, a career CIA officer, may not have initially noted the story, but his wife may have. And I suspect she was the one who read it, and recommended that her husband read it. Or a fellow CIA officer might have read it. A work of fiction involving the CIA in a major US publication certainly would have come to the attention of the CIA.

And I believe to the attention of our CIA assassination architect.

The plot is similar, and so are many of the aliases and devices. The story involves the use of aliases, false passports, and multiple venues.

The original story differs slightly from the film, but not by much. In the original story, the principal murderer of Charles Lambert is merely arrested. In the movie version, he is finished off.

Other differences involve devices intended to get Cary Grant into the picture from the beginning of the movie.

The book is more straightforward and logical. The original story might have made a better movie.

Nevertheless, let me describe eerie similarities between Charade and the JFK Assassination.

The first is the title itself: Has there ever been any document thought of as a charade more than the Warren Commission findings?

No. The two terms are virtually synonymous.

I will list the similarities first.

• The use of CIA agents.
• Charles Lamnbert is 44 years old when murdered. JFK was 46. Pretty close.
• Regina Lambert enters the office of the man who she thinks is Hamilton Bartholomew. The clock reads 12:30. JFK is assassinated at 12:30 PM on 11/22/63.
• The culmination of the novel’s plot comes to a head in the garden of the Palais Royal which contains a peristyle (three rows of 20 Doric columns). The culmination of JFK’s assassination comes to head at the pergola in Dealey Plaza.
• Three men visit Sylvia Odio in the JFK saga.. Their names are Leopoldo, Angelo and Leon. These are their war names. Three men show up at Charles’s funeral. They are former soldiers and mates of Charles. Their names are Leopold Gideon, James “Tex” Penthollow, and Herman Scobie. In the story of Gideon, Gideon is visited by an angel who commands him to do what he needs to do to save his people. Tex is Tex. James is James. Herman means warrior in German.
• The man in the novel who ultimately kills Charles Lambert is named Hamilton Bartholomew. But that is an alias. His real name is Carson Dyle. His counterpart in the novel is named Alex Dyle. In the JFK saga, Lee Oswald uses an alias, Alek Hidell. That’s too close for comfort. His middle name is James. In the novel, James Penthollow is called Tex. Lee Oswald has lived in both LA and TX.
• In the novel, Regina Lambert, knows not who to trust – Hamilton Bartholomew, the supposed CIA agent, or Alex Dyle. Alex Dyle plays a game of deception with Regina Lambert to the same degree as Hamilton Bartholomew. The deception is carried forward to the final scene – or so we think. In the JFK saga, the deception is carried forward to this day.
• Carson Dyle was abandoned and left to die in Germany as he and his mates were robbing the gold. The CIA was left to die on the beaches of the Bay of Pigs by JFK, or so they desire to believe. In reality the CIA was just as much at fault as JFK.

What I contend is that our CIA assassination architect read and studied this novel and used elements of the novel including the basic plot in his plan to assassinate JFK. Some elements were rearranged. Some were changed. Perhaps the architect may not realized that he was incorporating elements of the novel into his “play” to kill the President.

Our assassination architect, Seymour Bolten, was in the Playgoers Society at NYU. He would have been intimately familiar with play structure and design. He would be precisely be the type of individual to obsessively analyze a play and its elements. He would have analyzed and dissected this novel: The Unsuspecting Wife.

He would have seen that Alex Dyle and Carson Dyle are flip sides of the same person. They are a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – the good side and the dark side of the CIA.

So what? What are we going to do with these nice similarities? Nothing, yet. They are just another piece to the puzzle.

Incidentally, LHO named his newborn daughter Rachel Audrey just before the assassination. There is only famous Audrey that I know of back in the 1960s and that was Audrey Hepburn, the star of Charade.

Maybe Bolten who knew a few people or two, and could have easily learned that Charade was in production, suggested the name to Lee and Marina in the months prior to delivery. Oh, but how do we know Bolten knew Lee. He knew him alright. He got his mother, Marguerite, a job inside the house of Amon Carter, Jr. just before the assassination. And who was Amon Carter, Jr. to Seymour Bolten. They were POWs together in Szubin, Poland during WWII. They knew each other there also. Tight bonds are formed under harsh conditions.

Copyright 2023 Archer Crosley All Rights Reserved.