Unpublished original matte-finish 12 x 15 photographic print of President John F. Kennedy standing next to a large portrait painting of fellow Democratic leader Franklin D. Roosevelt. This uncommon print was presented by Kennedy to his former press secretary Robert Thompson. Affixed to a same-size cardstock mount and in fine condition, with some faint silvering to the image. President Kennedy posed next to this painting when he delivered remarks at the opening of ‘The Old Navy, 1776-1870,’ a National Archives exhibit of naval prints and watercolors from the collection of former president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, on June 27, 1962.
From the personal collection of Robert E. Thompson (1921-2003), a top political writer and Washington journalist who worked as John F. Kennedy's press secretary in the late 1950s, quitting just prior to the then-Senator's presidential campaign. The men met through Robert F. Kennedy, who had befriended Thompson during the McClellan Committee hearings into labor racketeering. It was at a party in 1958 at RFK’s Hickory Hill estate that JFK asked Thompson to become his press secretary. One of Thompson’s major contributions to his new boss’s 1958 senatorial reelection campaign was a movie he put together entitled ‘The U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy Story,’ which was broadcast on Massachusetts television. Kennedy later remarked that ‘it was the best thing (he) had in the campaign.’ Thompson left Kennedy’s staff in 1959 and joined the Washington Bureau of the New York Daily News, where he eventually became their White House correspondent and was assigned to cover the new American President: John F. Kennedy.
