If adjusted\u00a0for inflation between then and now, Jim Marrs\u2019 2010 book The Trillion-Dollar Conspiracy would come out\u00a0nearer\u00a0a double-trillion, subject to marketplace whims.\u00a0Marrs had objected to any such title, for that matter. He reckoned that his topic \u2014 economic collapse, politically driven \u2014 would devalue that figurative trillion dollars to chump change, any day now.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Long acknowledged as the double-dog-defiant journalistic face of the John F. Kennedy assassination of 1963, Marrs had taken his beatings and invited more of the same since his breakthrough book of 1989 \u2014\u00a0Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy.\u00a0That historical novel had\u00a0emerged\u00a0from 26 years of primary-source research to become a mass-market publishing phenomenon, and eventually the basis for Oliver Stone\u2019s 1991 film, \u201cJFK.\u201d Jim Marrs (1943-2017) stoked controversy as an energizing resource: The more raucous the razzes from the naysayers, the more emphatic the backlash, the greater Marrs\u2019 sense of encouragement.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And the greater his revenues as a consequence.\u00a0Marrs told the truth as he knew\u00a0it\u00a0and conventionally easy answers be damned.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Jim proposed to call his new-for-2010 book by the\u00a0title of\u00a0Zombie Nation.\u00a0He telephoned me from his office in Wise County to pilot the idea.\u00a0Didn\u2019t\u00a0have caller ID yet on the antiquated landline hookup, but the instrument packed a more recognizably urgent ring when Jim Marrs was doing the dialing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
No sooner had I picked up, than Marrs posed a pressing question: \u201cYou know that World War II-era movie, \u2018King of the Zombies\u2019?\u201d He paused a beat. I veered the train of thought onto a film-history track. \u201cWell, then,\u201d he continued, \u201cwould you say that \u2018King of the Zombies\u2019 might be more of a social allegory than an out-and-out horror movie?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI might,\u201d I answered, easing into my official American Film Institute Fellowship hat. \u201cYou mean the 1941 movie \u2018King of the Zombies,\u2019 right? More a comedy than a scare-show or a social-message piece \u2014 but sure-enough an anti-Nazi piece. Unusual for its time, too, before Pearl Harbor, when corporate Hollywood was going easy on the Third Reich in the name of fair-play isolationism.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cJust what I\u2019d thought,\u201d said Marrs. \u201cA society of zombies, numbed to their own enslavement.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSomething like that,\u201d I answered. Director Jean Yarbrough had fashioned \u201cKing of the Zombies\u201d around the notion that Adolf Hitler\u2019s superstitious flunkies were exploring the crackpot idea of resurrecting cadavers as cannon fodder. Zombies, all right.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cPerfect title for my new book!\u201d Jim said. \u201cZombie Nation!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cStill on the Nazi kick, eh, Jim?\u201d I\u00a0said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cNaw, no Nazis, per se,\u201d Marrs said. \u201cThis is as new as tomorrow \u2014 the Third Reich has never really gone away, evolving into a newer New World Order of\u00a0phantom banking, mind-controlling pharmaceuticals with evasive basic medical care, and\u00a0a bureaucratic\u00a0dictatorship. A nation of zombies,\u00a0that\u2019s\u00a0what. And\u00a0we\u2019ve\u00a0gotten that way without having to resurrect a single\u00a0stiff!\u00a0Zombie Nation,\u00a0all right.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Marrs\u2019 bankable identification with controversy was hardly fleeting. Marrs reentered the bestseller mainstream with 1997\u2019s\u00a0Alien Agenda: Investigating the Extraterrestrial Presence Among Us,\u00a0which saw eight printings in less than a year. He did so again in 2000 with\u00a0Rule by Secrecy,\u00a0a connecting\u00a0recent history with ancient mysteries. Marrs and I developed a graphic novel called\u00a0Oswald\u2019s Confession\u00a0(2012), a fact-based speculative sequel to\u00a0Crossfire.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But about\u00a0that\u00a0Zombie\u00a0Nation:\u00a0Marrs said later in 2010, \u201cThe publisher scrapped my perfect title. Said it sounded too much like a Stephen King book \u2014 a horror title,\u00a0y\u2019know. Which it is, of course, of the real-life variety. Anyhow, now\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0The Trillion-Dollar Conspiracy.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The fuller official title proved a mouthful:\u00a0The Trillion-Dollar Conspiracy: How the New World Order, Man-Made Diseases, and Zombie Banks Are Destroying America.\u00a0The book has\u00a0remained\u00a0in\u00a0print, and\u00a0never\u00a0mind\u00a0the inexorable shrinkage of the trillion-dollar distinction.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cStill managed to keep the word zombie in there, though,\u201d said Marrs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Conventional Origins of a Unique Career\u00a0<\/p>\n
James Farrell \u201cJim\u201d Marrs, a Fort Worth native,\u00a0had\u00a0become a reporter for the\u00a0Denton Record-Chronicle\u00a0while a student at the University of North Texas. In 1968, he joined the\u00a0Fort Worth Star-Telegram.\u00a0He spent 1969-1970 as a translator of French and German documents for the U.S. Army. Back at the\u00a0Star-Telegram,\u00a0Marrs challenged management with an insistence that the 1963 Kennedy assassination must be a continuing story. He left in 1972 to join the public-relations industry, then returned to\u00a0the\u00a0Telegram\u00a0from 1974-1980.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThey blacklisted me at the\u00a0Telegram,\u201d Marrs told me after our first meeting in 1983 through the Society of Professional Journalists. \u201cBanished me from the very building, even as a visitor, because I kept challenging the \u2018Oswald-done-it\u2019 conclusions. Better not let [editor] Jack Tinsley catch you dealing with me, lest you get the same.\u201d I was working as an editor and columnist for the\u00a0Telegram. Marrs and I became collaborators on the Society\u2019s annual \u201cTexas Gridiron Show,\u201d a political-satire revue.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When Oliver Stone\u2019s \u201cJFK\u201d\u00a0came to light\u00a0during 1990-1991, it became imperative that Jim Marrs, as the film\u2019s local-angle source-author, must be interviewed for the\u00a0Telegram. As the newspaper\u2019s syndicated film critic, I stated the case to Jack Tinsley.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy, Jim Marrs is a charlatan,\u201d said Tinsley. \u201cAn embarrassment to the profession.\u00a0I\u2019ve\u00a0barred him from the newsroom.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, if we\u2019re going to cover Oliver Stone\u2019s picture, then we can\u2019t neglect the originator of the story,\u201d I said. \u201cAnd a bestselling, home-grown originator, at that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u00a0determined\u00a0that Marrs had\u00a0maintained\u00a0an account with the Star-Telegram Credit Union. No figure of authority could banish an investor. The interview\u00a0proceeded, and the newsroom-at-large welcomed Marrs as a fondly remembered colleague.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Marrs progressed as publisher of the weekly\u00a0Springtown Current\u00a0while serving as an executive of First Bank & Trust of Springtown.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And why the backlash? Political analyst Stephen E. Ambrose disdained conspiracy theorists, but he championed Marrs\u2019 reasoning that motives for the Kennedy murder included attacks on organized crime; failure to support Cuban exiles in connection with the Bay of Pigs invasion; the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty; plans to withdraw from Vietnam, to abolish the oil-depletion allowance, and to drop Lyndon B. Johnson from the 1964 ticket; and civil-rights policies.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Marrs\u00a0remained\u00a0a defiant moving target.\u00a0Publishers Weekly,\u00a0the trade journal, reviewed\u00a0Alien Agenda\u00a0by scoffing at the notion that the moon might be a UFO and taking to task his refusal to dismiss the notorious \u201calien autopsy\u201d films. But\u00a0Publishers Weekly\u00a0also hailed\u00a0Alien Agenda\u00a0as \u201cthe most entertaining and complete overview of flying saucers … in years.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Marrs\u00a0remained\u00a0a chronic TV-and-radio presence, a perpetual-motion engine of research, until a heart attack\u00a0felled\u00a0him in August of 2017. Such were the relentless ambitions \u2014 not to mention the sheer showboating generosity \u2014 of one of the more vivid personalities Fort Worth has produced.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If adjusted\u00a0for inflation between then and now, Jim Marrs\u2019 2010 book The Trillion-Dollar Conspiracy would come out\u00a0nearer\u00a0a double-trillion,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48337,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[116,118,117,2637,92],"class_list":["post-48336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-worth","tag-fort-worth","tag-fort-worth-headlines","tag-fort-worth-news","tag-michael-h-price","tag-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48336\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}