The assassination of president John F Kennedy brought to an end an era that has become immortalised in the American imagination as "Camelot," cutting off the life of the young, dashing leader and the hopeful change he had ushered into Washington.
Kennedy won office in 1960 elections as the youngest man ever to be elected president and the first to be born in the 20th century. He effectively used the relatively new medium of television to bolster his campaign against Richard Nixon, helping him secure a narrow victory.
"The torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans," he declared in his inaugural address, painting his administration as one unlike any previous administration, with a focus on the "New Frontier" of the 1960s.
The youthful outlook was bolstered by Kennedy's personal life with young wife Jacqueline Kennedy and two small children, Caroline and John Jr. Photographs captured the young John John playing under his father's Oval Office desk and Caroline on her pony on the White House lawn.
Jacqueline meanwhile set about redecorating the White House and the couple brought a new emphasis to arts and culture into the presidency.
Ahead of the 50th anniversary of Kennedy's death, the Newseum in Washington has illustrated how the Camelot image was captured and shaped by the Kennedys themselves with the hiring of photographer Jacques Lowe to document the family months before Kennedy began running for president.
The exhibit, called "Creating Camelot," includes many pictures that dwell on a happy family man, admiring and playing with his young children, while others depict the loneliness of the campaign trail and the influence of the extended Kennedy clan on John and Jackie.
The sense of connection to the young family and the glamorous first lady and president only served to deepen the family's hold on the popular imagination. The assassination of Kennedy on November 22, 1963 brought that all crashing down, but by cutting short his political career it left the idealistic impression foremost in many Americans minds that helped solidify the Camelot image that would emerge in its wake.
Jacqueline Kennedy herself propelled the Camelot myth into popular use, suggesting it as a symbol for the administration in an interview in Life magazine just after her husband's assassination.
She pointed to a song from the popular Broadway musical Camelot about King Arthur that her husband had enjoyed listening to, with its reference to a "brief shining moment that was known as Camelot."
"There'll be great presidents again," she said. "But there'll never be another Camelot again."
Yet allusions to the Arthurian legend - and questions of what might have been - helped to mask a dark side of the Kennedy presidency, with marital infidelity and womanising that would have stained a presidency in later years under the increasingly intense media spotlight on politicians' personal lives.
Marilyn Monroe's sexy rendition of Happy Birthday Mr President - her gown was so tight she had to be sewn into it - may have raised the most eyebrows and come to symbolise Kennedy's indiscretion.
Revelations in recent years show a broader pattern.
A former White House intern, Mimi Alford, claimed in a book, Once Upon a Secret, published last year that she had an 18-month affair with the president, complete with allegations of drug use.
Most presidential affairs already have been extensively reported in detail by biographers. Kennedy biographer Robert Dallek first revealed Alford's affair with the president a decade ago. He stopped short of discovering Mimi's identity.
Over the years Dallek has been given credit for having a number of romantic relationships with famous women, including Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield.
Love letters Kennedy wrote to a Swedish aristocrat, with whom he carried on a relationship even after marrying Jacqueline, sold for more than 115,000 dollars three years ago.
Author Christopher Andersen in his book released this year, These Few Precious Days: The Final Year of Jack and Jackie, quoted friends and associates of the Kennedys as saying Jacqueline Kennedy knew about the president's affairs.
"That didn't mean she took Jack's cheating lightly," Andersen wrote. "'She didn't like Jack's fooling around. She was damn mad about it,' said Jack's close friend, George Smathers. 'But she was willing to look the other way as long as he was careful.'"
Publicly however, Kennedy presented the image of the happy, young family that continues to dominate his mystic.