Age and reproduction quality of the newspaper photo showing Al Chop and his wife together isn't the best, but it does offer another example of various partnerships involved in assuring accuracy for the documentary motion picture. As we mentioned several years ago when first posting this rarely seen picture, the movie depicts Mrs. Chop remaining home while husband Al speeds off to Washington National during an historic night of radar/visually-confirmed UFO activity. However, in reality she accompanied him and was present just outside the restricted radar room as her husband joined military officials and air traffic personnel in watching the unknowns on the radar scope, even as one pilot was reportedly surrounded by bright objects in the sky.
One article here, unfortunately, repeats the error that Edward J. Ruppelt played himself in the film -- an error in which I played a part in my earlier writing, to my everlasting regret. It turns out that the studio press book itself initially printed this error, and in later years Al Chop himself repeated it in a letter to me, surely a mistake which went unnoticed as he went into detail about his own relationship to the movie. Ruppelt's brief depiction was actually portrayed by Robert Phillips, one of the few professional actors who graced the documentary.
Regarding the radio interview with producer Clarence Greene, adding a recording of this likely unique interview to the archives would have been great, but I am unaware that any such recording survived the years. (article credit: Barry Greenwood)
