Confirmation: Maj. Dewey Fournet and Others

The events in the movie accurately portray the official response to UFO activity in the late forties and early fifties. As chief of the press desk at the Pentagon, Albert M. Chop was routinely exposed to the best military and commercial airline UFO encounters on record, a situation that eventually changed his mind about the UFO phenomenon's reality. Working with Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt, chief of the Air Force's UFO investigative division Project Blue Book, allowed Chop a bird's-eye view of important UFO reports.

However, amongst key players in the U.S. government investigation there existed yet another with a ringside seat to the story of the UFO: Air Force Maj. Dewey J. Fournet, Jr., responsible for closely monitoring the UFO project. Like Chop and like radar expert Wendell Swanson (Swanson played his own role in "U.F.O." and was said to be eminently familiar with cases of UFOs -- solid objects -- tracked on radar)), Fournet came to realize there was far more to the UFO mystery than meets the skeptical eye. Fournet, too, was kind enough to answer my questions and confirm the things he had emphasized for years, and in future blog entries I'll post his letters to me in the mid-seventies.

Today's posts include a color snapshot that Fournet arranged in a hurry in 1976 when I requested a recent photo for my Official UFO article. The other photo, a good 10 years or so older, is a poor reproduction, but does show (in order from left) screenwriter Francis Martin, Chop and Ruppelt posing with a copy of the motion picture script (I may have borrowed this photo from the Project 1947 Web site, highly recommended to the reader, incidentally). Fournet, Chop and Ruppelt, as previously noted, were portrayed by actors in the movie itself.  It was originally believed that the photo I bordered in yellow showed Fournet, but researcher Barry Greenwood determined the first person on the left is writer Martin and not Fournet.

Fournet's first letter indicates how busy he usually was, and per his position with a chemical corporation following his military career, he seemed often wrapped up in his job, causing response delays. Nevertheless, Fournet assures me in his initial letter that he examined his section of the script. Also, as on numerous other occasions, I owed a big thank-you to the late Jim and Coral Lorenzen of the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO) for arranging my contact with Fournet (also since deceased), following his attendance at a UFO-related conference at Fort Smith, Arkansas.

Another photo, one of many black-and-white 8x10s issued by the studio for promotional purposes, shows producer Clarence Greene (left) discussing the script with radar expert Wendell V. Swanson (mentioned above).

The final publicity photo shows producer Greene (standing, left), radar expert Wendell V. Swanson (seated) and Capt. Edward Ruppelt himself. Ruppelt did not play his own role, though Swanson did. Like other former members of the official U.S. UFO project, Ruppelt was on-site to examine and approve every line of the script to assure the accuracy demanded by Greene.

Searching in the Sixties

Between 1966 and 1967 I attempted a few more queries about "U.F.O." and did receive replies from most sources. As a teenager, I became a formidable pest as I constantly begged Syracuse TV station WHEN (now WTVH) to run the movie again and again on either its late-night movie presentation or during its daily afternoon offering. I remember the sense of accomplishment I felt when I had a chance to record the soundtrack from the TV on a small audio reel-to-reel tape recorder I received as a gift from my family, thrilled that I had somehow conquered the technological barrier preventing memories from becoming actual sounds on demand with the press of a button.

There were letters to and from United Artists, which released the Greene-Rouse movie, and though the ones reproduced here were helpful, their responses to me weren't always so. As I prepared my original Official UFO article for publication in the mid-seventies, for example, a representative of the UA legal department actually told me I would have to pay to use already-available movie publicity photos and images with my article. Inasmuch as I had already obtained permission from Greene -- per UA's original advice -- to use any and all promotional material, my ultimate decision was to just go ahead and do my own thing. In weeks to come, I'll also be posting one of numerous letters from Tom Towers (Tom could be quite chatty in correspondence, and I'm very grateful) in which he offers his own words of condemnation regarding UA, and, again, I'm hoping the studio reputation he paints will be an annoyance of the past.

As an aside -- People connected with the motion picture industry realize that United Artists, for all the great movies the studio has turned out for decades, boasts a very troubled existence historically. Recently, UA was acquired by actor Tom Cruise and associates, and it is hoped that the corporation will function smoothly once again. Coincidentally, Tom Cruise was born in Syracuse, as was I. So, I might ask the God of Coincidence, why didn't I get to star in "Top Gun?"

I did have one of those oh-if-only-I-had-known moments in 1967. Too late, I discovered that a considerable amount of "U.F.O." publicity material had been printed by the Cato Show Printing Company of Cato, NY -- almost next door to me, in terms of "as the crow flies." I queried the company (see letter) and learned to my eternal consternation that all movie items had been disposed of years previously. What an historical treasure trove each and every excess publicity memento would have been, every one in pristine condition! Posters, lobby cards, photos, newspaper displays, the works. What does it all mean? It means. . .you know, I would have been happy just to have had a bit part in "Risky Business". . .but I digress (sigh). . .

Orchestrating the Intangible: UFO Music

Even back in 1966, several years prior to jumping in and doing some serious research on the motion picture, I began looking for bits and pieces of knowledge. One generally forgotten little tidbit concerning the film's publicity aspect was the existence of what was probably a record, a little continuously played audio record in essence, that theater managers could play outside or in their lobbies to draw viewers in. These were common attention-getters in the fifties and would usually play audio from the movie trailer or flaunt exciting dialogue and/or music from dramatic movie scenes. Like the odor of popcorn at the refreshment stand, who could resist the sounds of terror or chaos teased from the silver screen and directed toward the street for the benefit of potential ticket purchasers?

I really don't know what the recording contained, and neither I nor others on the trail ever achieved success in tracking down a copy, but locating one would surely be of historical significance today.

However, always high on my mind was the beautiful musical score accompanying "U.F.O." I even wrote to the music organization A.S.C.A.P. (see letter) in 1966 for further information. Perhaps not surprising, the score is entitled "U.F.O." What might be surprising to some, though, is the fact that this low-budget black and white (except for the Montana and Utah UFO films, shown with their original colors) movie was scored by the famous Ernest Gold, noteworthy for the music of "Exodus" and other major motion pictures. When you've watched "U.F.O." as many times as I and you concentrate on the musical theme and its various interpretations throughout the movie, it's obvious that Gold had virtually woven a musical suite for the story whose parts, though varied, fit together nicely. Further, just as Clarence Greene took the low-key approach to filming his movie, Gold declined to create a typically wild fifties science-fiction score, instead opting wisely to use his music conservatively to set an "official" mood. I'm no music authority, but the realization that Gold created music of such restrained beauty and strength for a movie about UFOs -- UFOs! -- is simply amazing. But Ernest Gold, strangely, did not conduct the score himself for the motion picture.

In recent years, I had the pleasure of corresponding a time or two with Ernest Gold's son, popular singer and songwriter Andrew Gold (for you younger folks, Andrew composed and sang the theme, "Thank You for Being a Friend" for the TV series, "The Golden Girls.") about the music. While kindly imparting some information about his father and family, Andrew did admit that he was a young child in the early fifties and had only a vague recollection of "U.F.O." being scored.

I've often wondered, aware that so many motion picture scores are eventually re-orchestrated and put into special movie music collections, why this veritable " 'UFO' Suite" hasn't received the same caring treatment. It's really a very, very nice piece of music and, quite honestly, its presence vastly enhances the motion picture's dramatic quality.

The Driving Force: Clarence Greene

The bitter truth is, I wish my research into the motion picture had been far more comprehensive. For my first article, published in Official UFO, I faced a deadline. Far worse, I had no expense account and when all was said and done I was only paid a few hundred dollars, so to depict my research as a labor of love would be accurate. I couldn't fly about the country seeking out principal movie associates and, quite honestly, the long distance phone bills racked up in the mid-seventies as I attempted to find people and information took a toll in themselves. Yes, for the first article I would certainly have preferred additional interviews with such key personnel as screenwriter Francis Martin and director Winston Jones, and I'm sure everybody from the camera crew to the set decorators would have fascinating anecdotes to pass along. I tried to locate radar expert Wendell Swanson and inquired of such sources as the "new" NICAP about where I could find UFO photographers Newhouse and Mariana -- with no success. Unfortunately, the initial article, printed more than 30 years ago, must stand on its own merits now. As I write this blog entry in June of 2008, I'm also more than aware that pretty much all of the major folks involved with 1956's "U.F.O." are dead now. Even Al Chop, who, like Tom Towers, always seemed somehow immortal to me, passed away a couple of years ago.

On a brighter note, in the weeks ahead I'll post numerous letters from the likes of Chop, Towers, Dewey Fournet and Willis Sperry, for written communication sent back and forth via "snail mail" was the method I used -- the method I had to use -- three decades ago. Looking back, I'm grateful for the written words of one and all, for this is crucial history interpreted in their very words, not just some pile of notes I jotted down in my own handwriting. Yes, much of this information appears in my magazine and journal articles of the past, but I think you'll agree that one's ability to examine the original source -- the letters themselves -- takes everything to a higher level of documentation.

Yet, I would never have searched for any of these gentlemen, were it not for motion picture producer Clarence Greene's little effort entitled "U.F.O." Already established in the industry with his partner Russell Rouse in Greene-Rouse Productions, Greene was somebody I obviously needed to contact. Nevertheless, while actually thrilled that he responded to my letter and questions in January of 1976, I was profoundly disappointed that he provided little more than one-word or single-sentence answers. I've posted his letter, but the questions to which Greene offers answers are as follows:

1. I asked him if I could extract and use any information from press kit materials (a redundant question, since they were already for public distribution) regarding the movie, and that was acceptable to him.

2. There was further confirmation about using other visuals from the movie, and again he harbored no objections.

3. This is his response to my request for a list of his recent films.

4. I asked about his own UFO sighting, and received precious little information. He probably assumed I could obtain details from the press kit.

5. This was an attempt to establish a time frame when "U.F.O." was started and finished. I still tend to believe, however, that the whole procedure from research to end of filming required something closer to 2 1/2, if not three years.

6. A brief, funny, response! I asked Greene about the costs involved, losses at the box office and "Is it possible that the country wasn't ready for the documentary-form motion picture in 1956?" He quips that "It is possible but the audience wasn't ready."

7. I hoped to get more insight on Greene's use of numerous Los Angeles Sheriffs Dept. personnel as extras in the film. His response about their "experience with UFOs" certainly could have led to other questions -- though the chance that he would have replied in detail was slim, indeed.

8. How would "U.F.O." do at the box office, were it released in 1975 instead of 1956, I pondered. Okay, bad question, predictable answer.

9. Did Greene consider making a "part 2" after the first movie? No.

10. I wondered about problems encountered in obtaining prints of the Utah and Montana UFO films, and Greene assures me that there were none.

11. Greene likewise responds negatively about difficulties with official government opposition or interference.

12. Greene offers no response when I ask about interesting anecdotes during filming.

13. Again, he skips a question. I had asked about anything he might have changed regarding "U.F.O."

14. Here, Greene confirms that actor Harry Morgan provided the voice of a pilot during the segment about the Washington, D.C. UFOs. Nowadays, you can find this information on the Internet in two seconds. Back in the seventies, not so quickly.

15. Considering how public interest in UFOs has become more heightened and sophisticated over the years, would you ever consider making another UFO film documentary? "Possibly," Greene replies, honoring me with the word chosen to close out my earliest magazine article.

I listed five more questions, but producer Greene quit after no. 15 above.

Fortunately, Clarence Greene appeared far more verbose years earlier. In 1967, he stepped forward with a detailed explanation of why he made the movie. I'm posting his statement below, but I regret that I don't know where it appeared originally. Some quotes from this piece have been attributed to me, but I had nothing to do with the following account, so if any of my readers know its origin I'll be happy to add a credit. In the meantime, here's producer Greene's 1967 statement: (Note -- I found this some time ago on the Internet, uncredited, and I have taken the liberty to correct the spelling on a few words, as I'm not sure if Greene originally made these errors, or if somebody made errors in posting his comments.)

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UFO: WHY I MADE "UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECTS," by Clarence Greene -- July 26, 1967

I made "Unidentified Flying Objects" because of a simple, but most urgent belief: that the public should know the true facts about flying saucers.

Although "Unidentified Flying Objects" didn't go into production until may of 1954, it could be said the picture had its conception on an August night in 1952. I was with a friend when the latter called my attention to a strange object in the sky. Although it was like nothing I had ever seen before, it had the shape and appearance of a sphere of light. We watched it for about five minutes, during which period it stopped, made various turns, then finally sped over the horizon.
Later that night I learned that the strange flying object had also been observed by members of the Ground Observation Corps.

The incident made an indelible impression on me, and the next morning I told my partner, Russell Rouse, and the members of the Greene and Rouse staff about it. All along I had been reading newspaper stories scoffing at reports of flying saucer sightings. Now, having seen one of the strange objects myself, I could understand how the sighters must have felt at being ridiculed. Later I was to learn that hundreds of other sightings had been made, with the sighters reluctant to mention it for fear of ridicule. I found myself becoming irritated at the scoffers. I was at a complete loss to understand why there seemed to be such a determined effort to suppress all news of Unidentified Flying Objects by what seemed to be a planned campaign of skepticism and scoffing.

I decided to get to the bottom of the story. I learned that Albert M. Chop, who had been the Press Information Specialist for the Pentagon, handling all flying saucer news, was on the West Coast. I had several meetings with him. Chop was reluctant to talk at first. But when he realized I was dead serious about the Unidentified Flying Object business he gave me a breakdown on Project Blue Book, code name for the investigation of UFOs carried on by U.S. Air Force Intelligence.

Through Chop and certain newspapermen, a meeting was arranged with Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, USAF Reserve, former director of Project Bluebook. Together, we went into a lengthy and exhaustive study of reports, various documents and affidavits of UFO sightings and reports from radar experts.

I had been tipped off by some newspapermen who had heard rumors of the existence of actual motion pictures of UFOs which were being kept secret by the Pentagon. These reporters had tried to track down the films, but everywhere they turned they had met what seemed to be an official wall of silence and mystery.

I confronted Chop and Ruppelt with what I had been told. After much pressing on my part they finally admitted they had seen the motion pictures, designated by the Pentagon as the Utah and Montana films. Their existence had never been made known either to the public or the press.
I immediately contacted the two men who had shot the film: Navy Chief Photographer Delbert C. Newhouse (Utah film) and Nicholas Mariana (Montana film). When I saw the films with my own eyes, I had the confirmation of what I had seen in the sky.

I had both the Utah and Montana film analyzed by scientists and film experts. Their report was that the objects were unknowns, that they were not birds, nor balloons, nor planes. Chop and Ruppelt informed me that these reports agreed with the analysis of Air Force and Navy scientists, with the added information that they were not secret developments of any United States government agency nor of any foreign government agency.

Now I knew that I was on the trail of something of vital importance to the entire world.
Sometime later, through Ruppelt, I met Wendell V. Swanson who, Ruppelt told me, knew more about radar-tracked flying saucers than any other man in the world. I listened to Swanson as he told me about all the radar sightings of UFOs. Then Chop told me about his eye-witness experiences when UFOs flew over Washington, D.C., being picked up by radar, with visual contact also obtained by jet interceptors sent up by the Air Force.

Major Dewey Fournet was the senior officer in the radar room when the UFOs invaded the National Capitol. It was he who had recommended that the jet interceptors be sent up after the objects. I immediately got in touch with Major Fournet, who had been the liaison officer between the Pentagon and Project Bluebook.

If the other men had been cautious about revealing inside information on the subject, Fournet was doubly cautious. It was only after he was convinced that we would adhere only to the truth in what we told the public, that he agreed to participate in the project.

It had taken an entire year to get all these men together and to uncover the Utah and Montana films, and to get the actual facts on the Washington sightings.

Now I definitely decided to make a motion picture on Unidentified Flying Objects. After discussion with my partner, Russell Rouse, we agreed to give Winston Jones the directing assignment. Jones had been with us for over five years and been immersed in the UFO material from the very beginning. The assignment seemed most logical.

Screenwriter Francis Martin had just come out of the Navy. He, too, was vitally interested in the subject of UFOs. I felt that only men who were deeply caught up in the subject should be connected with the project. Martin was assigned the arduous task of putting the voluminous documents and records into screenplay form.

Then came months of interviews with saucer sighters, scientists, Air Force personnel, law enforcement officers, airline pilots, in fact, with anyone who had something to contribute in the way of legitimate information.

As an example of a credible observer, we selected from among the hundreds we interviewed Captain Willis Sperry, American Airlines pilot for 17 years, to appear in the picture and tell his experience with UFOs in his own words.

In order to film the picture, it was practically a tour of the entire country, with Jones shooting at the actual sites of events. In the Mantell case, for instance, Jones shot the scenes on the Kentucky location where Mantell was killed, the first pilot to meet his death while chasing the Unidentified Flying Objects. The full transcript of the report from the Kentucky State Police was studied before the incident was recreated for the screen.

The single objective was utter accuracy in everything that was to appear on the screen. This sometimes meant weeks spent on verifying the most minute points. A good example of this was during the filming of the July, 1952 appearance of the UFOs over Washington. Two eye-witnesses seemed to disagree over certain words expressed by Lt. Patterson, the jet pilot who established visual contact with the objects while chasing them. It was Chop and Major Fournet who disagreed over his exact phrasing, Fournet not recalling Patterson saying certain things. However, a Washington Times-Herald interview with Patterson secured right after he had landed his jet quoted the exact words Chop remembered. But Jones and I were still wondering why the original conflict in stories. Then Chop recalled that Fournet had been called out of the radar room by a telephone call. I called Fournet in Louisiana and he remembered that Robert Ginna of Life had telephoned at 4:00 a.m. to ask permission to interview the jet interceptor pilots. This time covered the period of the disputed dialogue. So that problem was settled.

This painstaking care was used on every piece of information that went into "Unidentified Flying Objects". I also held conversations with the Pentagon, keeping the officials informed in detail of the elements that would be included in the picture, including our use of the Utah and Montana motion pictures. Congressman Joe Holt of the local California district was also kept informed of what we were doing.

One definite fact emerges from all the facts compiled about Unidentified Flying Objects. There are objects appearing in Earth's sky that cannot be identified as anything known to man. The substantiated arguments of the skeptics and scoffers do not stand up against the overwhelming evidence. UFOs exist. This can no longer be disputed. The only questions left are: What are they? Where are they from? Why are they here? (signed) CLARENCE GREENE

First Contact: Al Chop

When I first saw the 1956 United Artists documentary motion picture, "U.F.O." on TV in the mid-sixties, I could hardly believe my eyes. UFO history had been my interest as a teenager for a while, but I never even heard of this seemingly obscure film. Yet, it held a spellbinding attraction for me. Because much of it concerned the real life story of Pentagon spokesman and former U.S. Marine Albert M. Chop, who slowly transformed his hardened skepticism to overt acceptance of the UFO as a real phenomenon with apparent intelligence behind its identity, Chop had already served on the board of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), but resigned for reasons unknown. I wanted to ask him a few questions about the movie and NICAP resignation.

And find him I did, though it wasn't difficult because he was working for NASA in public relations at the time (see his photo), even calling the occasional space launch on national TV as "The voice of mission control."

Today, I'm posting the two earliest letters received from Al Chop in 1966. The first, on NASA letterhead, offers a basic explanation for his NICAP resignation and favorable comments about the movie. The second letter expresses further his disappointment and outrage about his leaving NICAP, and he has nothing positive to say about the writings of a particular figure who has been prominent in the UFO arena for years -- and noted as a long-time critic of NICAP.

Also posted today is Chop's 1953 letter to Donald Keyhoe's book publisher. I posted this letter a couple of times on my main UFO subject blog (see link in margin) and decided to resurrect it here as well because Chop, then on the Air Force Press Desk at the Pentagon, references it in one of his 1966 letters. My "book," which Chop mentions in a handwritten comment at the end, never materialized.

Years passed and I entered a four-year Air Force enlistment, but never dismissed the importance of the movie, "U.F.O." That's why, when eventually I was fortunate enough to write a few national magazine articles, I broached the idea of a movie update article to Official UFO (a very informative UFO-related newsstand magazine for its first few issues, until the publisher decided to turn it into a pathetic, lie-infested rag). The proposal was okayed and off I went, phoning and writing contacts in some 12 states and 17 cities.

The February, 1977 issue of Official UFO carried the lengthy results of in-depth research months later in my article, " 'UFO' Revisited," offering interviews with such movie participants as Al Chop himself, Tom Towers (the actor who played Chop), American Airlines pilot Willis T. "Doc" Sperry (experienced a dramatic UFO encounter), Maj. Dewey Fournet (original UFO project monitor for the government project) and producer Clarence Greene.

A few months later, using the London press book's synopsis of the movie and adding a few update details here and there -- in addition to some new visuals that did not appear in the Official UFO article -- Argosy UFO carried my second piece on Clarence Greene's feature-length motion picture in its Winter 1977-78 issue.

A third article, intended to complete a trilogy on the movie with focus primarily on lead actor Tom Towers, met disaster when I submitted it to Saga Magazine's UFO Report. Stuffed with rare visuals, some absolutely irreplaceable, the package was "lost in the mail" according to editors. I was devastated and gave up on the project at that point.

In 2005 I wrote an updated article on the movie for the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies, and in January, 2006 the piece appeared in Volume 30, #2 of the International UFO Reporter.
In 2006, I pulled out the old unpublished article about Tom Towers, now long deceased (in 1995, the year confirmed recently thanks to researcher Barry Greenwood's note to me), in hope of at least memorializing this interesting man. Ultimately, it appeared in August, 2006, in Volume 30, #4 of the International UFO Reporter.

The movie, which used to appear sporadically on cable TV, was released on videotape in 2000 by MGM Home Video, but it was discontinued about three years later with no DVD ever issued.

Why should we care about "U.F.O." so much, and why does it represent more than just a movie? There are two enticing reasons. First, this 1956 documentary, now more than 50 years of age, is a brilliantly shining beacon that establishes and endorses the history of UFOs in the USA -- a time when the U.S. government seemed "this close" to telling the American people that UFOs are real, with intelligence behind their maneuvers, and perhaps of extraterrestrial origin. With several former government and military people "who lived the story of the UFO" behind this film's production, the efforts of every serious UFO researcher who ever dared to confront the UFO enigma are legitimized forever.

Second, "U.F.O." reflects American history, plain and simple. This documentary deserves a prominent spot in the Library of Congress because of its integrity and, not to be ignored, its implications. Based soberly upon the government concern once openly exhibited for a still very much unexplained phenomenon, this old movie has the potential one day to be the most important motion picture ever made. If the U.S. government ever discloses the same facts it was on the verge of revealing in the early fifties -- with even just the minimum of details -- "U.F.O." will be the ultimate silver screen reminder that our existence, our science and our very lives pale in comparison to things we can't even imagine.

The UFO Movie Fact Sheet - Part 2 of 2

The UFO Movie Fact Sheet - Part 1 of 2

What was "U.F.O." all about? In conjunction with the movie's 1956 release through United Artists, a "Fact Sheet" was issued by the studios as one of numerous attempts to publicize "U.F.O." (I'll post part of it today and the remaining pages in the next post.) Just about the only aspect not highlighted prominently is the fact that the Washington, D.C. UFOs were observed not only on radar, but visually as well (per Lt. Patterson, portrayed in the film).

Even if you haven't seen the documentary, the fact sheet alone should emphasize the unique qualities of this motion picture, depicting the years 1947-1952, now more than a half-century old. Despite the director, writer and others involved with the technical facets of the production -- the movie-makers themselves -- it was producer Clarence Greene who brought this vision to the screen, complete with assistance from the absolutely key military, government and civilian personnel "who lived the story of the UFO."

To date, I've written four magazine and journal articles about "U.F.O." However, when I first conducted research back in the seventies, much of the information I can offer here now was unavailable to me, or I just wasn't aware of it. Because of this, I did make a major error in the first article, written for Official UFO Magazine, and that was my insistence that former Project Blue Book chief Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt played his own role -- and he did not. Though Ruppelt was intimately involved in assuring accuracy of the script, his part was played by an actor. During my research, I simply didn't have access to many photos of Ruppelt; in addition, other information directed my way convinced me that Ruppelt went before the cameras. Actually, many of the "actors" in "U.F.O." were members of Los Angeles law enforcement.

And this brings me to the acting in the film. The casual observer, like many reviewers who initially watched "U.F.O." on the silver screen, couldn't help but notice a dearth of acting quality. Again, many who performed were L.A. cops, with only a few professional actors present. A major problem which principals such as Al Chop and Tom Towers readily agreed upon was Clarence Greene's concern for accuracy over dramatic effect. So determined was Greene to portray the evidence as truthfully as possible that dramatic effect took a back seat, and the lack of (as Chop stated) "the Hollywood touch" probably helped significantly to cost Greene-Rouse Productions and United Artists dearly at the box office.

Yet, I don't really care about the acting quality, and never did. For me, the revelation that a major Hollywood studio released a serious, documented film regarding the UFO enigma in 1956, during a decade noted for science-fiction movies, many of them just plain silly, was a bombshell event. Yes, it's true that the Capt. Mantell incident, integral to the film's beginning, has been dismissed and un-dismissed as a balloon chase and not a UFO, and even as I write this there is again controversy about that balloon explanation that some researchers seemed to settle upon years ago. Jerome Clark, in his excellent book, Strange Skies: Pilot Encounters With UFOs (Citadel Press, Kensington Publishing Corp., NY, 2003) discussed the controversial Mantell incident and also lends doubt to the Lt. Gorman case, also portrayed in "U.F.O."

Nevertheless, the old 1956 film stands up well as a monument to the UFO mystery's longevity. In a breathtaking manner, stilted though the acting often appears, the movie itself bears witness to the fact that it isn't just some farmer out in a field who reports "flying saucers," because high-ranking military and government personnel see them, too -- and in many instances high-ranking authorities who investigate UFO reports are themselves shaken by the evidence.

"U.F.O." exemplifies this and exudes a timeless charm, not because the acting suffers, but because the producer's wish to tell the people the truth is so evident and so welcome. We long for such integrity, the sort of thing we can't even expect from our own government anymore. But for a brief time between 1947 and 1952, U.S. government personnel entertained a growing belief in a somewhat open atmosphere that the likely source of "saucers," apparently under intelligent control, was extraterrestrial. By 1953, the government censorship lid had come crashing down, and the official openness about UFOs as expressed in "U.F.O." would never be seen again. Thus, the 1956 motion picture we note so fondly here isn't only a monument to the film industry's abilities, it's a time capsule of used-to-be as well.

Of Relatively Incredible Things

Welcome to my newest blog, all about the making and background of a true motion picture whose existence enticed and haunted me since I first viewed it on TV in the early sixties. As a UFO researcher and writer, I experienced the rare pleasure of communicating with and receiving written responses from some of the documentary's main participants. In the months to come, I hope to post numerous visuals such as letters and the movie's diverse promotional material.

Pictured today are two movie-related items. First is page one of the late Tom Towers' very own copy of the script. Tom, who portrayed Al Chop in the key role, confessed when I corresponded with him in the seventies that the cherished storage spot for the script was behind his living room sofa, where it remained for years. Incidentally, his 1954 script encountered numerous changes during the movie's filming and prior to release two years later, and at times is actually unrecognizable when compared with the finished production.

When "U.F.O." hit national theaters in May of 1956, Tom Towers' friends who owned the Krim theater in Detroit put his name in lights on the marquee and sent him the photo shown here, and I can say that he valued this picture and his personal copy of the script more than anything else related to the movie. Getting top billing over George Sanders and crew in "Death of a Scoundrel" certainly was quite an accomplishment, even in a scenario contrived by friends!

I realize all too well that you may never have seen "U.F.O." But maybe you will one day, I hope so. Whether familiar with it or not, my intention is to guide you through its 92 minutes of historical significance -- and the implications of the UFO phenomenon as depicted via that celluloid journey. The fact that producer Clarence Greene's creation also includes two of the best early films of UFOs in existence (the Montana and Utah films), still unexplained after decades, enhances the documentary's feel for an exquisitely real mystery.

I'm also putting up links regarding the movie, and a couple of my old magazine articles about "U.F.O." can be accessed on the Web.

Finally today, the unusual title of this blog entry derives from a statement given by General John Samford following the famous Washington, D. C. UFO tensions of 1952. A portion of Samford's press conference is shown in the movie, and at one point he states that some UFO witnesses are "credible observers of relatively incredible things." The importance of this brief phrase was never lost upon UFO researchers, nor was it ignored when Clarence Greene produced his motion picture. In fact, General Samford's statement endures and enjoys eternal publicity largely because of the movie's influence amongst serious researchers.