Showing posts with label Lecture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lecture. Show all posts

Thursday, September 14, 2023

Donald E. Keyhoe: From Saucers to Swamp Gas


Donald E. Keyhoe was born in Iowa in 1897, so he was a 50-year-old man during the summer the flying saucers arrived in 1947. He went on to become the best-known figure on the topic, and this article is chiefly a scrapbook on him as a pioneering author and UFO lecturer. It’s not intended as a complete biography, but along the way we’ll hit some of his career highlights. 
 

Donald Edward Keyhoe was a retired Marine major who had served in World War I and became a writer of both news articles and fiction, including adventure stories for pulp magazines. 

In 1927 Charles Lindbergh made his historic solo trans-Atlantic flight. Afterwards, he flew across the US on a 3-month publicity tour, managed by retired Marine pilot Donald E. Keyhoe. The experience was later documented by Keyhoe in the 1928 book, Flying with Lindbergh. That was the start of Keyhoe’s new career as an author of adventure stories and non-fiction. 

Keyhoe’s article on the potential of rocketry and space in The Baltimore Sun, April 10, 1938, “To Paris by Rocket.” His closing lines discussed the price of being a pioneer:

“The first who dares will probably never be heard of again. Many others may follow and fail before the secrets of space are learned. But success will come. There has never been a frontier which man has not dared to cross.” 


In 1949 the editor of True magazine sent Keyhoe the assignment on the flying saucer story, hoping Keyhoe’s military contacts could help him penetrate the secrecy by the government. The resulting article was a sensation almost as big as the original fever of 1947, and along with the resulting 1950 book, The Flying Saucers Are Real, proved it was a bankable topic. Keyhoe was persuasive since he focused on factual, documented cases from credible witnesses, but he often leapt far ahead of the evidence. His message solidified some notions that had been circulating into the tenets of  UFO belief:
1) Flying saucers are spacecraft from other worlds. 
2) The government knows it. 
3) There is a government cover-up. 


Keyhoe was promoting flying saucers just as the Air Force was trying to close the book on the problem. They became the villain in Keyhoe's story, and to them, he was a major pain in the neck.
The Buffalo News - Daily News Ad, Jan. 6, 1950

When Keyhoe expanded the material into The Flying Saucers Are Real, he received some free press by claiming authorities were suppressing the book.

Reading Eagle, May 25, 1950

Clip of Donald Keyhoe that was used in the 1950 movie short, The Flying Saucer Mystery.

Keyhoe had a best-selling paperback book, and was in demand by the media, becoming a popular attraction on the lecture circuit. The typical flying saucer lecture was generally held at a public venue, anything from a gymnasium to an auditorium, with a modest admission or donation charged to attendees. The program usually included a speaker or two, followed by a question and answer session. There was also a table set up where the host could sell the guest’s merchandise, and also gather attendees’ addresses for mailing lists, and recruit new members for their organization. 

Keyhoe at press conference about the Washington, DC, UFOs of 1952

Keyhoe’s second book was Flying Saucers from Outer Space, this time a hardcover release.

Ventura County Star-Free Press, Oct. 1, 1953

“He's in demand for serious TV and radio performances, lectures and technical advice. Each morning an average of 20 letters are delivered to his home near Mount Vernon ‘from serious, respectable and the honest persons quote reporting the signings and offering additional information on saucers.’”


Keyhoe NEA news article, Dec. 24, 1953.

The Daily Times, May 15, 1954

Some Professional Advice

Donald Keyhoe frequently corresponded and “talked shop” with Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, the head of the U.S. Air Force UFO investigation from 1951 until 1953. After Ruppelt retired from the AF, and in 1954 he was consulting for the movie, Unidentified Flying Objects: The True Story ofFlying Saucers (released May 1956) and began working on a book about his days with Project Blue Book. Ruppelt asked Keyhoe for business advice. Keyhoe’s June 28, 1954, reply detailed the grind of being on the lecture circuit: 

“You asked about lectures... don't sign up unless you get a good offer, better than the one I had. My outfit took 40% of the gross and I had to pay my own expenses. I wouldn't agree to less than a 70-30 split if I talked next season, and I'd try for 75-25%. You should be able to get some paid engagements out in your area, I think; I don t know any California bureaus, but your movie company people should know some names. You could arrange for evening talks, so they wouldn’t interfere with your work — or Saturday and Sunday appearances, before clubs, etc. Regular bureaus often get $250 for a luncheon engagement from the bigger luncheon clubs, Ad, Rotary, etc.

If you didn’t have to travel out of your area, you would make some money. They’d want about a 30-minute talk, for noonday clubs; 45 minutes to an hour for evening talks. My trouble was that I was scheduled for isolated talks involving expensive travel — to Milwaukee, Kansas City, Buffalo, etc. Considering the lost time, plus expenses, I figure I barely broke even; however, I did it at first in order to get more people talking about my book. I learned later that one good TV program, on a network, is worth twenty such lectures, probably worth a hundred of them.”

June 28, 1954

Flying Saucer Conspiracy, 1955

Detroit Free Press, April 8, 1956

Keyhoe had a 1956  movie based on his 1953 book. Sorta. Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, was "Suggested by the novel Flying Saucers from Outer Space..."

 

The Boston Globe, July 8, 1956

In 1956, Edward J. Ruppelt’s The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects was released, and a few passages had barbs about Keyhoe. Of his 1950 book, “Keyhoe had based his conjecture on fact, and his facts were correct, even if the conjecture wasn't.” Of Keyhoe’s 1953 book, Ruppelt said:

“The book was based on a few of our good UFO reports that were released… The details of the specific UFO sightings that he credits to the Air Force are factual, but in his interpretations of the incidents he blasts way out into the wild blue yonder.”


Daily Press (Newport News, VA), March 22, 1957

The Cincinnati Enquirer, March 25, 1957

The National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) was founded in 1956, with Keyhoe becoming its director early the next year.

Democrat and Chronicle, Nov. 17, 1957

The Pittsburgh Press, Jan. 5, 1958

The Pittsburgh Press, Jan. 10, 1958

Tulsa World, Sept. 7, 1958

The Oklahoma Courier, Oct. 4, 1958

Tulsa World, Nov. 5, 1958

George Adamski was the first Contactee, followed by many imitators came forward claiming to have met aliens, rode in their ships and heard their spiritual messages of cosmic peace  and brotherhood. Keyhoe thought it was all hokum.

UPI story, The Daily Herald, July 13, 1959

Flying Saucers: Top Secret, 1960

The Rock Island Argus, March 27, 1962

Keyhoe continued to get under the skin of the Air Force. In Jan. 1965, his picture appeared in a UFO newspaper article. 

Someone in Project Blue Book made an artistic alteration that indicates they viewed him as a villain.
TV listing March 3, 1966


TV listing March 14, 1966. - The Pittsburgh Press, April 14, 1966

The Kingston Daily Freeman, April 19, 1966

Tulsa World, Nov. 18, 1966

The Y-12 Bulletin, Jan. 18, 1967 (Paper For Y-l2 Employees of Union Carbide Corporation—Nuclear Division, Oak Ridge, Tennessee.)

Swamp Gas

Project Blue Book’s “Swamp Gas” fiasco at the March 1966 flap in Ann Arbor, Michigan, caused a public outrage and an upsurge of interest in flying saucers. The demand for UFO lecturers was so great, two other speakers tried to horn in on Keyhoe’s territory, Jim Moseley, publisher of Saucer News, and the flying saucer physicist, Stanton Friedman.

Akron Beacon, March 30, 1967 (Friedman)

Mt. Vernon Register-News, April 11, 1967 (Moseley)

The findings of the government-contracted UFO evaluation led by Dr. Edward U. Condon was published as Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects in 1969. Keyhoe gave it the thumbs down.

Buffalo News, Jan. 11, 1969

NICAP was struggling with declining membership and financial problems, and in December 1969, the board forced Keyhoe to retire as director. Things continued to decay under the new leadership and NICAP was dissolved in 1980. 

Donald Keyhoe’s final book was Aliens From Space: The Real Story of Unidentified Flying Objects, 1973.

Review from Richmond Times-Dispatch, Dec. 29, 1973


Hynek on Keyhoe's Disclosure Campaign

In the 1975 book, The Edge of Reality, Dr. J. Allen Hynek was asked about UFO literature, “Would you recommend the books by Kehoe?” Hynek replied with some criticism:

“I wouldn't recommend that myself. When I have a seminar on UFOs I do not put that on the reading list, but if a person wants a sociological perspective he should have it, because Kehoe was very largely fighting city he. He took as his objective to vilify the Air Force, to try and get congressional investigations and prove that the Air Force was covering up. What he should have done, of course, was publish solid technical reports on cases and then the sheer weight of those would eventually have toppled the Air Force. But instead he kept importuning congressman and didn't get anywhere.”

Keyhoe on Flying Saucer Crash-Retrievals

The subject of crashed UFOs came up when Keyhoe appeared on a television show in 1975, debating UFOs with a colonel in the USAF. Here’s the Toronto, Canada show listing from The Ottawa Journal, March 15, 1975:

Sunday 7:30 March 16, 1975 (Channel 6) Great Debate Resolved: "That Unidentified Flying. Objects from Outer Space - Exist." Speaking for the motion is Major Donald Keyhoe, author of several books on the subject of UFOs. His opponent Is Colonel William T. Coleman, former chief of Public Information for the U.S. Air Force and a science fiction novelist.

 A recording of the show was archived in the Faded Discs project by Wendy Connors, in the collection “Profiles In Ufology” item no. 20: Major Donald E. Keyhoe and Col. William Coleman, USAF… 41:30

When asked about if any UFOs had been recovered and studied, Keyhoe brought up Silas Newton’s Aztec saucer story. (30:54 in the recording) 

“There was the story about the crashed UFOs way down in the southwest and the small beings who were deep frozen. As far as I’m concerned, you can write that one off. I investigated that for True magazine, years and years ago. The who men who were putting it out were really trying to raise some dough. There may have been such a thing that happened, but I never found any evidence of it.”

(Keyhoe didn’t mention the saucer crash tale in his Jan. 1950 True article, but did discuss it in his first book. He said he’d flown to Denver to investigate, but it “turned out as expected – a dud… a big joke. But in spite of this, the ‘little men’ story goes on and on.”) 

Recognition from MUFON

Ufologist Bob Pratt interviewed Keyhoe by telephone, “in 1977, 1978 and 1979 for thirty to fifty minutes each time.” See: Conversations with Major Keyhoe. 

The annual Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) Symposium was held July 29-30, 1978, in Dayton, Ohio. Major Donald E. Keyhoe delivered the lecture, “Behind the UFO Secrecy," opening with his tenet, “The UFO cover-up is the greatest deception in the history of the United States.” He was later named to MUFON's board of directors, to recognize his lifetime contributions.

MUFON Journal, April 1981

Throughout the 1980s, Keyhoe was often referred to in newspapers and occasionally reached for quotes. Major Donald E. Keyhoe died November 29, 1988, at the age of 91. His obituary appeared in the Washington Post, Dec. 2, 1988.

Lincoln Journal Star, Dec. 7, 1988


Thursday, July 7, 2022

UFO Expert and Lecturer, Norman S. Bean

 

Norman S. Bean was a first-generation ufologist. He was born in 1906, so he was a full-grown man when the 1947 news of flying saucers captured his life-long interest. Electronics engineer by trade, his 1967 profile in the Palm Beach Press described him as a graduate of Tufts College, Mass., who had “designed electrical equipment for Pan-American Airways, Philco Corp. and RCA. In 1943 he designed a television camera for guided missile projects: after the war he is credited with designing the first RCA commercial TV camera for both sports and studio use.”

Broadcast News, Oct. 1946

Around 1950, Bean became the electronics and TV engineer for station WTJV in Miami, Florida. In his spare time, Bean kept up with UFO literature and gathered enough knowledge that in 1952, he began lecturing locally on the topic, sometimes as often as three times a week, His position was that flying saucers were real, and he believed them to be spaceships from another planet. 

He didn’t speak much about it publicly, but Bean and his wife Louise had a strong interest in psychic phenomena. “I read a book about Edgar Cayce's life in 1952. It opened my eyes and changed my way of thinking.” His passion was flying saucers, and he connected with others who shared his interest, including the saucer clubs that started forming. He also became friends with a notable UFO witness from Miami, Pan American World Airways pilot Bill Nash, of the July 14, 1952, Nash-Fortenberry UFO sighting.

 

Bill Nash

Bean’s First Saucer Sightings

They say, “seeing is believing,” but up until late 1953, Bean had been believing without seeing. From Bean’s letter to The Little Listening Post newsletter:

"There have just been two saucer sightings over Miami. March 18 [1954] I had my first daylight sighting. Saucer was following a B-36. Several witnesses, (one my technical assistant, Carl McClure, is an ex-navy spotter.) It was his first sighting. I had a night sighting ln Sept. [1953], through my telescope. On that occasion I watched the object hover for four minutes. It was glowing red."

As we shall see, Bean was just getting started.

 

Norman Bean on left. From PIC magazine, June 1954

At the beginning his ufology career, James Moseley went to Miami in Feb. 1954 to meet William Nash and “contacted a number of interesting people... Norman Bean, a pseudo-engineer and saucerer who'd invented a psychic machine that he claimed healed people at a distance; and marine PFC Ralph Mayher, whom Nash had put me onto. In late July 1952 Mayher had shot some movie film of a saucer. His superiors took the film to a local television station to have it developed, where it was processed by none other than Norman Bean.” (Shockingly Close to the Truth, 2002). Bean only played a minor supporting role in  this UFO case, but the full story can be found at NICAP’s page on the Mayher film

Besides his frequent lectures, Bean also frequently appeared on local radio stations to talk about flying saucers and their origins. At these appearances, members of the audience would sometimes tell him stories they heard about captured flying saucers, and even alien bodies. When in March 1954 Bean was unable to speak as planned, he asked his friend Bill Nash to fill in.

The Saucerian, Jan. 1955

Based on some of those second-hand tales, Nash said in his lecture on saucer, he said he was convinced, "the Air Force has collected hardware from outer space." That caused quite a stir and launched even more rumors and speculation. (For more on that story, see Captured UFOs and Building Hangar 18: A Chronology.”


Agent of N.I.C.A.P. 

NICAP (the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena) described both Bean and Nash as “member-investigators” and also on their “Panel of Special Advisors.” They’d later refine that a bit, listing Bean among their “Scientific and Technical” panel.  

Bean in 1959

With Sputnik and the UFO flap of 1957, his lectures had titles such as, “Satellites and Saucers, and "Mystery from Outer Space." Things slowed down but never stopped. The 1966 saucer flap put UFO speakers back in big demand, and it kept Bean in front of eager audiences.



Here is What Bean Believes about UFOs

Now for our feature presentation, an excellent profile on Norman S. Bean’s first two decades as a ufologist, from the Tampa Bay Times, July 22, 1973, written by Gene Rider.


Illustration by Rick McCormick.


13 UFOs over Miami

The press continued to be interested in Bean’s views on UFOs. The Bulletin (Bend, Oregon), Jan. 9, 1974, reported that Bean believed saucers were extraterrestrial ships that are magnetically controlled, powered by atomic reactors for anti-gravity flight, and that when an earthly nation discovers the secret, “it will rule the skies.” The Miami News, Nov. 6, 1975, reported, “Bean, who says he has seen 13 UFOs over Miami in the last decade or so, said it is not unusual for the objects to sit suspended over airports.” Bean said, "This happens at airports all over the world. It's as if they are curious about our methods of flight."


The Bermuda Triangle… and Roswell?

Charles Berlitz's 1974 book, The Bermuda Triangle included some UFO cases, and two of them were provided by Norman S. Bean. 


In the 1979 documentary based on the book, the credits listed a few ufologists among the technical advisors including William L. Moore, Don Berliner and Bean.

Bean was also mentioned in 1980 book by Berlitz and Bill Moore, The Roswell Incident. It was in a section titled, “Holes in the Cover-up,” a passage about a rumor that had been repeated about an of alien autopsy…

Norman Bean, Miami, Florida, electronics engineer, inventor, and lecturer on UFOs, remembers an incident that took place in the mid-fifties. After a lecture he had just given he had a conversation with a retired air force officer, a Colonel Lake, who informed him that a close friend had talked to a doctor in Dayton, Ohio, at some length about the autopsies of the "saucer" crew in which he had participated. According to Colonel Lake, the internal organs were similar to those of human beings, with basic organs "just like chickens and people." Colonel Lake, naturally aware of security regulations, said he could talk about this now in a general way because "all this is going to be a matter of public information in a few months." 

By the time of the Roswell book, Bean was in his mid-70s, and retired, but not from ufology. The Feb. 1981 MUFON Journal announced him as their new State Director for Florida. 

“It is an extreme pleasure to announce that one of the pioneers in UFOlogy in the U.S.A. has accepted the position of State Director for Florida. Norman S. Bean, a retired RCA engineer… Norman has interviewed several thousand UFO sighting witnesses during the 30 years he has been lecturing on UFOs. Many of our new MUFON members in Florida have joined as a result of the radio talk programs that Mr. Bean has participated in around south Florida.” 

After serving almost four years, Bean retired from the role in late 1984 due to “his inability to travel and advancing age.” A few years later, the MUFON Journal, April 1987 carried some sad news. 

Bob Pratt learned from Mrs. Louise Bean that her husband Norman Bean, former State Director for Florida, died on December 8, 1986 at the age of 80. Mr. Bean, a retired RCA engineer with many television related patents and truly a UFO pioneer, was recognized by Larry King on his CNN radio show, featuring the Japan Air Lines flight 1628 UFO sighting report. Norman had appeared on many of Larry King's radio programs when they both lived in Miami, Florida. 

Norman Stuart Bean 1906-1986

Gone, but we remember...

. . .

 

For more news clippings on Norman Bean’s UFO cases and lectures, see the PDF clipping collection at NICAP.



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