Ray Harryhausen’s special effects wizardry brought flying saucers alive in the 1956 film, “Earth vs. the Flying Saucers,” which was released at the peak of the saucer craze.
Kenneth Arnold was piloting his private plane over Mount Rainier in Washington on June 24, 1947, when he suddenly saw nine silver flying discs, each shaped “like a saucer if you skip it across water,” according to Arnold.
The highly publicized sighting not only led to the coining of the term “flying saucer,” but also led to a rash of similar sightings across the country. Of course, the idea of beings from other worlds traveling to the Earth in spaceships had already become a staple in science fiction, but Arnold’s sighting, and others that quickly followed, seemed to inflame the public’s imagination.
The flying saucers may or may not have literally come to Earth, but the mysterious allure of them immediately landed fully formed into American pop culture. Books, magazines, films, television — all were awash in tales of space aliens visiting earth in flying saucers.
Aliens come to the dime store in this Torrance Press ad, Oct. 16, 1952, Page 9. (Credit: Torrance Historical Newspaper and Directories Archive database, Torrance Public Library)
The U.S. government, especially the newly formed United States Air Force, denied any knowledge ot the existence of the dazzling extraterrestrial spacecraft, which only seemed to fuel public imagination and curiosity.
The Air Force did collect data and issue studies on the phenomenon, assigning a broader term, unidentified flying objects (UFOs), in 1952 to describe all types of such sightings.
The Flying Saucers ride at Disneyland in Anaheim operated from 1961 to 1966. It was located where the Tomorrowland Stage, opened in 1967, now stands. (Credit: Los Angeles Public Library, Herald Examiner photo collection)
Mrs, Clyde Beck of Torrance reported what was believed to be the city’s first flying saucer, a shiny silver hovering object, while dining outdoors with two friends at her Hollywood Riviera home on March 12, 1952, according to the Torrance Herald.
Of course, there were those earthlings who testified that the saucers not only were real, but also had landed long enough to pick up them up and take them for a spin.
Truman Bethurum
On Sept. 24, 1953, Redondo Beach resident Truman Bethurum told the Daily Breeze that he had seen flying saucers, and, what’s more, had been taken aboard one of them for a flight while working on a road crew near Glendale Junction, Nevada.
The article caused a sensation, and over a series of stories, Bethrum revealed that he had taken 11 such flights with aliens from the planet Clarion, who were led by their captain, Aura Rhanes.
According to one Breeze story, Capt. Rahnes was a beautiful woman who had a “slender Latin-type face” and wore a radiant red skirt, black velvet short sleeve blouse and a black beret with red trim.
Clarion was a planet that always stayed on the far side of the moon’s orbit, and therefore could not be detected from Earth.
Donald Keyhoe’s 1950 book sold half a million copies.
Bethurum’s fanciful, detailed stories were a hit on the lecture circuit and he did many radio and television interviews about them. In 1954, he wrote a book, Aboard a Flying Saucer, that told his whole story, and wrote several other related books.
Alas, after his initial visits with the Clarionites, they never returned to visit again. Neither did Bethurum, who moved from Redondo Beach in the late 1960s. He later lived in Arizona and Salt Lake City, and died in Yucca Valley in 1969.
During his time in the South Bay, Bethurum became friends with a precursor in the field, George Adamski, one of the first self-styled UFO “experts.” Adamski co-wrote the 1953 book, Flying Saucers Have Landed, based on his encounter with “Saucerians” in the desert near Blythe in November 1952. Two years later, his book Inside the Space Ships was published.
Adamski also appeared locally on the lecture circuit, showing picture of purported extraterrestrial phenomenon taken at the Palomar Observatory in San Diego County.
Torrance Press, Jan. 7, 1954, Page 1. Click to enlarge. (Credit: Torrance Historical Newspaper and Directories Archive database, Torrance Public Library)
To the Torrance Herald’s credit, reporter Ralph R. Gompertz researched and interviewed Adamski, publishing a story on Jan. 7, 1954, that concluded that Gompertz was in reality the head of a religious cult that “capitalized on the popularity of flying saucers” to spread his utopian ideas.
Not to be outdone, former flight attendant Glora Lee of Rolling Hills also claimed to have encountered extraterrestrials while working as a hostess at Los Angeles International Airport in September 1953.
Allegedly with help from an inhabitant from Jupiter, she wrote the book, Why We Are Here, about her experiences. In 1959, she gave a talk entitled, “Revelations From the Space People — on Love, Sex and Marriage,” before members of a group interested in outer space contact called Understanding, according to the Herald.
Ad for an upcoming speaking appearance by Phillip Knox. Torrance Herald, March 10, 1957, Page 10. (Credit: Torrance Historical Newspaper and Directories Archive database, Torrance Public Library)
Phillip Knox was another frequent speaker on the South Bay lecture circuit during the 1950s whose talks combined photos of flying saucers and other unexplained phenomenon with religious themes.
The Air Force kept statistics on UFO sightings through its Project Sign, Project Grudge and Project Blue Book. Most of those recorded during the 1950s and 1960s involved saucer-like craft. The Air Force stopped collecting data on the topic in 1970.
By the 1970s, invading spaceships had taken on a variety of different forms. Sightings were more easily debunked as resulting from a variety of non-alien sources such as weather balloons, vapor trails from missile launches and other more mundane causes.
California leads the nation with more than 12,000 reported sightings of UFOs, according to the National UFO Reporting Center and the UFO Sightings Desk Reference, a first-of-its-kind book that analyzes such sightings.
A SpaceX rocket launched 30 minutes after sunset from Vandenberg AFB glows in extremely clear skies. The sight alarmed residents across the L.A. area. Dec. 22, 2017. (Photo by Gene Blevins for the Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)
Sightings still occur — an apparition resulting from a SpaceX Falcon Nine launch on Dec. 22, 2017 caused an uproar across Southern California — but most (though not all) of them can be explained logically.
Maybe things really were more fun back when we wanted to believe inhabitants from Jupiter and Mars — and Clarion — really were swinging by for a visit to Earth.
This 1951 Popular Library paperback helped fuel the craze.
Sources:
Daily Breeze files.
Torrance Herald files.
UFO Casebook website.
A group of four youths spotted this object that “glowed reddish-white” while they were at the Redondo Beach Pier in 1967. (Credit: UFO Casebook website)
Chris Christensen on his flying-saucer shaped houseboat in Los Angeles Harbor in 1975. (Credit: UCLA Library Special Collections, Los Angeles Times Photo Archives)
