For as long as humanity has looked up at the night sky, it has wondered one thing: 'Do you think it will rain later?' Oh, and we have also always been haunted by the wonderful and horrifying possibility that aliens prowl the cosmos. The latest person to be visited by this spectre is none other than Hollywood legend Steven Spielberg.
Spielberg is no stranger to extraterrestrials. He previously made the captivating Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the wonderful War of the Worlds, and he tried his best with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Still, his fantastic new movie, Disclosure Day, might be his most interesting take on aliens yet. The film follows cybersecurity expert Daniel Kellner and meteorologist Margaret Fairchild, who find themselves at the heart of a plan to expose a cover-up of extraterrestrial secrets.
I won't say any more, as this is the type of film you need to see in a cinema (preferably on the biggest screen in your town), but it's basically a fun and engaging mishmash of various conspiracy theories and alien anecdotes. There are all the classics, including Roswell, Flight 1628, and even the recent Pentagon UFO videos. Yet among all the familiar UFO stories, the filmmaker also makes use of one lesser-known but no less chilling urban legend for his film.
The Urban Legend: Nixon and Gleason
In Disclosure Day, we are told the government stopped telling presidents about aliens after a previous Commander in Chief took some unknown actor friend to see the aliens. This is the tale of President Richard Nixon and his friend, the comedian Jackie Gleason. Nixon and Gleason became friends in the 1960s, with the actor even endorsing Nixon's 1968 presidential campaign. Apparently, they bonded over a love of golf, but they also shared a fascination with aliens.
Supposedly, after a few cocktails on February 19, 1973, the president drove Gleason to Homestead Air Force Base in Florida, where he showed him something that would leave the star traumatised. While there, Nixon ordered soldiers to show his friend the embalmed bodies of four alien beings. These otherworldly visitors were two feet tall, had small bald heads, and big ears. The nature of their death and the recovery of the bodies were never explained.
After seeing the creatures, Gleason was sworn to secrecy and returned home to his wife, Beverly McKittrick Gleason, who said he came in looking visibly shaken, pale, and haggard. Gleason then confided in his wife what he had seen, making her swear never to tell a soul about the aliens, fearing it might damage his reputation.
How the Story Emerged
If Gleason and his wife made a vow of secrecy, how do we know what went down? After Gleason and Beverly got divorced, she started telling people. Specifically, she wrote about it in an unpublished memoir and started telling people about it in interviews in the 1980s. The story eventually ran in the always unreliable National Enquirer under the headline: 'Space aliens exist! Ask Jackie Gleason — he's actually seen them'.
Is It True?
There are more holes in this story than a broken colander. The first issue is that the president cannot just drive to an airbase, like someone nipping out for milk from the Co-Op. They are always surrounded by security and tracked. We then have to consider Beverly's motivations. She told the story while trying to sell her book, and what better way to get publishers' interest than spinning a yarn about a disgraced president and aliens. Finally, some UFOlogists often point to Gleason's interest in UFOs as proof he 'knew' something about alien life, but his obsession began in the late 1950s and 1960s, decades before the supposed trip to the base.
And yet, Nixon's diary does reveal he met Gleason on that day in February. Sadly, the president's published schedule left no room for a drunken trip to see some alien mummies, but why let the truth get in the way of a good story? Spielberg certainly didn't.
Disclosure Day is in cinemas now.
