|
Home |
The Internet Corner for Books, Poems and everything! |
|||
|
Writer's Block Corner |
||||
| - -The Next Generation In Publishing - - | ||||
 |
 |
 |
||
| Fiction Books Non-fiction Books Short Stories Poetry Internet & Business Related Books Accessories |
||||
|
NaturalHealthNewsletters.com provides one of the most complete collections of
Free Newsletters for Natural Health and Alternative Medicine on the internet.
You can receive Free articles, book reviews, Recipes and more on topics ranging
from Nutrition, Fitness to Herbal Remedies and Holistic Medicine The Ideal place
to go to learn how to improve your health. |
||||
|
This article was originally written for a paranormal magazine called The Paranormal Journal, it became known as The Underground Files covering ghosts, ufos, cryptozoology, and government conspiracies amongst others. I no longer write for the magazine and it is no longer in existence. UFOs and the Disney Connection Jiminy Cricket, The Cheshire Cat, The March Hare, The Mad Hatter – any clues yet? We’ve heard of Disney but this guy, this animator, also redesigned Mickey Mouse in 1938… His name was Ward Kimball, referred to by Walt Disney as one of the trusted ‘nine old men.’ This was Disney’s nickname for his very own supreme court of animators. Kimball died in Arcadia, California in 1988. He joined the Disney studios in 1934 to rise up the ranks to become a directing animator on classics Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Fantasia and Peter Pan. He directed Disney shorts Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom in 1953 and It’s Tough to Be a Bird in 1969 – they were all Oscar winners. What isn’t known and is a pleasant surprise, Kimball was an avid believer in UFOs and ‘things’ Outer Space. According to physicist Bruce Maccabee who met with him in 1980, he had a large collection of UFO books and magazines. Maccabee visited Kimball at his house to recruit him as one of the 10 original board members for the Fund for UFO Research and Kimball accepted the position. Kimball worked with technical advisor Werhner Von Braun to write and direct three key outer space documentaries for the Disneyland TV series. Man in Space, Man and the Moon and Mars and Beyond. Kimball referred to them as “the creative high point to my career.” According to Disney spokesman Howard E. Green, the three space documentaries are “often credited with popularizing the concept of the government’s space program in the 1950s. The first of these, the 1955 Man in Space, viewed by over 42 million people, was so popular – Kimball stated President Eisenhower phoned the Walt Disney from the White House asking for a copy of the production. When Disney asked why, Eisenhower replied, “Well, I’m going to show it to those stove-shirt generals who don’t believe we’re going to be up there!” Kimball, at the July 1979 MUFON UFO symposium in California, told a stunned audience that the government had approached Walt Disney prior to Sputnik to make a UFO documentary to help acclimatize the American population to the reality of extraterrestrials. He also stated in the speech he was contacted by the USAF around 1955 or ‘56 and asked to participate on a documentary on UFOs, they offered to supply actual UFO footage, which Disney would be allowed to use in his film. Kimball states that Disney
went along with USAF plan, the event not unusual – use of Walt Disney cartoons
had been suggested by the 1953 CIA Robertson UFO panel as part of
public-education program involving the mass media to “strip the UFO phenomenon
of its special status and eliminate the aura of mystery it has
acquired.” This went further – according to a December 16th, 1954 FBI document made a SAC Contact with the FBI, which elevated him from his former position as an informant for the agency. The confidential internal FBI memo read: “Because of Mr Disney’s position as the foremost producer of cartoon files in the motion picture industry, and his prominence and wide acquaintanceship in film production matters, it is believed that he can be of valuable assistance to this office…” Once Walt Disney had finished his meetings with USAF, he began work on the requested UFO documentary for the public. He asked his animators to imagine what an alien would look like and waited for the Air Force to deliver the promised film. However, he was contacted again by the USAF but was informed the request for the film would have to be withdrawn. There would be no UFO footage as promised. Kimball told researcher Stanton Friedman that once he found out there would be no delivery of such film; Kimball personally spoke to an Air Force Colonel who told him, “there indeed was plenty of footage, but that neither Ward, nor anyone else, was going to get access to it.” This put a temporary halt on the project. An account by Bruce Maccabee put it like this: “Disney cancelled the project but by this time a lot of animated film of creatures, had been completed by his artists. So Disney went ahead and made a short ‘documentary’ anyway, featuring Jonathan Winters impersonating various ‘characters’ associated with typical UFO lore.” “I specifically recall Mr. Winters as old lady/grandmother who saw a UFO and reported it… then he portrayed the Air Force officer who investigated the sightings and offered explanations. He also portrayed a little boy in a room who had a telescope looking up at the stars and, to the little boy’s amazement, an alien came through the telescope into his room. Of course the boy’s father did not believe that story.” The UFO documentary was never shown to the public, but Kimball did show the 15-20 minute piece at the 1979 UFO Symposium. UFOs and the Disney Connection written by Bill Barber |
||||
 |
||||
 |
||||
|
|
||||
|
BACK TO Poetry OR Short Stories OR Articles |
||||
|
Home Our Aims Bookcase Book Shop |
||||