Mulder, Scully, and Kimball?

Published March 8, 2005

By C. W. Oberleitner

Did Walt Disney, with the help of producer, writer, director Ward Kimball, one of Disney's legendary Nine Old Men, almost beat the FOX network to an X-Files-like story of UFOs and government cover-up by nearly forty years? The success of last year's Disney Treasures two-disc DVD release of Tomorrowland: Disney In Space And Beyond is sending new generations of Disney animation and Ward Kimball fans to the Internet to learn more about the DVD's three Disneyland TV series space exploration shows. And, they're learning that Walt and Ward may have found out a whole lot more about space exploration than ever made it to television.

To Infinity and Beyond

Tomorrowland wasn't just the name of a section at the Disneyland theme park, it was also a regular part of Walt's weekly television series in the 1950s where he explored the exciting possibilities of space travel. Producer Director Ward Kimball presented a dazzling series of shows that drew on his own fertile imagination as well as factual material, presented by such leading scientific minds as Werner von [sic] Braun, Willy Ley, and Heinz Haber. "Man In Space," "Mars and Beyond," "Man And The Moon," and "Eyes In Outer Space" are as fascinating today as they were when they first appeared.

[Excerpted from Tomorrowland: Disney In Space And Beyond, liner notes written by film critic, historian, and author of The Disney Films, Leonard Maltin.]

A prominent member of Germany's V-2 rocket missile development team during World War II, a director of technical development of the U.S. Army's ballistic missile program at Redstone Arsenal, and later Director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, Dr. Wernher Von Braun first met Walt Disney and producer/director Ward Kimball when the pair approached Von Braun and several of his colleagues to act as consultants for a segment of the Disneyland television series to be called "Man In Space." Eager to find ways to get the American public behind the country's nascent space program, the pentagon and Von Braun and his colleagues jumped at the chance.

With the support of the Department of Defense, the help of Von Braun, and colleagues Willy Ley and Heinz Haber, Kimball and his team soon found that they had far more material than they needed to produce a one-hour television program. Disney, too, saw the material's potential and ordered that the project be expanded into a three-part series.

Walt may have been fascinated by what he saw but he was far too busy ironing out Disneyland park's operational kinks and shortcomings, not the least of which was a very underdeveloped Tomorrowland, to become directly involved in the production of the space exploration series. That job fell to Kimball, who, with his usual gusto and zeal, threw himself into a remarkable understanding of astrophysics.

First broadcast and then repeated between 1955 and 1959, the Tomorrowland space series was the forerunner of what we now call "edutainment." Kimball knew that audiences would not sit still for an hour-long lecture on how one gets off the planet and into space. As a master storyteller himself, he realized that what the Disney studio did best was to tell stories. The fact that the audience was about to learn something along the way was an added bonus.

The third show in the series, Mars And Beyond, is perhaps the most ambitious of the three space-based programs. Predating Carl Sagan by decades, through Paul Frees' narration, Kimball's story acknowledges the mathematical likelihood of some form of life on other planets. From Jules Verne and H. G. Wells to 50s pulp fiction and science fiction B pictures of the day, Mars And Beyond includes a brilliant, satirical look at our fascination with extraterrestrial life. Long before Sigourney Weaver waxed her first Xenomorph, the hero of Kimball's SciFi satire is a young, buxom, animated woman.

An inveterate collector himself, Kimball, according to Navy physicist Bruce Maccabee, had a large collection of UFO books and magazines. America in the 50s was obsessed with UFOs, especially after a group of them was spotted flying over the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.

Trust No One

Kimball had good reason to be interested in the idea of life possibly visiting Earth from other worlds. He was getting information straight from the Air Force's mouth.

According to one Disney historian, Kimball and Von Braun had become good friends while working on the Tomorrowland shows. "They found they had a lot of interests in common," said the historian who still works with the Disney Company and asked not to be named.

When first told of Kimball's friendship with the man widely regarded as the father of America's space program, Disney fans often find this friendship curious since the wryly imaginative Kimball is most often remembered for his life-long fascination with a far more terrestrial form of transportation: railroads and model trains.

"It was Von Braun who recommended Ward to Project Blue Book," said the Disney historian. Project Blue Book was a program of the U. S. Air Force that, from 1947 to 1969, investigated reports and sightings of "unidentified flying objects" (UFOs).

From the beginning, critics questioned the Air Force's commitment to rigorous, scientific investigation of these sightings. Project Blue Book investigated 12, 618 UFO sightings, 701 of which remain unidentified.

"The Air Force wanted to prepare the public for alien arrival," continued the historian. He said Kimball publicly acknowledged this and that his remarks were well documented on the Internet. "Just type in "Ward Kimball and UFOs" in Google."

A Google search on the phrase "Ward Kimball and UFOs" generates 379 links, not all of which refer to the Disney animator. A great many of those links contain accounts of an appearance by Kimball at a 1979 Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) symposium held in San Francisco, California.

[Links to several of the sites visited while researching this story will be posted at the end of the article.—Editor]

The essence of these accounts is about Kimball speaking of his interest in the subject of UFOs. Then to a stunned audience, he related the story of how the government approached Walt Disney, prior to the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik, to make a UFO documentary, the purpose of which was to help acclimatize the American population to the reality of extraterrestrials.

During the speech, Kimball said that sometime in 1955 or 1956, Disney was contacted by the Air Force and asked to cooperate on a documentary about UFOs. As part of the deal, the Air Force offered to supply actual UFO footage, which Disney could include in the film.

According to Kimball, at that time it wasn't unusual for either Walt or the studio to go along with the government's wishes. During World War II, the military practically took over Disney's Burbank facilities, and the studios produced dozens of hours of military training and war effort films featuring Disney characters, like Donald Duck. It was the early years of the Cold War, we weren't yet involved in Viet Nam, and Americans by and large trusted the government.

The studio began work on the requested UFO documentary. Animators were asked to imagine what an alien would look like, while Walt waited for the Air Force to deliver the promised film of actual UFOs.

"Walt and Ward were going to fly to Washington for the final meeting and return with the UFO footage," said the Disney historian in an account that differs slightly from those posted on the Internet. "Then at the last minute they were told by the Pentagon that the meeting had been canceled."

One Internet account of the story states:

Kimball told researcher Stanton Friedman that once he found out there would be no delivery of UFO film, he personally spoke with an Air Force Colonel who told him, "there indeed was plenty of UFO footage, but that neither Ward, nor anyone else, was going to get access to it.

According to another account of the story, attributed to Bruce Maccabee, the project was canceled; however, the studio went ahead and made a short film out of the work already completed. Jonathan Winters supplied the character voices, including an old lady and a little boy. Most accounts agree Kimball ran this short film, sans any government footage, as part of his MUFON presentation.

Of particular interest among the Internet accounts of Kimball's MUFON appearance are the stories about the number of times, since offering films authenticating the existence of UFOs to Disney, that the government has pulled this same bait and switch move on other documentary producers.

More disturbing, however, are the stories about a British photographer who, in 1995, reported being invited in 1972 to a dinner with a prominent Disney Company executive, several animators, and Ward Kimball. According to the photographer's story a "well known" Disney employee offered to show him some "unusual film footage." Taking the man up on his offer, the photographer described the film as "old footage of UFOs, and two beings, that he was told were aliens."

Journal Entry

Despite the fact that Kimball supposedly told his story, about the Air Force's attempts to "acclimate" the American public to the existence of extraterrestrial visitors to Earth, before a public symposium in 1979, only one of the Internet accounts, located for this article, was a first-person account of that presentation. The majority of the accounts of Kimball's MUFON appearance were placed on the web shortly after his death in 2002.

MUFON's website does not have a searchable archive of past events. As of press time, there has been no response to emails regarding the authenticity of these reports.

Only Bruce Maccabee, posting to UFO Updates on March 16, 2000 prior to Kimball's death, reports having attended the MUFON presentation. He is the only UFOlogist writing about the Disney/Air Force connection to have actually met and spoken with Kimball:

I met Kimball in 1980. I was at his house. I saw his tremendous collection of model trains...

You may wonder how I, a commoner, would happen to know Mr. Kimball. Well, to make a long story short, when the Fund for UFO Research (FUFOR) was founded in 1979 we scoured the world... sort of... for big names to be on the National Board of Directors. One of our major supporters knew Ward and suggested that he might be interested, so she arranged for me to meet him. That's how I got to his house. That's how he became one of the original 10 members of the National Board of FUFOR.

"Ward was a diarist," the historian contacted for this story said. "He journaled everything. That's what made him such a great interview. You'd ask him some question about the past at Disney and he'd reach up on shelf and pull down a diary for that period."

If that's true, then somewhere among Kimball's papers are probably detailed records not only of his 1979 MUFON appearance but his activities before, during, and after the production of the Tomorrowland space exploration shows. Hopefully, some day in the not too distant future, perhaps his family will make this modern day Leonardo's writings available to a world eager to learn from the master himself.

The Beat Goes On

The present day Walt Disney Company, under the leadership of Michael Eisner, has produced two television programs on the subject of extraterrestrials and UFOs.

During February and March of 1995 for only a few markets, Disney ran a one-hour special hosted by actor Robert Ulrich entitled Alien Encounters. The show, also known as Alien Encounters from the New Tomorrowland, was originally created to help promote the opening of the newly remodeled Tomorrowland and brand new Alien Encounters attraction at the Walt Disney World resort in Florida. Viewers of the Alien Encounters television special were more impressed, however, by the credibility of the show's documentation of the likelihood of real extraterrestrials visiting Earth than they were by Tomorrowland's latest thrill ride.

On February 25, Disney-owned ABC TV ran a two-hour documentary, Peter Jennings Reporting: UFO —Seeing Is Believing. The program was not a tie-in with any other Disney film or theme park attraction. It reported on the scope of the UFO experience from the first credible sighting in 1947 to the present day. The program featured interviews with police officers, pilots, military personnel, scientists, and ordinary citizens who give their accounts of encounters with the unexplained. Also included were the views of professional skeptics about UFOs, including scientists who are leading the search for life-forms beyond Earth, elsewhere in the universe.

Ward Kimball's remarks to the 1979 MUFON symposium, regarding a possible earlier Disney film about aliens and UFOs visiting Earth, was not discussed during either Alien Encounters or UFOs—Seeing Is Believing.

Referenced Sites

UFO UpDates 03/16/00

Disclosure Pattern: A Disney Connection

MUFON Mutual UFO Network

UFO-Folklore Center

Aquarian Age Information Central

UFO Evidence

The UFO Phenomenon -- Seeing Is Believing

news & features

Publicity still of Ward Kimball and Walt Disney.

In addition to writing, producing and directing the Tomorrowland space exploration shows Ward Kimball also acted as co-host with Walt Disney.

Walt Disney and Dr. Wernher Von Braun.

Way before the movie "Alien," Tomorrowland's "Mars and Beyond" featured a female heroine fending off hordes of alien beings.