Remember that time when President Richard Nixon showed “The Honeymooners” star Jackie Gleason some dead alien bodies? If you’re well-versed in conspiracy theories and urban legends, you’ve probably heard about this absolutely bonkers rumor at some point. The story goes that in 1973, then-President Nixon took his good friend Jackie Gleason to Homestead Air Force Base in Florida, where he proceeded to show Gleason “six or eight of what looked like glass-topped Coke freezers” which contained what Gleason first thought were “the mangled remains” of children.
But ah! They weren’t children at all! They were dead aliens recovered from a crashed flying saucer! The experience rattled Gleason, who eventually spilled the beans of what happened to his wife Beverly. A decade later, the Gleasons had divorced, and Beverly published a story about the incident in the tabloid rag the National Enquirer. It all sounds hard to believe, but according to Steven Spielberg’s new alien conspiracy thriller “Disclosure Day,” it really happened. In fact, Spielberg goes ahead and recreates the infamous moment, complete with actors playing Nixon and Gleason.
Did Richard Nixon show Jackie Gleason some dead aliens?
Early in “Disclosure Day,” whistleblower Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor) shows his girlfriend Jane (Eve Hewson) some old security camera footage he’s stolen from the nefarious, secretive company he works for. The black and white footage shows someone who appears to be Richard Nixon greeting a heavyset man at a military base. When Jane asks Daniel who the “guy with Nixon” is, he replies: “Some old TV comedian.” While Gleason’s name is never mentioned, anyone familiar with the urban legend can connect the dots. As the footage continues, Nixon takes Gleason into a building and shows him some glass containers housing dead alien bodies. Watching the video, Jane is understandably shocked.
So … did this event really happen? It depends on who you ask, I guess. According to Skeptoid, the story published in the National Enquirer was billed as being from Beverly Gleason’s “bombshell book” that would reveal the real Jackie Gleason as a guy obsessed with the occult and aliens.
Beyond that, Skeptoid adds that Larry Warren, a well-known UFO expert, allegedly tracked Jackie Gleason down to get to the bottom of things in 1986, at which point Gleason confirmed that yes, the Nixon alien story was true. A year later, Gleason died, taking whatever the truth really was to his grave. But there seems to be almost nothing concrete to back any up any of these claims.
Disclosure Day intentionally uses well-known alien lore
Would Richard Nixon really risk national security by showing the guy who played Ralph Kramden and Buford T. Justice some dead aliens? I suppose you could argue that Nixon, notoriously corrupt, wasn’t exactly the most by-the-book President. But in the annals of far-fetched alien stories, this one seems particularly far-fetched.
So why does it show up in “Disclosure Day” as a true story? I got to ask “Disclosure Day” screenwriter David Koepp that very question, and he had a good answer. “What we’re looking to do is not invent a whole new mythology or try to create new cultural memories,” Koepp told me. “Steven [Spielberg] said, ‘We want to honor all that lore, and we want to draw on people’s … collective cultural memory.”
In other words, since this story is already well-known among people who are fascinated by the prospect of alien visitors to earth, it made sense to include it as true in “Disclosure Day.” And hey, who knows? Maybe it really did happen.
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