Frank Scully

Template:Short description Template:Use mdy dates Template:Main otherTemplate:Wikidata image Francis Joseph Xavier Scully; (April 28, 1892 – June 23, 1964) was an American journalist, author, humorist, and a regular columnist for the entertainment trade magazine Variety.

Career

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Scully in 1937

Scully studied journalism at Columbia University, was on the reporting staff at The New York Sun and was a contributor to Variety. His books include Rogues' Gallery and Fun In Bed: The Convalescent's Handbook. Scully received screenwriting credit for the American version of the film Une fée... pas comme les autres (The Secret of Magic Island).

Shortly after Scully moved to Burbank, California with his family in 1934, fellow journalist and author Upton Sinclair won the Democratic primary for the upcoming gubernatorial election. A supporter of Sinclair's End Poverty in California plan, Scully founded the Author's League for Sinclair, which attracted the likes of Gene Fowler and Dorothy Thompson.

In January 1939, Scully was appointed administrative assistant and secretary of the California Department of Institutions by director Aaron Rosanoff. Just nine months later, Scully was fired and replaced with Rosanoff's daughter Marjorie. A year later, Scully testified against Rosanoff and detailed abusive conditions at the Whittier State School for Boys. He further alleged that his lack of involvement in the abuse was the reason why he was targeted in an indictment for misappropriating funds. He was later acquitted of all charges.

During the 1940 Democratic Party presidential primaries, Scully joined a left-wing slate pledged to lieutenant governor Ellis E. Patterson for president. They opposed incumbent Franklin D. Roosevelt on the grounds he was focusing too much on foreign affairs and not enough on domestic unemployment. The Patterson slate lost to Roosevelt's by a margin of fifteen to one.

Aztec UFO hoax

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Author Frank Scully (right), confidence man Silas Newton (center), and KMYR radio salesman George Koehler (left) discuss Newton's claims of magnetism-powered flying saucers.

Scully publicized the Aztec, New Mexico UFO hoax when, in 1949, he wrote two columns in Variety claiming that dead extraterrestrial beings were recovered from a flying saucer crash.

Scully's 1950 book Behind the Flying Saucers expanded on the themes of flying saucer crashes and dead extraterrestrials, with Scully describing one of his sources as having "more degrees than a thermometer". In that book, he promoted the pseudohistorical claims of Paxson Hayes that prehistoric giants inhabited the Americas.

In 1952 and 1956, True magazine published articles by the San Francisco Chronicle reporter John Philip Cahn that purported to expose Scully's sources as confidence tricksters who had hoaxed Scully. Scully's 1963 book, In Armour Bright, also included material about alleged flying saucer crashes and dead extraterrestrials.

Publications

Archives

• Collection Number 09554 processed in 1995.

See also

• Aztec, New Mexico UFO hoax
• Donald Keyhoe
• Frank Edwards

External links

• Template:Trim/ Frank Scully at IMDbTemplate:EditAtWikidata
• "Flying Saucers and Frank Scully", a detailed account of Behind the Flying Saucers and subsequent exposé

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