Frank Scully

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
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). 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.

Archives

 * Collection Number 09554 processed in 1995.