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A “UFO” behind John Wayne: what is zigzagging in a scene from Rio Grande?

5 min read

In an evening scene of John Ford’s 1950 Western, a point of light zigzags in the background next to John Wayne’s head. A viewer discovered the footage in 2005, and since then there has been talk of an alien spacecraft, drunk special effects men and glinting wires. There is still no definitive answer today, but the clues point in one direction.

When: January 1950
Where: United States

A scene against a rocky backdrop

John Ford’s Rio Grande was released in theaters in November 1950. It was the third installment of the director’s so-called cavalry trilogy. John Wayne plays Lieutenant Colonel Kirby Yorke, whose regiment defends settlers on the Texas border from Apaches raiding from Mexico. Most of the film was shot around Moab, Utah, as well as in Monument Valley and Mexican Hat.

A little over an hour into the film, Kirby tells his wife, Kathleen (Maureen O'Hara), that he will not take their son, Jefferson, with him in pursuit of the Apaches. The scene takes place in the evening, and the silhouette of a rocky mountain range is visible in the background. Anyone watching the upper left part of the frame will see a bright point that zigzags back and forth next to Wayne’s head and then disappears behind a tree.

The story of the Rio Grande “UFO” from 1950 to the present. Sky Glitch chart

Nobody noticed it for 55 years

In January 2005, a viewer named Roland A. Duby sent the point of light to an American website called Rense. James Neff, the site’s editor, wrote in his article about a disc-shaped object that, in his view, performs maneuvers no aircraft is capable of. Neff first suspected studio footage, but according to Duby, the making-of documentary on the DVD states that the entire film was shot on location.

Comments kept coming in under the article for weeks. Some thought the phenomenon was artificial, others that it was entirely ordinary, and one reader believed he had spotted a second “UFO” at the end of the film. Since then, UFO blogs have picked up the case again from time to time; most recently, Vice also wrote about it in October 2026.

Studio or open sky?

The key question of the debate is whether the scene was filmed under the open sky or in a studio. If in the studio, the background is a painted backdrop, and the point of light could have been at most a few meters from the camera.

According to the catalog of the American Film Institute (AFI), the film was made around Moab, Monument Valley and Mexican Hat. However, some scenes were also shot at Republic’s studio in Los Angeles. Several commenters with film backgrounds say the sunset mountain range in the background of the scene in question is painted. In a real nighttime location shot, the background would be completely black, and in a “night” scene shot during the day with a darkening filter, the sky would appear lighter.

On the other side, Clark Boone, who looked into the case in 2005, wrote that on the commentary track of the restored DVD, Maureen O'Hara remembers the scene as a location shot. A film historian commenter, however, cautioned that actors’ recollections decades later are often wrong. No shooting schedule that could settle the question has turned up to date.

The legend of the drunk special effects men

In spring 2005, an American Western magazine, Western Clippings, came forward with its own solution. According to it, Republic studio’s special effects men, Howard and Theodore Lydecker, had taken a remote-controlled flying saucer model to Utah for an upcoming sci-fi serial, Flying Disc Man from Mars. They were testing it in the background, and Ford didn’t even notice. According to the rest of the story, the next day the brothers, intoxicated, flew the model into a cliff face.

The Lydecker brothers were indeed the special effects men on Rio Grande, but the story falls apart on several points:

It is thirdhand: someone heard it from actor Walter Reed at a festival.
The Lydeckers did not work with remote-controlled models but with “gravity models” that slid down wires, propelled by their own weight. A 1950 remote-controlled model would not have been capable of such rapid changes of direction.
The serial’s “flying disc” was actually a squat, triangular prop reused from a 1942 serial, and the serial made ample use of earlier archival footage. So there was no need for a new saucer model.

More mundane explanations

In the Rense debate, four more down-to-earth explanations also came up:

Glinting wire. On the restored DVD, Clark Boone saw the lights sliding back and forth along wires attached to the nearby tent or tree. The wires may have moved in the wind and reflected the light of the lamps.
Reflection of an arc lamp. According to a film expert, an arc lamp is reflected on the painted backdrop. The “wandering” may be caused by the lamp being repositioned for the different camera setups.
Insect. According to a film historian, an insect that strayed into the lamplight circled between the actors and the backdrop, which is why it zigzags unpredictably.
Reflection in front of the camera. According to a commenter with cinematography knowledge, the light may have been reflected on the glass holder mounted in front of the camera (matte box) or on a glass surface of the set.

The proposed explanations in outline, side view. Sky Glitch chart

The sober take

What speaks for the mundane explanation:

The actors don’t react to anything, even though according to Neff the object passes right next to Wayne’s head.
According to one forum user, the point of light shifts together with the camera. This suggests that the light originated in front of the camera or in the camera, and was not flying in the background.
The phenomenon is visible in only one shot, and no one from the crew reported it.
The saucer model of the legend does not fit what we know about the serial.

What remains open:

We don’t know for certain where the scene was shot, so we also don’t know how great the distance could have been.
None of the four mundane explanations has been verified by anyone on the original film material.

In summary: the Rio Grande “UFO” is almost certainly an optical phenomenon created during filming: a reflection, a glinting wire or an insect that strayed into the lamplight. Which one exactly could only be settled by the shooting schedule or a frame-by-frame analysis of the original negative, but so far no one has undertaken this. The case shows well how many “UFOs” can be born from tiny flaws in old film footage, and that an anecdote can live on for a long time even if nothing supports it.