Some Neville Goddard stories are almost impossible to confirm.

A first name. A friend of a friend. Someone’s husband. A woman who came to a lecture thirty years earlier. And then the story disappears back into the lecture. Danny’s album though, has an interesting story.

In January 1966 Neville recounted a manifestation success story about a minister named Danny, Danny’s wife, a famous Hollywood singer named Gloria Wood and an record album which, according to Neville, materialized out of the whole affair.

We went looking for them, found them and the cool twist to the story is how Danny’s album eventually found its way into the White House.

It began with an imaginary record

On January 4, 1966, in his lecture Your Future, Neville told his audience about a minister and his wife who had been experimenting with his imagination method.

Danny’s wife seriously worked Neville’s techniques. Neville said she had kept eleven case histories, nine of which had already worked out and Danny’s story was next.

In 1965, she gave her husband a very specific imaginal exercise. She told him to sit quietly and hear her voice congratulating him on selling his songs and earning more than $100,000 a year. Not say it himself. Hear her say it.

Neville tells the story in the lecture, “Your Future” (1/04/66)

“The day was July 27th of last year. She said to her husband Daniel, the minister, “I want you to play this record back for me in your mind…not audibly. Sit quietly and listen to my voice and this is what you’re going to hear, ‘Danny, I am so happy that you have sold your song and have your 100,000-a-year-plus income.’ You play it over and over until my voice becomes as natural to you in this imaginary state as it is when I’m talking to you now.” One month later, on the 29th of August…now I do not know these people in the theatrical world. I’ve been out of it for years and years. I do not know the terminology of the musical world. But she said this lady and she called her by name (she did not confine me to secrecy), the name is Gloria Wood, whoever she is, never heard of her. She said that she has nine gold star records (whatever that means). She is a commercial artist and receives as high as $50,000 for one commercial jingle that only goes a half-minute. She likes Danny’s voice, likes his songs, and said to him after the service that she would like to help him. Then, said she, at the very end of her note to me, “This is prophetic. I am sure this will be as real as the nine that I have told you that are already behind us.”

On Christmas week, Danny calls up and he tell us—my wife answered the phone—‘I know that my wife told you of my hope to put my songs over in an album, well, (calling this same lady by name), she has the reputation’—her name associated with his is an instantaneous sale—‘we’ve made the album. It’s distributed by the company who has promoted her to the tune of nine gold records!’ Now, $100,000…it just started. But her name was identified with his name on the records in his album, using only his songs, and he plays piano. In fact, he’s a one-man-show: plays the organ, he’s his own chorus, he’s the minister, and he does everything but take up the collection. You’ve seen him here…big strapping fellow. Well that’s one.

Yes, you can persuade yourself if you want these things, but don’t, don’t resort to anything but God, and God is your own wonderful human Imagination. If God is the only creator, he is the only receiver as well. So you think of your home right now, who’s doing it? If I said, what are you doing? “I”—right away you said God—“I am” and then you name it. Well, who’s doing it? You said, “Well, I’m doing it.” Well, that’s God. He is the only receiver. But if you don’t know that, you aren’t going to believe in the reality of what you’re doing. So you imagine something now, that’s God doing it, that’s God in action. So when this chap, Danny, imagined his wife’s voice saying, “Danny, I’m so happy that you sold your songs and you have a 100,000-plus in income a year,” it’s only just on the market this past month of December, but at least it’s in an album. How many people today who have written songs would give anything to make one record of it! And here a woman comes off the street, comes into his little church here on Wilton Place, I think it’s 801 Wilton, and likes the man’s voice, likes what he’s singing, and ___(??) so that right after the meeting she goes up and tells him what she thinks of the songs. Well, that’s just what Danny wanted, and he puts on a whole show for her; and then she said, “I want to help you.” So she, because she has nine gold star records, she wants to associate her name to help his name, and does it. I think it’s called “My Pastor and I”…I think it is. He called up and told this story to my wife.”

Gloria Wood

So this famous recording artist Gloria Wood walked into Danny’s church. Neville said he had no idea who she was, but Gloria Wood was very much a somebody, though known as a nobody (see Time magazine reference).

Neville had been told that Wood was a tremendously successful commercial singer, that she had some connection with “nine gold star records,” and that she could command extraordinary money for advertising jingles.

In 1958, Time magazine devoted a profile to Gloria Wood. In just three years she had recorded more than 2,000 singing commercials. She was making almost $150,000 a year, an enormous income at the time, and had a four-octave range that allowed her to imitate almost anything a producer wanted. She sang for commercials, records and films and supplied voices for performers including Marilyn Monroe in River of No Return and Vera-Ellen in White Christmas.

But there is another little detail in the Time article that caught our attention.

Gloria Wood had recently appeared on Art Linkletter’s House Party, singing all four parts of a quartet by overdubbing herself.

Let’s remember that name. We will come back to Art Linkletter later.

Dr. Danny Hart

Danny turns out to be Dr. Danny Hart, minister of the Temple of Soul-Truth. Neville remembered the church as being at “I think it’s 801 Wilton.” And he was right, the surviving album jacket gives:

Temple of Soul-Truth
801 South Wilton Place
Los Angeles, California

Hart had been around for years before Neville told the story. Newspaper advertising places Rev. Danny Hart and the Temple of Soul-Truth at 292 Redondo Avenue in Long Beach as early as 1952, where he was giving sermons and metaphysical services.

And the old Long Beach material gets stranger.

A 1953 clipping we found describes Hart having a vision of a painting containing Christ, a kneeling soldier and, in the clouds behind them, the faces of Washington, Lincoln and Eisenhower. Hart described the vision to artist Lloyd Austin, who painted it as The Spirit of Peace.

According to the newspaper, a photograph of the painting was sent to President Eisenhower.

We thought this was just interesting trivia in Danny Hart’s history. You’ll see the connection later on.

By Christmas 1965, Neville said Danny telephoned his wife with the news: they had made the album. Here it is.

Danny had imagined his wife’s congratulatory voice, Gloria Wood appeared in August, and by December there was a record.

He described Danny as essentially a one-man show singing his own songs, playing piano and organ, doing practically everything himself.

That description is pretty much what is on the album.

It is called Stars In The Night, issued on the Soul-Truth label, and the jacket describes it as:

“Original Compositions by Dr. Danny Hart with His Own Vocal, Piano and Organ Accompaniment.”

The Nixon Presidential Library catalog gives exactly the same description and names Charlie Pallos as audio engineer.

And it is considered a cult classic. Blue translucent vinyl. Danny on the back in ministerial robes.

Songs with titles like “Heavenly Voices,” “My Golden Hour,” “Those Funny Little Saucers (In the Sky),” “We’re All Sons of David,” and “An Eastern Light in Our Western World.” You couldn’t invent a better surviving example of 1960s Los Angeles metaphysics.

So, Neville’s memory of the title “I think it’s called ‘My Pastor and I’…I think it is.” was truthful, he didn’t remember the title and Gloria Wood’s name was not associated with Danny’s on the record or that the album distributed by the company connected with her success. There’s no Gloria Wood credit, liner-note endorsement or major-label distribution information. Actually, one Discogs entry says, “privately issued LP out of Los Angeles, CA from the founder of the Soul-Truth Church (also in LA). Pressed on blue vinyl.”

But, the audio engineer credited on the album, Charlie Pallos, was a Hollywood professional who orchestrated and arranged for major labels like Capitol and Liberty Records during this exact decade. There’s a possibility Wood made introductions or helped at an earlier stage of the project.

A note that Discogs dates known copies to 1969, while the Nixon Library which actually holds one lists the album itself as undated. From the Neville lecture the album is already on the market in December 1965.

Danny speaks up

A month after “Your Future” something even better happens.

During the questions at Neville’s February 8, 1966 lecture “Invisible Things” a man in the audience says that he is a singer and had wanted to appear on The Art Linkletter Show.

He hadn’t known how he would get there, so he simply imagined himself already on the program singing. Then a friend telephoned him. Without telling him, she had written on his behalf and sent his photograph. He now had an audition scheduled for February 16.

Neville listens to the story and at the end says: “Thank you, Danny.”

If we go back to the Time article, Gloria Wood, the woman who walked into Danny’s church had herself appeared on Art Linkletter’s House Party. Does that prove she arranged Danny’s audition? No. But it makes for an interesting story.

How the record ends up at the White House

This is our favorite part.

The Richard Nixon Presidential Library holds an actual copy of “Stars In The Night” in its Domestic Gift Collection. It arrived at the White House on August 15, 1969. It was not sent by Danny Hart.

It was sent by a woman named Rev. Sarah Ferguson of Long Beach, California, together with a letter and newspaper clippings. The White House gift card made a point of identifying Ferguson as a first cousin of the late President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

And Sarah Ferguson turns out to have been deeply involved in the same Long Beach spiritualist world in which Danny Hart had worked years earlier.

The newspaper clippings we found show her preaching at local Spiritualist churches, giving lectures with titles such as “The Secrets of Life and Death,” and speaking openly about her famous cousin and her visits with him.

Which brings us back to that odd clipping from 1953.

Danny Hart was then in Long Beach. He had his vision involving Eisenhower. The Spirit of Peace was painted from that vision, and a photograph was reportedly sent to the White House.

Sixteen years later, an actual Danny Hart record travelled from Long Beach to the White House this time sent by Eisenhower’s own cousin.

That is quite a paper trail for a man remembered today mainly because Neville once mentioned him in a lecture.

“Dr. Danny Hart” was a working alias for his legal name, Joseph Daniel Choisser. The 1965 entries under Choisser’s name show that alongside a few of his spiritual album titles, he was registering commercial jingles for major national brands, including Folgers Coffee and Royal Crown Cola. This might explain the connection between highly-paid Hollywood voiceover artist and a local Los Angeles minister. They were both operating in similar commercial ad circles.

Appendix B – Not Major Label

Record’s matrix identifiers “RR03…7A” and “7-188F” are not machine-stamped like major manufacturing plants in the mid-1960s like as Capitol or Columbia.

Appendix C – Scandal

The 1965 Neville story relies heavily on the setting: “Here a woman comes off the street, comes into his little church here on Wilton Place…” But from this 1954 clipping, we now know that “little church” wasn’t manifested through pure spiritual alignment. It was purchased a decade earlier using the hijacked life savings of an elderly widow he tricked into adopting him. The $58,200 from the widow in 1954 doesn’t entirely account for the supposed “$100,000-a-year” income in 1965. It does show though he had zero qualms about fabricating his finances and manipulating titles. If he could convince a 74-year-old woman to adopt a 27-year-old man, convincing Neville Goddard that a massive record distributor picked up his vanity project was probably not very difficult for him to do.