Hello. Very interesting discussion here, I had to jump in. If we were to perhaps examine the phenomena like detectives examining a crime scene for the first time, we might be able to look at this period differently. Hindsight is perhaps still blinding us to the givens of the original events and media reports?
I've read only one of the following books, the one edited by Haines, but I think these might interest you. In “Cultural Factors” by Simon from the study “UFO Phenomena and the Behavioral Scientist” from 1929 to 1948 the films depicted, in the craft’s column, are versions of the rocket; it was in 1949 that we get the first saucer
in the movie "The flying Saucer", at least as far as this study, with one exception.
If the first saucer sighting influenced this particular film listed as the only one showing a saucer (defined as such in the title) at that date, then as was mentioned by a few previous posters, reality, media reports, the flaps etc. is influencing the fiction, at least in films, at this date. Previous to this date you have rockets, cannons, propeller, anti-gravity craft, even a bubble as far back as 1906. But between 1906 to 1948, according to Simon, nothing like a saucer appears in the movies—there is a top shaped craft in 1948! Except oddly he has under craft for a 1938 Flash Gordon a “rocket/saucers” but I’m not quite sure I recall this—is this negligible?
Why 1949 as the first, as it were, pure depiction of a saucer. Did it coincide with Arnold’s very public sighting or did it precede it? I think Arnold was 47?
As to the question of the magazines being the source for some of this, I’m very skeptical myself. I can’t say I have seen all the magazine covers and inside illustrations. But as was mentioned by others here, there is this bothersome contradiction in that not enough supposedly “hysterical” people see robots, mad-scientists, fiends, naked women in guazy nightgowns, and a variety of strange monsters, perhaps more prevalent on the magazine covers, why did this strange form of mass hysteria supposedly created by both science fiction films and pulp magazine covers not also create even weirder hallucinations, misidentifications, of people, say, for example, at that time there was no mass sightings of men in gorilla suits or King Kong? Nobody saw giant lions after the sequel to Kong, maybe at the local madhouse level but not wide spread. No one saw as they did and do Bigfoot nor a Tarzan the ape man, say. Indeed, as was stated here, the correlation between fiction and films and the phenomena is very problematical in terms of getting a handle on what happened.
Of course to thow a monkeywrench into this, you have Orson Welles' broadcast which might've suggested to larger numbers of people the idea of invasion from outerspace and the movies and pulps triggered the focus there--aerial flight being still very new and important at the time. So the fixation in in the air, as it were. I'm skeptical of this.
Here are the books, perhaps you haven't heard of them.
The list of science fiction films with themes of either
Visitors from space, or traveling to space or both presented by
Armando Simon in "UFO Phenomena and the Behavioral Scientist"
(1979) (edited by Richard F Haines) at page 53 (in Chapter 3) of
the Scarebrow Press hardback edition.
The list entitled "Alien Inspired Movies" presented by
Kurland, Michael in his "The Complete Idiot's Guide to
Extraterrestrial Intelligence" (1999) at page 290 (in Chapter
28) of the Alpha Books softcover edition, and included in
Appendix E at pages 315-316.
The list entitled "A Checklist of ETs in the Cinema"
presented by Chris Boyce in in his "Extraterrestrial Encounter"
(1979) at page 164 (in Appendix 1) of the David & Charles
hardback edition, at page 152 of the 1980 revised NEL paperback
edition.