Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 250: Bill Ash (1926-2011)

Bill Ash has a brief but memorable turn in Plan 9.

There are just 21 credited actors in Ed Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957). The majority of these folks were members of Eddie's social circle and worked with him on multiple projects, often spanning years. If you're reading this article, you know their names by now: Criswell, Duke Moore, Connie Brooks, Dudley Manlove, Tor Johnson, Carl Anthony, Lyle Talbot, Carl Anthony, and so on. The troupers. The ride-or-die crowd. Even Vampira and John Breckinridge, neither of whom ever appeared in another Wood film, found their names forever linked to Eddie's because of Plan 9.

But some of the credited performers in Plan 9 must be considered ringers. Or, better yet, hired guns. Eddie cast them for this one project only, then never worked with them again. These were fledgling actors in mid-1950s Hollywood, and Plan 9 was likely just another job. How odd it must have been for them to realize that this cheap little sci-fi throwaway would haunt them for the rest of their lives. Gregory Walcott (who played Jeff Trent) eventually learned to have a sense of humor about it. Joanna Lee (who played Tanna) didn't. Guess who seemed to be having more fun.

Tom Keene and Bill Ash.

But then there is character actor Bill Ash (1926-2011), who plays an unnamed US Army captain in the film. To my knowledge, Bill merely has one brief scene in Plan 9. It occurs at the 20:33 mark and lasts a little over a minute, but it's a memorable minute. 

A brief recap: Flying saucers have been spotted in the skies over numerous American cities, leading to mass hysteria among the general populace. Though the US government refuses to acknowledge the existence of aliens, it has nevertheless dispatched the military to deal with the crisis. Narrator Criswell breathlessly tells us that stoic, humorless Col. Tom Edwards (Wood favorite Tom Keene) has been placed in charge of "saucer field activity." Standing in front of a featureless gray backdrop and waving a pair of binoculars, Edwards commands his men to open fire on the wobbly spaceships hovering above them. Wood cuts between shots of Col. Edwards and stock footage of the military, and it's more or less up to the viewer to piece all of this together into a coherent scene. Eventually, the saucers depart.

That's when Bill Ash, in full captain's uniform and combat helmet, ambles into the movie and chats with Col. Edwards about the flying saucers and the military's response to them. He's carrying a 1940s walkie-talkie that resembles a primitive, oversized cell phone. The conversation between Edwards and the captain is supremely Woodian: sincere and yet utterly absurd and giggle-inducing. The two men speak as though their entire conversation has been clumsily translated into English from some obscure Slavic language, possibly by someone who did not know the double meaning of "beat them off." The screenplay contains a few bonus lines of dialogue between Keene and Ash. I have included them below in red.

CAPTAIN: Quite a sight, wasn't it, sir?

COLONEL: A sight I'd rather not be seeing.

CAPTAIN: Are you worried about them, sir?

COLONEL: Well, they must have a reason for their visits.

CAPTAIN: Visits? Well, that would indicate visitors! Are big guns the usual way of welcoming visitors?

COLONEL: We haven't always fired at them.

CAPTAIN: Oh?

COLONEL: For a time we tried to contact them by radio, but no response. Then they attacked a town. A small town, I'll admit. But nevertheless a town of people. People who died.

CAPTAIN: I never heard about that, sir.

COLONEL: Well, it was covered up by the higher echelon. Take any fire, any earthquake, any major disaster, then wonder. Flying saucers, Captain, are still a rumor. Officially.

CAPTAIN: Do you suppose Washington will also deny this "rumor"?

COLONEL: It was Washington that gave this fire order.

CAPTAIN: Ten to one the files said "Training Maneuvers." Looks like we beat them off again, sir.

COLONEL: What do they want? Where are they from? Where are they going?

CAPTAIN: They, sir? Who? Oh, this is a training maneuver, sir. We only did a little practice firing at the clouds.

COLONEL: Yeah. I wonder what their next move will be.

It's possible that Ed Wood actually filmed the extra lines in the script but removed them from the final cut of Plan 9. At that exact point in the conversation, Wood cuts from Tom Keene and Bill Ash to some stock footage of jet planes, then back to Keene and Ash. The stock shot may have been used to disguise the jump cut. And that's the last we see of Bill Ash. At least in this movie. There's more to his story than 70 glorious seconds in Plan 9, however.

Bill Ash is somewhere in this movie.

William "Bill" Ash was born on Christmas Day 1926 in Atlanta, Georgia to John and Fannett Ash. Like many of his generation, Bill served honorably in the military during World War II. Specifically, he was a B-17 gunner in the US Army Air Corps. This experience served as his introduction to the wider world. For one thing, he met some young men from the West Coast and started thinking he might want to move to California himself someday and try to make it in cowboy pictures. But it was a dream (slightly) deferred. After the war, Bill studied at Wake Forest, then returned to Atlanta and married his girlfriend Myrtice in 1947. They had a son, Bill, Jr., the next year. 

Even though he was now a husband and father, Bill Ash kept his showbiz aspirations alive and did community theater at the Peachtree Playhouse in Atlanta. There, he met a man named James Ryan who encouraged him to try his luck in Hollywood. And so, in 1951, Bill and his family relocated to California. He studied acting at the Geller School of Theater, Stage, Motion Pictures and Television, an institution whose alumni include Marilyn Monroe and Glenn Ford. Success in show business, however, remained elusive.

"I was just not the Rock Hudson type," Ash mused to an Atlanta Journal reporter in 1984. For years, he was bitter over a pivotal role he supposedly lost to heartthrob Tab Hunter (1931-2018).

Bill Ash did manage to snag a few screen roles in the early-to-mid-1950s. His part in Plan 9, originally known as Graverobbers from Outer Space, is probably his most conspicuous appearance during that era of his career. Bill can supposedly be spotted in such other films as Column South (1953), The Raid (1954), The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954), and Screaming Eagles (1956). Not all of these even appear on Ash's IMDb profile, so Bill's screentime in them was likely minimal. He also appeared in a few episodes of a now-forgotten variety series called The Ken Murray Show (1950-1953). Ash himself described his roles as "small stuff."

With acting work hard to come by, Bill Ash tried his hand at other professions while Myrtice worked as a secretary to help make ends meet. He moved to Thousand Oaks, sold real estate and insurance, and even tried to run for city council. Finally, in 1969, Bill had become disenchanted with Hollywood altogether and relocated with his wife back to Georgia. The Ashes bought a farm near Douglasville where they raised paint horses, and Bill owned and operated a Western wear store for five years. He also reignited his political career in the mid-1970s, running successfully as a Republican for county commissioner. By 1984, he'd given all that up and was happily driving a bus for the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA).

You might presume that Bill Ash's showbiz career was undeniably and reliably dead. But, like Inspector Daniel Clay, it just wouldn't stay buried. If you've ever seen that familiar "Made in Georgia" logo at the end of a television show, you probably know that the Peachtree State is a popular filming location due to its favorable economic conditions. Bill started auditioning for some of those productions and managed to get cast in several of them, often playing a Gabby Hayes-type prospector character he called "Ol' Sid." For many years, Ash sported a bushy beard, and he could change his appearance by taking out his false teeth. (Yes, like Ed Wood, Bill lost his pearly whites.) On the side, he did commercials for clients like Bank of Alabama, Hardee's, and General Mills, plus MARTA.

There's a 20-year gap in Bill's filmography, but the second half of the actor's career is arguably more impressive than the first. After returning to Georgia, he appeared in the Don Knotts/Tim Conway comedy The Prize Fighter (1979), another Conway caper called They Went That-A-Way & That-A-Way (1978), both Coward of the County (1981) and Six Pack (1982) with Kenny Rogers, The Baron and the Kid (1984) with Johnny Cash, and four episodes of the popular TV series In the Heat of the Night (1988-1990). In the teen comedy The Heavenly Kid (1985), meanwhile, Bill can be seen as the white-suited official who welcomes a newly-dead hot rodder named Bobby Fontana (Lewis Smith) to the afterlife. 

Bill Ash (right) appears in The Heavenly Kid (1985) with Barney Johnston.

Ultimately, Bill got to have his movie and television career while staying in his home state and doing other, more conventional things with his life. The mountain came to Mohammad in this case, though the actor admitted to The Atlanta Journal that he had "mixed emotions" about giving up on his Hollywood dreams. And what of his appearance in Plan 9 from Outer Space? Was Bill Ash aware of the film's notorious reputation? Oh yes. Very much so. When Tim Burton's Ed Wood (1994) became an Oscar contender in 1995, The Atlanta Journal tracked Bill down and asked for his take. As always, he was affable.

"I'm in the worst movie ever made—my claim to fame," he told writer Bill Torpy. "Maybe they should give Academy Awards for really bad movies."

William Ethridge Ash, Sr. died on January 14, 2011 at Tanner Medical Center in Villa Rica, Georgia. He was 84. His passing merited a lavish, photo-illustrated obituary in The Douglas County Sentinel that emphasized both his acting and political careers. Charlie Camp, another Georgia politician of the era, said that Bill loved to share stories about his showbiz adventures. "He was extremely proud of his career as a screen actor," Camp told the newspaper. While Bill's story parallels Ed Wood's in many ways, the Georgia-born actor and politician managed to avoid becoming yet another Hollywood casualty.

On the other hand, Bill Ash never got his own biopic. So maybe there's value in being a Hollywood casualty, too.

ADDENDUM: I have a rich assortment of supplemental material to share with you this week related to the life and work of Bill Ash. Mainly, I have created a gallery of press clippings about the man. Most of these articles mention Plan 9 or Graverobbers from Outer Space in some way.

• A career profile (The Atlanta Journal, May 7, 1974)

• An article about Ash's run for county commissioner (The Atlanta Journal, October 29, 1974)

• Another lengthy career profile, parts one and two (The Atlanta Journal, November 25, 1984)

• Bill's thoughts on Ed Wood (The Atlanta Journal, March 27, 1995)

• Bill's obituary (The Douglas County Sentinel, January 21, 2011)

• Footage of Bill appearing as "Ol' Sid" in the Cowboy Casino interactive game