Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 269: The Ed Wood/Chuck Berry double feature of 1959! [PART 1]

Two movies, one poster artist! Yes, Tom Jung painted both of these.

Ed Wood's most famous film, the sci-fi/horror hybrid Grave Robbers from Outer Space, premiered at the Carlton Theatre in Los Angeles on Friday, March 15, 1957. Lord only knows what the audience thought of it. Eddie certainly must have been curious, because he handed out comment cards to his viewers, asking for their favorite scenes and whatever miscellaneous thoughts they might have about the movie. (I wonder if any filled-out cards have survived from that fateful night?)

To say the least, Grave Robbers is an oddity, combining wonky special effects, stilted dialogue, a surreal plot about an alien invasion of Earth, grainy footage of the late Bela Lugosi, and even the pseudo-apocalyptic rantings of TV personality Criswell. The end result is less like a coherent narrative and more like a strange, half-remembered dream somehow preserved on celluloid. For these reasons and more, writer-director Wood had very little luck getting Grave Robbers distributed after the premiere. As actor Gregory Walcott told Rudolph Grey in the book Nightmare of Ecstasy (1992): "Nobody would touch the darn thing." Even with such well-known figures as Lugosi, Criswell, Tor Johnson, and Vampira in the cast, the movie was going to be a tough sell. 

Was there Hope for Plan 9?

Producer Ed Reynolds was understandably nervous about all this, since he'd sunk plenty of his own money into the production and had convinced others at the First Baptist Church of Beverly Hills to do the same. How was he going to get any of his (or their) money back? According to both Gregory Walcott and Ed Wood's widow, Kathy, it was Reynolds who wrangled control of Graverobbers away from Ed Wood and sold the film to a New York company called Distributors Corporation of America. 

This sale proved a turning point in the movie's history. In 1958, DCA changed the title to Plan 9 from Outer Space and released it to theaters and drive-ins across America—on a limited basis at first, then more widely starting in July 1959. By 1960, Plan 9 was already popping up on television, where it would remain a late-night staple for decades. I've seen no evidence that Eddie profited from this, and I doubt the original investors were reimbursed either, but at least somebody was making money from the movie. And, more crucially, it was being seen by thousands of impressionable youngsters.

Back in those days, double and triple features were much more common than they are today. Theatergoers of the 1950s were accustomed to getting multiple films for the price of admission, plus some added cartoons and shorts. Sometimes, theaters would offer a big budget main feature and a cheaply-made second feature on the same bill. That's what B-movies originally were, essentially cinematic appetizers for more prestigious films. But, as can be seen in vintage newspaper ads from the 1950s and '60s, it was also fairly common for two or three low-budget films of roughly equal stature to be packaged together and shown on the same bill. Which was the "main" feature? Flip a coin.

With its brisk 80-minute runtime and rock bottom price point, Plan 9 from Outer Space was an ideal "programmer," i.e. a movie that could fill out a double or triple bill as either the main or supporting feature. And that was its fate for years. In various American cities, it was paired up with such titles as Outlaw Women (1952), Alias Jesse James (1959), The Crawling Eye (1958), Devil Girl from Mars (1954), Time Lock (1957), and The Trap (1959). Most of these are sci-fi and horror films, as you'd expect, but some are comedies and Westerns. So exhibitors must have felt that the genre-hopping Plan 9 made a suitable companion to just about anything they had to offer. (I've even argued that the finale of Plan 9 is Western-like, since Tom Keene, Greg Walcott, and Duke Moore form a posse and settle their differences with the aliens with a barroom-style brawl.)

A handy primer.

Recently, in a Facebook forum devoted to Ed Wood, Michael Martin mentioned one of Plan 9's strangest and most memorable co-features from this era: Go, Johnny, Go! (1959). Directed by prolific TV and film journeyman Paul Landres, who also helmed The Return of Dracula (1958) and The Vampire (1957), this was a so-called "rocksploitation" movie, capitalizing on the popular teenage music of the day. Many such films were made in the 1950s and '60s. For a good overview of this subject, I highly recommend Marshall Crenshaw's book Hollywood Rock: A Guide to Rock 'n' Roll in the Movies (1994).

Go, Johnny, Go! stars disc jockey and concert promoter Alan Freed and pioneering rocker Chuck Berry as lightly-fictionalized versions of themselves. It also features performances by Ritchie Valens, Eddie Cochrane, The Flamingos, The Cadillacs, Jackie Wilson and more. The film's thin story revolves around the meteoric but troubled rise of fictional rock star Johnny Melody (Jimmy Clanton). Typical of movies of this type, Go, Johnny, Go! has just enough plot to set up the plentiful musical numbers. That's what teenagers were actually paying to see—their rock & roll heroes larger than life on the silver screen. They could care less whether Johnny Melody makes it or not.

At first glance, Go, Johnny, Go! and Plan 9 from Outer Space might seem incompatible, until you realize that science-fiction was nearly as integral to 1950s teen culture as rock itself. Consider such hit singles as "The Flying Saucer (Parts 1 & 2)" (1956) by Buchanan and Goodman, "Flyin' Saucers Rock & Roll" (1957) by Billy Lee Riley and His Little Green Men, and "The Purple People Eater" (1958) by Sheb Wooley. I suppose that teenagers of the 1950s were trying to build a culture that was totally unfamiliar to their parents. And what could be more aggressively unfamiliar than aliens from outer space? The essential joke of "The Flying Saucer" and "The Purple People Eater" is that rock music sounds like it was made by inhabitants of another planet. So you see, Plan 9 and Go, Johnny, Go! are like peanut butter and jelly.

Interestingly, as it made its way from town to town in 1959, Go, Johnny, Go! was also paired up frequently with The Crawling Eye. It was also shown with Teenagers from Outer Space (1959) in several cities, again making the obvious connection between teenagers, rock music, and sci-fi. But we're concerned only with those times when Johnny and Plan 9 played together in 1959. Well, this happened in numerous places, including but not limited to: 

• Ada, Oklahoma (June 23, 1959)
• Akron, Ohio (July 19, 1959)
• Alton, Illinois (July 28-August 1, 1959)
• Altus, Oklahoma (July 24, 1959)
• Atlanta, Georgia (July 8-11, 1959)
• Bartlesville, Oklahoma (June 21-23, 1959)
• Brantford, Ontario, Canada (October 21, 1959)
• Brattleboro, Vermont (October 22-24, 1959)
• Bridgeport, Connecticut (October 23-29, 1959)
• Bridgewater, New Jersey (November 28, 1959)
• Bryan, Ohio (August 28, 1959)
• Cape Girardeau, Missouri (August 13, 1959)
• Chandler, Oklahoma (June 18, 1959)
• Charleston, West Virginia (October 4, 1959)
• Chickasha, Oklahoma (June 4, 1959)
• Clinton, Oklahoma (July 17, 1959)
• Corpus Christi, Texas (December 28-29, 1959)
• Dayton, Ohio (September 7-11, 1959; October 31, 1959; November 1-3, 1959; December 5, 1959)
• Detroit, Michigan (June 20-30, 1959)
• Duncan, Oklahoma (June 29, 1959)
• East Prairie, Missouri (July 30, 1959)
• El Reno, Oklahoma (June 8, 1959)
• Elk City, Oklahoma (July 9-10, 1959)
• Fort Worth, Texas (August 25-26, 1959; September 27, 1959)
• Frankfort, Kentucky (October 9, 1959)
• Frederick, Oklahoma (July 13-16, 1959)
• Greenville, South Carolina (May 1-5, 1959)
• Hartford, Connecticut (August 10, 1959)
• Henryetta, Oklahoma (July 10, 1959)
• High Point, North Carolina (May 5, 1959; August 17-18, 1959)
• Lafayette, Indiana (August 25, 1959)
• Lawton, Oklahoma (May 13, 1959)
• Lewiston, Maine (July 6, 1959)
• Logan, Ohio (June 29-30, 1959)
• Mansfield, Ohio (July 11-13, 1959)
• Meriden, Connecticut (July 23-27, 1959; August 8-11, 1959)
• Miami, Florida (May 10-16, 1959)
• Minneapolis, Minnesota (August 19-25, 1959; December 30, 1959)
• Mount Vernon, Illinois (July 13-14, 1959)
• Nashua, New Hampshire (August 29, 1959)
• New Bedford, Massachusetts (September 30-October 3, 1959)
• New London, Connecticut (September 22-26, 1959)
• Newark, New Jersey (November 20-27, 1959)
• Newark, Ohio (August 1, 1959)
• Norman, Oklahoma (June 10-14, 1959)
• North Bay, Ontario, Canada (October 24, 1959)
• North Vernon, Indiana (September 3, 1959)
• Pampa, Texas (June 7-9, 1959)
• Portland, Maine (August 18-25, 1959)
• Richmond, Indiana (October 18-20, 1959)
• Rome, New York (August 4, 1959)
• Sainte Genevieve, Missouri (October 3, 1959)
• Seminole, Oklahoma (July 17, 1959)
• Shawnee, Oklahoma (June 26-27, 1959)
• Shelbyville, Kentucky (July 30, 1959)
• Sidney, Ohio (December 2-3, 1959)
• Somerset, Kentucky (August 19, 1959)
• Springfield, Ohio (June 16-21, 1959)
• Springfield, Vermont (October 21, 1959)
• St. Louis, Missouri (July 9-15, 1959; September 28, 1959)
• Toledo, Ohio (October 1-6, 1959)
• Traverse City, Michigan (October 22, 1959)
• Troy, Ohio (September 1-5, 1959)
• Urbana, Ohio (September 11-17, 1959)
• Waterville, Maine (June 27-30, 1959)
• Wilmington, Ohio (December 9-10, 1959)
• Winchester, Kentucky (August 5, 1959)
• Windsor, Ontario, Canada (October 29-31, 1959)
• Zanesville, Ohio (July 15-17, 1959)

Phew! That's a lot of cities and dates. Frankly, when I started assembling my list, I thought it was just going to be a handful of places. But it turned out to be dozens and dozens. Eventually, in the interest of sanity, I had to stop looking. The point is, the double bill of Go, Johnny, Go! and Plan 9 from Outer Space played in many locations from May 1959 onward. It seems to have been especially popular in Ohio, Oklahoma, and Connecticut. The program's success in St. Louis is to be expected, since that's Chuck Berry's hometown, but the August 26, 1959 edition of Variety noted that the Minneapolis run of Johnny and Plan 9 brought in an impressive $6,500 haul.

There's more to say here. I wanted to share with you some of the best newspaper clippings generated by the double feature and even share my thoughts on Go, Johnny, Go! But this article is already too long, so that will have to wait until next time. See you then.