Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 257: Carl Anthony (1932-2021) [PART 2 OF 2]

Is there more to say about Carl Anthony? I'd better hope so.

Last week, as you'll recall, we were talking about actor Carl Anthony (birth name: Carl Anthony Wuco), who played prominent roles in two of Ed Wood's best-known movies, Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957) and The Sinister Urge (1960). We discussed how Carl grew up the youngest of three brothers in a Croatian-American family in the suburbs of Cleveland before pursuing a career in show business, first as a daredevil pilot in Florida and then as a film and television actor in Hollywood. 

Quite an intiguing character, this Carl Anthony. But I neglected to talk about the thing Carl's actually remembered for: his film career.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 256: Carl Anthony (1932-2021) [PART 1 OF 2]

It's time to shine a spotlight on a key player in the Ed Wood canon.

I have not been especially kind in my descriptions of actor Carl Anthony (1932-2021), a friend of Ed Wood who played prominent roles in both Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957) and The Sinister Urge (1960) and who later appeared as an interview subject in the documentary Flying Saucers Over Hollywood (1992). Here are some of the adjectives I've applied to Carl's work over the years: "colorless," "pedestrian," "stiff," "dull," and "uncomfortable." Not exactly the rave of the century. Hey, at least Carl got his own trading card in Drew Friedman's Ed Wood Players set. 

Carl's trading card.

Look, if you're studying the work of Edward D. Wood, Jr., you're going to spend some time (vicariously) with Carl Anthony. Hearing his voice. Looking at his face. And Carl is maybe, just maybe, not the most fun actor to watch. Though they're on opposite sides of the law, his characters in both Plan 9 and Sinister are kind of the same: surly, impatient, and unimaginative. This actor has the demeanor of a man waiting for a bus that will never arrive. And he has a pebble in his shoe the entire time.

But Christmas is a time for forgiveness and reconciliation, and I thought I'd give Carl's work a more charitable evaluation this year. Perhaps it will help to learn more about the man himself. He was born Carl Anthony Wuco in Garfield Heights, OH, a suburb of Cleveland, on November 4, 1932. That makes him one of the younger members of the Ed Wood repertory company. Of his Plan 9 costars, the closest in age would have been Conrad Brooks, born in 1931.

Carl's parents, Anthony and Gloria, stayed in Garfield Heights while their son moved first to Florida and finally to California to pursue his show business aspirations. According to back-to-back obituaries that ran in the August 22, 1965 edition of The Cleveland Plain Dealer, both Anthony and Gloria died "suddenly" on Monday, August 16, 1965. Details about their deaths will be included in next week's article.

Carl Anthony Wuco had two older brothers: Walter (who died in 2004) and Raymond (who died on December 30, 2014 at the age of 86). Raymond's elaborate obituary in the January 7, 2015 edition of The Cleveland Plain Dealer is quite an entertaining read by itself. Raymond was a distinguished mathematics teacher who spent 25 years as a religious Brother in the Marianist Catholic order but left the order in the early 1970s and married a woman named Lynn Valin in 1975. The two met when Raymond was teaching at a college in California. His academic career lasted 50 years and spanned both the monk and non-monk eras of his life. The obituary also reveals that the family name Wuco was originally Vuco, which is Croatian in origin. If you're wondering where Carl Anthony got his dark wavy hair and strong jawline, it's his Croatian roots.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 255: Is this the most complete cut of 'Glen or Glenda' (1953) yet?

Austin Wolf-Southern has assembled the jigsaw pieces of Ed Wood's debut film.

Like Blanche DuBois, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers. Well, maybe not always. Actually, when I started writing these articles in July 2013, I was pretty much on my own. I had two books, Rudolph Grey's Nightmare of Ecstasy (1992) and Rob Craig's Ed Wood, Mad Genius (2009), to use for reference, as well as the documentaries Look Back in Angora (1994) and Flying Saucers Over Hollywood (1992). Other than that, I was flying solo. What did I bring to this topic? My own thoughts, my own ideas, my own... personality. I wrote Ed Wood Wednesdays by myself for myself. 

But very early on, people started emailing me. Some wanted to ask questions. Some wanted to make corrections. And still others wanted to share Ed Wood-related things with me—trivia, photos, sometimes even entire books, articles, and films. And then there were those who had Woodian projects of their own and wanted to tell me about them. Some were making music. Some were making films or comics. Several were writing or had already written books about Ed. And they sent much of this material to me to see what I thought of it. And, if I were feeling industrious that particular week, I told them. The main reason this column has lasted over 12 years (with no end in sight) is that my readers have supplied me with so much material.

One such person is comedian and Ed Wood superfan Austin Wolf-Southern. He has embarked on a project that should be of interest to all Woodologists: assembling a "complete cut" of Eddie's debut film, Glen or Glenda (1953). I've long said that this movie is the Rosetta Stone for understanding Ed Wood's entire career—not just his other films but his literary work as well. But, to this day, there is no "definitive" or "authoritative" version of it. Over the years, through various theatrical and home video releases, Glenda has had scenes added to it and subtracted from it. And Austin has taken it upon himself to comb through all this material and assemble it, almost as a Frankenstein monster, into one movie.

Podcast Tuesday: "God Bless Us, Every Fonz"

Henry Winkler in An American Christmas Carol.

One of the most anxious nights of my childhood happened sometime in the mid-1980s. At the time, I was in elementary school and living at home in the suburbs of mid-Michigan with my family. We were Catholic and attended mass regularly. One December, it happened that a holy day of obligation, a midweek mass, fell on the same night that CBS was planning to rerun the 1984 version of A Christmas Carol starring George C. Scott. Mass was at 7:00; the movie was at 8:00.

I was already a Christmas Carol obsessive at this tender age, so this constituted a crisis. I didn't want to miss a minute of the movie, since it's so important to see this story from the very beginning. Luckily, there were a few things on my side. Midweek masses typically lasted only 45 minutes or so, and we did not live far from the church. Seeing the entire movie was still possible. We made it home just as the opening credits were starting, much to my relief. But I can tell you that I took very little, spiritually, from that midweek mass. I'm sure I did not hear a single word the priest said. I was too busy thinking, "Hurry up! Hurry up! Hurry up!"

Now, you might think that since both A Christmas Carol and Happy Days have played such important roles in my life, I would be extremely familiar with the 1979 made-for-TV movie An American Christmas Carol starring Henry "The Fonz" Winkler. I certainly knew of this movie's existence, but until 2025, I had never actually watched the darned thing from beginning to end. This week on These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast, we talk about our reactions to An American Christmas Carol. This'll be our last episode of 2025. We'll catch you again in 2026.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 254: Is 'Jail Bait' (1954) film noir?

A moody moment from Ed Wood's semi-obscure crime thriller Jail Bait.

"It has always been easier to recognize a film noir than to define the term."

-James Naremore, film scholar

If you look up Edward D. Wood, Jr. on the Internet Movie Database (as I have done many hundreds of times while writing this column) and sort his credits by genre, you'll see that only two of his films have been designated "film noir" by the site's users: Jail Bait (1954) and The Violent Years (1956). I'd have thought The Sinister Urge (1960) would qualify, too, but currently that one is designated simply a drama. Not moody enough, I suppose. Or maybe no one thought to label it as such.

Noir namer Nino Frank.

Whatever the case, we have just lived through another November or, as film writer Marya E. Gates has famously dubbed it, Noirvember. This is the time each year when cinephiles are encouraged to study and appreciate film noir (literally "dark film"), a genre first named by French film critic Nino Frank in 1946. Appropriately, in keeping with the gloomy spirit of the season, Mike White's podcast The Projection Booth just did four noir-themed episodes last month, and YouTuber James Rolfe posted a thoughtful 23-minute video essay called "Why I Love Film Noir" to his Cinemassacre channel. 

All of this material has been buzzing around in my brain recently, and I started to think about how Ed Wood fits into this whole picture. That's my curse. I have to apply everything to Eddie's career. It's become the prism through which I see the world. He's not thought of as a "noir director," but certainly these movies had an effect on him. It's a topic worth exploring. Should I have done this article back in November? Yes. But I had other articles I was working on at the time, so this one had to wait. I'm getting to it now. We'll call it Noircember, okay?

Since Ed Wood did not direct The Violent Years himself -- those duties were handled by one-and-done director William Morgan -- I am concentrating my attention on Jail Bait, Eddie's oft-overlooked sophomore feature. As I've said before, it remains the neglected middle child of his 1950s films, likely because it does not feature flying saucers, graveyards, or men in angora sweaters. Criswell, Bela Lugosi, and Tor Johnson are AWOL as well. (Since Bela was busy with his Vegas revue, his part was given to the wheezing Herbert Rawlinson.) Even though Eddie made this bleak crime thriller between Glen or Glenda (1953) and Bride of the Monster (1955), the biopic Ed Wood (1994) skips right over it, as if it never existed. Well, it did and does. But is it film noir?

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 253: We are living in Ed Wood's paradise

I don't know if Ed Wood made it to heaven, but he might think we already live there.

Wherever you are right now, I want you to take a moment and look around you. Pry your eyes away from your phone, tablet, or laptop and study your surroundings. Are you impressed with what you see? Well, you should be, because you are living in paradise. At least from Ed Wood's perspective, you are.

Let me explain.

Filmmaker and author Edward Davis Wood, Jr. (1924-1978) spent the last three decades of his life living in Hollywood and trying to find a place for himself in the movie industry. He never really found one, so he was relegated to the margins of show business, working first in low-budget independent pictures and then in pornography. Along the way, he supplemented his income by writing paperback books, short stories, and magazine articles, usually of an adult nature. Prolific as he was in all fields, Ed never made enough money to cover his expenses and so lived in abject poverty for decades. He was also a heavy drinker and chronic smoker. These factors, along with job-related stress and poor diet, led to his early death at the age of 54.

I would suggest that many of the problems Ed Wood faced in the 1950s, '60s, and '70s have been either alleviated or eliminated altogether by the 2020s. Had Eddie been born at a later time, he still might never have found mainstream success—his work is simply too idiosyncratic for that, regardless of budgetary concerns—but he would not have had to live as miserably and die as prematurely as he did. And I say that because of a few larger societal trends.

Podcast Tuesday: "A Tyler Perry Movie for White People"

Lindsay Lohan and Dermot Mulroney in Georgia Rule.

Garry Marshall got his start in show business as a writer, working for sitcoms and variety shows and even crafting material for standup comedians like Phil Foster. He became known and established in the entertainment industry as a "comedy guy," which led to more work. When Garry started producing his own TV shows, including the sitcom Happy Days (1974-1984), he wanted to prove that he was more than just a joke machine. He could handle serious topics, too. That led to such Happy Days episodes as "Kiss Me, Teach" and "Such a Nice Girl," both of which deal with the subject of sexual assault.

Garry's urge to tell darker, more meaningful stories continued when he became a film director in the 1980s. As I've made my way through his filmography, I've seen him waver between the desire to entertain and the desire to educate. Young Doctors in Love (1982), Overboard (1987), and the two Princess Diaries movies (2001-2004) are mindless, cotton candy comedies, while Beaches (1988), The Other Sister (1999), and Nothing in Common (1986) tackle some weightier themes.

And then there is Georgia Rule (2007), a comedy-drama about an exceptionally tricky subject: child abuse. As is often the case with Garry's movies, this one has an incredible cast, led by Jane Fonda as the highly religious title character and Linsday Lohan (then at the height of her tabloid infamy) as her rebellious granddaughter. This week on These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast, we talk about this highly unusual movie and our strong reactions to it. Please do join us.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 252: Additional thoughts on Bela Lugosi's appearance in Plan 9

We know Bela Lugosi appears in Plan 9. But how did that footage get there?

As Americans prepare to travel and reunite with loved ones for the Thanksgiving holiday, I thought I'd share some feedback I received about last week's article. If you'll recall, I prepared an alternate cut of Ed Wood's notorious sci-fi/horror hybrid Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957) that only includes the silent footage of actor Bela Lugosi (1882-1956). The legendary Hungarian actor famously died before the movie was ever completed, and Plan 9 was somewhat deceptively marketed as his farewell performance. I challenged my readers to consider what they might have done with this footage if they'd been in Ed Wood's high-heeled shoes.