Norma McCarty

Gone to that great Drive-in in the sky

Norma McCarty passed away at age 93 on August 20, 2014. And no, darlings, she was not a famed, lauded or even talented star of stage, screen or telly. Still, her legacy will live on as long as there are those of us who have certain affection for movies that are so bad they are an art form and genre unto themselves... movies crafted with such chematic awfulnessthey fill us with wonder, leaving us aghast, agog, and howling with laughter.

Say Whaaaat? Say Norma McCarty's enduring legacy is that she played the stewardess in what is perchance one of the most hilariously terrible movies ever. "Plan 9 from Outer Space" (1959). In her never-to-be-forgotten scene, she pops into the cockpit (through an obvious and wrinkled shower curtain that serves as the cabin "door) to talk to the pilots about the flying hubcap, we mean flying saucer, spotted out the window.

Miss McCarty was also legally (if not publicly acknowledged) married to "Plan 9" director Ed Wood. They wed on a soundstage in 1955 but apparently were together only briefly (and never divorced although Wood went on to marry Elvis songwriter and "Glenn or Glenda" co-star Kathleen O'Hara).

The end to Ed and Norma's love story, darlings? Well, it was a tad hard for Ed Wood to keep secret the fact that he was trying on his wife's clothes as soon as she left the house. "I'd find my nightgown on the bed when I got home from work and said 'I didn't wear that last night.' But it never dawned on me that he might be wearing these things." she said in an interview.

Finally it did dawn on her and, either because she was unable to accept Ed's feminine side or was fed up with his stretching out her sweaters and negligees. Norma bed Wood adieu.

But, thankfully, their cinematic collaboration endures on and in as the penultimate example of a so-bad-it's-hilarious-film. And we like to think Ed Wood and Norma McCarty have put aside their fashion differences and are now happily sharing a celestial wardrobe in the sky.

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