The Gracious Gregory Walcott

The screen career of Gregory Walcott (Bernard Wasdon Mattox, 1928-2015) is nicely bracketed by projects connected to Grade Z exploitation and horror auteur Ed Wood. Walcott is one of the leads the notorious Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957), and he has a small role in Tim Burton’s bio-pic Ed Wood (1994), his last role. But despite this fact, and in spite of the related one that Walcott’s Plan 9 role is what he is best remembered for, it would be a mistake to regard this as the Alpha and the Omega of his career. It was, in fact, a one time anomaly. Not only was it Walcott’s only picture with Wood, but it’s his only low-budget horror picture. Almost all of his other over-100 screen credits are in perfectly respectable mainstream vehicles.

Walcott’s successful acting career is doubly impressive in that he accomplished it without extensive training or a long apprenticeship in the theatre. Originally from Wendell, North Carolina (outside Raleigh), he was an army vet, who’d served in both World War Two and Korea. But he possessed attributes that no one could buy: a 6’4″ stature, broad-shoulders, excellent cheekbones, a fine voice, and a natural, all-around knack for the job. He was discovered while performing in a play and cast in a film that has a timely poignance as I type this (with L.A. wildfires still burning out of control). Red Skies Over Montana (1952) was a picture about smoke-jumpers starring Richard Widmark, about the Mann Gulch Fire of 1949.

Most of Walcott’s roles were in westerns and military stories, genres, you’ll observe where a certain stiffness of manner is rarely a hindrance. Quite early on he was cast in some major films. He has bit roles, for example in Mister Roberts and The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell, both in 1955. He had a great role in the ensemble of the Frank Tashlin comedy The Lieutenant Wore Skirts (1956), and is fifth-billed as Bat Masterson in the 1958 western Badman’s Country.

Technically Walcott’s career peak was his role as a regular on the tv police procedural 87th Precinct (1960-61) with Robert Lansing, Ron Harper, and Norman Fell (surely the reason why Fell was cast in that cop role in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World). Television work, particularly on westerns, was Walcott’s met and drink throughout the ’60s as he seemingly appeared on all of them, including The Rifleman, The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, Wagon Train, Bonanza, and Rawhide. Walcott guested on the latter show five times, which is surely how he became pals with Clint Eastwood, who went on to cast him in several of his movies, including Joe Kidd (1972), Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974), The Eiger Sanction (1975), and Every Which Way But Loose (1978).

The Eiger Sanction

Outside of the Eastwood-iverse, Walcott could be seen in such things as Michael Ritchie’sPrime Cut (1972), Steve Spielberg’s The Sugarland Express (1974), the WWII epic Midway (1976), and the multiple Oscar winning Norma Rae (1979). Later TV work included episodes of Kojak,McCloud, The Six Million Dollar Man, Eight is Enough, Baretta,The Dukes of Hazzard,and Murder She Wrote, et al. I am particularly intrigued by the 1978 NBC TV movie he appeared in about the Donner Party!

So why would a guy like Walcott this be in an Ed Wood picture? It’s not hard to deduce. His part in Plan 9 was a lead role at a time in his career when he was mostly playing bit parts in major films. It didn’t help his career as he might have hoped, but it seems not to have damaged it, either. Later, Walcott graciously appeared in documentary featurettes about Wood and Plan 9 that were used as extras in home video releases, and was characteristically gracious about the experience, bemused at the poverty row techniques. (I’m an especial fan of what passes for an airplane cockpit in the movie, in which Walcott holds a triangle made of painted cardboard or plywood that’s supposed to be the control wheel). Yet Walcott was not the slightest bit mean in his recollections. That’s those Southern manners! That, and the wisdom that comes to all show business veterans, best expressed by Nietzsche in The Twilight of the Gods: whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.