Paul Marco

In 1944, at the age of 17 -- probably helped by the shortage of male bit-players due to the war -- Marco turned up in a small, unbilled part in the B musical Sweet and Low-Down. His next known screen appearance came eight years later, in the Monogram Pictures costume drama Hiawatha, starring a young Vince Edwards in the title role and directed by B-movie master Kurt Neumann. It was during this period that Marco became part of the circle of friends surrounding Criswell, a syndicated columnist who published predictions of the future, and who had lately moved into local television with his own show. According to some accounts, Marco was responsible for introducing Criswell to Edward D. Wood, Jr., a writer/producer/director of ultra-low-budget films; whoever introduced who to whom -- Criswell was later to become part of Wood's stock company of players -- but Marco was soon a member of Wood's coterie of regulars. In 1955, the aspiring actor got his first credited role -- and, indeed, his first major role, and his most enduring part, as Officer Kelton in Wood's Bride of the Monster, a feature film starring one-time horror film great Bela Lugosi. Marco's performance as the good-natured if slightly inept Kelton made him one of the more endearing supporting players in the movie (the most appealing qualities of which, as with most of Wood's movies, were its mistakes). The director apparently liked Marco's work sufficiently to cast him in the same role in his next movie, Plan 9 From Outer Space, with more dialogue thrown his way and more scenes. And Marco was once more back as Kelton in a third film, Night of the Ghouls (1959), which didn't get released until the mid-'80s, owing to Wood's inability to pay the laboratory bill. By the early '60s, he'd also turned up in small supporting roles in episodes of series such as The Donna Reed Show and 77 Sunset Strip and was working regularly as a property man in numerous lower budgeted Hollywood films. Marco still showed up as an actor as well on occasion, and in 2005, the year before his death, reprised the role of Kelton in Wayne Berwick and Ted Newsom's The Naked Monster, a spoof of horror movies that also featured such fixtures of 1950s shock cinema as John Agar, Robert Clarke, Robert Cornthwaite, John Harmon, and Jeanne Carmen. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide