HOW ALBERT MARTEN SAVED PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE

by Richard S. Marten

Albert E. Marten was born in the Harlem section of New York in 1921 and grew up along (and under) the boardwalk in Coney Island. Pee Wee (or Pee Vee in the Yiddish cadence of the immigrant Jews) grew up and flekt makhn shtiferai (made mischief) during the 1920s and 30s in the home of Dreamland and Luna Park. Decades and a world war later, he took me and my brothers to the old neighborhood in Coney Island to show us where he and his pals battled other first generation American gangs and where he hung out with Murray Handwerker, son of the owner of Nathan’s Famous (five cents bought a kosher all-beef dog and a soda).

My father was an original who defied convention.
To say that he had a dynamic presence would be an understatement. A rising star in progressive Democratic circles in New York City until he refused to take a bribe and decided to get out of politics, he headed the Speakers Bureau for Congressman Franklin Roosevelt, Jr., escorting Eleanor Roosevelt to political functions. Pop took an independent path in politics and in life.

He became a prominent entertainment and theatrical attorney. A pioneer in the post-World War II film industry when Hollywood movies began to be shot off the studio lot and enterprising producers were going overseas, he represented talent, producers, and distributors, negotiated co-production deals, and arranged financing for more than 150 feature films, and several television series, including Wild Bill Hickok starring Guy Madison and Andy Devine. The Broadway productions of Peter Ustinov’s Love of Four Colonels and Picnic were among his credits. In his obituary in Variety, Albert Marten was credited with introducing the completion bond to the motion picture industry in the United States.

His clients ranged from famous Hollywood swashbuckler Errol Flynn to best-selling author Harold Robbins, and included Allied Artists Distribution Co. and producer Edward Pressman, among others. He routinely dealt with stars like Marlene Dietrich, Maurice Chevalier, John Wayne, and Jayne Mansfield, but we knew our old man was an important guy when Moe Howard of The Three Stooges invited him to bring the kids to the set during filming. He once tore up a $50,000 option check for Mickey Rooney when the actor failed to show for a meeting for which Dad had specially flown in from the East Coast (Mickey was at the racetrack!).

Pop pioneered the concept of completion bonding in the United States and brought film production to Mexico and Cuba after the war. But, of all his many achievements in show business, the one that gave him the biggest kick and brought the most laughter around the dinner table, was his having rescued from oblivion the picture consistently voted the “Worst Movie Ever Made”. Without my Dad, Edward D. Wood, Jr.’s Plan 9 (originally titled Grave Robbers From Outer Space) would not have become the cult classic it did.

Here is the never-before-published story of how Plan 9 came out of the celluloid closet and into our hearts.
One day an Atlanta theatre owner walked into Albert Marten’s Manhattan law office carrying canisters of film under his arm. With the preamble that often introduced an off-the-wall proposal or a nutsy scheme – “Mr. Marten, I understand you’re a big theatrical attorney…” – the theatre owner proceeded to explain that he had put $40,000 (big money in the 1950s!) into a picture and he needed to get it out. If my father could sell the movie for him, anything above the $40,000 was his to keep. The picture starred Bela Lugosi, the venerable star of Dracula and other horror classics.

It so happened that my father had a relationship with Distributors Corporation of America, a successful, albeit low-rent, indie film purveyor. And they owed him a favor for having earlier let them out of a contract with another client of Pop’s – Maurice Valency, a well-known screenwriter of the day. So Al called Irv Wermser, one of the owners of DCA, and told him: “Irv, I’m calling my marker. I want you to screen a picture tonight.”
After office hours, the three principals of DCA and Pop were sitting in their screening room. The lights dimmed and the projector began to roll the film.

Now remember, Al had never seen the movie. He just assumed that with Lugosi, it was, if not grade A material, at least screenable. What he saw on the screen horrified him, but not in the way the director intended! The movie was pure, unmitigated drek … words alone were insufficient to describe the celluloid calamity. For God’s sake, the strings holding up the flying saucers carrying the grave robbers from outer space were clearly visible on the screen. To say the acting was execrable was an understatement; it was an outrage! In the middle of the picture, tall, suave, Hungarian-accented Bela Lugosi was suddenly replaced by a short, roly-poly actor with a thick Southern accent (it seems Lugosi had to be institutionalized for morphine addiction in the middle of production) and his role was thereafter played by the theatre owner!

Mortified, silently saying Kaddish (the mourners’ prayer) for his relationship with DCA, surrounded by their principals, Al sank lower and lower in his seat as the picture rolled inexorably along to its disastrous conclusion.

When it was finally over and the lights came on, Pop held his breathe and waited for the tirade that was sure to come. To his astonishment, someone broke the silence: “I like it. Irv, what do you think?”

“Me, too,” Irv said, nodding his approval. “Al, how much do you want for it?”

Quickly recovering, Pop sat up and threw out a number double the cost of the production. After a little hondling, they agreed on a price that allowed the theatre owner to recoup his nut and our Dad to make a handsome fee for a few hour’s work.

DCA bought Grave Robbers From Outer Space and distributed it under a new title: Plan 9 From Outer Space. The movie went down in the annals of film history as the “Worst Movie Ever Made”, and DCA made nothing but money in the years to come.