Joanna Lee

Her Wikipedia page lists her as a writer, not an actress. And it is true—she spent more of her career and was more productive as a writer, and we’ll get into just how noteworthy she is in that category. But it’s not what she’s doing here, even if some of her writing reads like horror with a little perspective. She is our first Spooktober entry for the year, and she will be known to generations as the slightly petulant and somewhat put-upon Tanna from Plan 9 From Outer Space, the only acting IMDb puts on her “known from” listings. Given the rest of her acting, it’s not exactly surprising, even if she was billed above Leonard Nimoy in the movie The Brain Eaters.

An Ed Wood appearance indicates that a person’s career wasn’t exactly prospering at the time it happened. Plan 9 was in fact her first movie. She’d done an episode of On Trial. She went on to appear in a handful of other things—a decent amount of TV shows people have actually heard of, even, such as Leave It to Beaver and The Donna Reed Show. She would later tell Groucho Marx that she was writing greeting cards presumably to make a living at this time, but it’s entirely possible she was going to get a break and actually have a successful acting career. Then, she was in a car accident that apparently was bad enough to keep her from acting.

She started writing. Her first produced script was for an episode of Top Cat. While some of the shows she wrote for are mostly forgotten—Ichabod and Me?—most of the others are classics. Though it does tell you how artistically bankrupt Gilligan’s Island was that there are twelve episodes between her two third-season episodes about look-alikes of one or another of the castaways. I can’t think there were a lot of people who wrote for The Waltons and Room 222, much less if you throw Jonny Quest into the mix.

In the ‘70s, she pivoted from comedy to drama. She also began working as a producer. And if her Plan 9 role is iconic, so, too, are the last handful of shows on which she worked. Members of Gen X will be delighted to learn that she wrote both two episodes of ABC Afterschool Specials and four of CBS Schoolbreak Special, those competing staples of our childhoods. And they are just as bonkers as we all remember. Wil Wheaton dealing with his schizophrenic father. Peter Billingsley taking steroids, with Vince Vaughn in a minor role. An episode about teenage drug addicts starring Corey Feldman, Tatum O’Neal, and Drew Barrymore, all of whom know a thing or two on that subject. I could cackle with nostalgia.

Oh, did I mention we’d get back to how noteworthy she is, and a little Gidget isn’t doing it for you? And, of course, appearing on both What’s My Line? and You Bet Your Life doesn’t count? That’s fair. That’s fair. So let me give you a character description she wrote. She said that he is “a mirror, reflecting life’s vicissitudes, vagaries, ritual magic and dreary reality. Simply, [the character] is life, brought home to our two favorite life participants, Fred and Barney.” Fred and Barney? Fred and Barney. Yes, one of the aliens from Plan 9 created the Great Gazoo. You’re welcome.