Ed Wood, Jr.
Encyclopedia
Edward Davis "Ed" Wood, Jr. (October 10, 1924 – December 10, 1978) was an American
screenwriter
, director
, producer
, actor
, author
, and editor
, who often performed many of these functions simultaneously. In the 1950s, Wood made a number of low-budget genre
films, now notable for their technical errors, unsophisticated special effects, large amounts of ill-fitting stock footage
, idiosyncratic dialogue, eccentric
casts and outlandish plot elements, although his flair for showmanship
gave his projects at least a modicum of critical success.
Wood's popularity waned soon after his biggest name star Bela Lugosi
died. He was able to salvage a saleable feature from Lugosi's last moments on film, but his career declined thereafter. Toward the end of his life, Wood made pornographic movies
and wrote pulp
crime, horror, and sex novels. His infamy began two years after his death, when he was awarded a Golden Turkey Award
as Worst Director of All Time. The lack of filmmaking ability in his work has earned Wood and his films a considerable cult following
.
Following the publication of Rudolph Grey
's biography Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1992), Wood's life and work have undergone a public rehabilitation of sorts, with new light shed on his evident zeal and honest love of movies and movie production. Tim Burton
's biopic of the director's life, Ed Wood
, earned two Academy Awards.
and his family relocated numerous times around the United States
. Eventually, they settled in Poughkeepsie, New York, where Ed Wood, Jr. was born.
During his childhood, Wood was interested in the performing arts and pulp fiction. He collected comics
and pulp magazine
s, and adored movies, most notably Westerns
, and anything involving the occult
. He would often skip school in favor of watching pictures at the local movie theater, where stills from the day's movie would often be thrown in the trash by theater staff, allowing Wood to salvage them to add to his extensive collection.
It is believed that Wood's mother, Lillian, always wanted a girl and would sometimes, until he was about 12 years old, dress her son in skirts and dresses. For the rest of his life, Wood was a heterosexual
crossdresser
.
On his 12th birthday, Wood received his first movie camera, a Kodak
"Cine Special". One of his first pieces of footage, and one that imbued him with pride, was the airship Hindenburg
passing over the Hudson River
at Poughkeepsie, shortly before its famous fiery demise
at Lakehurst, New Jersey
.
One of his first paid jobs was as a cinema usher, and he also sang and played drums in a band. He later fronted a singing quartet called Eddie Wood's Little Splinters, having learned to play a variety of string instruments.
Wood enlisted in the Marines
at age 17, just months after the Attack on Pearl Harbor
. He served from 1942–46 and claimed that he had participated in the Battle of Guadalcanal while secretly wearing a brassiere and panties beneath his uniform.
Fascinated by the exotic and bizarre, Wood joined a carnival
following his discharge
from the Marines. His several missing teeth and disfigured leg (wounds suffered while in combat) combined with personal fetishes and acting skills made him a perfect candidate for the freak show
. Wood played, among others, the geek
and the bearded lady
. As the bearded lady, he donned women's clothing and created his own prosthetic breast
s. Carnivals would be frequently depicted in Wood's works, most notably the semi-autobiographical novel Killer in Drag.
Wood's other habits included soft drugs, alcohol, and sex. He was a womanizer
in his younger days, but in later life he was faithful to his girlfriends (most notably Dolores Fuller
) and wife (Kathy O'Hara). Wood had one child, a daughter named Kathleen Emily Wood.
Wood's first wife, Norma McCarty, kicked him out of their house not long after they were married. McCarty had a son, Michael ("Mac"), from a relationship prior to Wood.
About his films, Wood is quoted as stating,
Wood's film career began after moving to Hollywood in 1947. He wrote scripts and directed television pilots, commercials, and several forgotten micro-budget westerns with names such as Crossroads Of Laredo and Crossroad Avenger: The Legend of the Tucson Kid. Wood wrote, produced, directed, and starred in Casual Company, a play from his unpublished novel which was based on his service in the United States Marine Corps
. The play opened at the Village Playhouse in Hollywood to disastrous reviews on October 25, 1948.
to make an exploitation film
, I Changed My Sex, based on the life of transsexual Christine Jorgensen
. After Jorgensen refused to collaborate on the film, Wood wrote a new autobiographical screenplay titled Glen or Glenda, a sincere and sympathetic study of transvestism
. Wood directed and, using the alias Daniel Davis, played the titular character who has a fetish for cross-dressing and angora sweaters.
Angora
was regularly featured in his films. His wife Kathy O'Hara and others recall that Wood's transvestism was not a sexual inclination, but rather a neomaternal comfort derived mainly from angora fabric (Ann Gora also happened to be one of Wood's pen names). The medical experts in the film go to great lengths to stress that the transvestite is a perfectly normal heterosexual man who simply feels more comfortable and "more himself" when wearing women's apparel. There is even a fantasy vignette showing Glenda rebuffing the advances of a homosexual man. Even in his later years, Wood was not shy about going out in public dressed in drag as Shirley; his alter ego—female characters named Shirley also appear in many of his screenplays and stories.
Most of Wood's films have a rushed quality due to the tight shooting schedule and limited budgets. While most directors film only one scene per day (or just a fraction of one in more contemporary pictures), Wood might complete up to 30 scenes. He seldom ordered a retake, even if the original was obviously flawed. Glen or Glenda, shot in just four days for $26,000, was done in a semi-documentary style. Narration and voice-over dialog was added to generous amounts of film-library stock footage
(a cost-saving trick he used in his later films). The love-interest role of Barbara was played by Wood's real-life girlfriend, Dolores Fuller. She went on to appear in his next two films. Bela Lugosi
, who was not told the film was about a transvestite, was paid $1,000 in cash for one day of filming. In a dark haunted-house set, speaking in vague, baffling metaphors and nursery rhymes, he played a portentous, omnipotent narrator.
The centerpiece of the film is a 15-minute fantasy sequence that illustrates Glen's tormented state of mind. Wood utilizes a barrage of surreal, dream-like vignettes with personalized symbolism. Producer George Weiss
added to the confusion by inserting footage of flagellation and bondage, reminiscent of the fetish films of Irving Klaw
, from another production. In this sequence, Barbara is pinned beneath a large tree (in her living room), and Glen rescues her; they are married with the Devil
acting as best man; a shirtless man vigorously flogs a woman reclining on a couch; lewd burlesque dancers gyrate to blaring jazz music and tear at their clothes; a woman gagged and bound to a yoke-like pole is untied by another gagged woman; a lust-crazed man roughly assaults a seductress in a flimsy negligee; an enraged Glenda rips Barbara's blouse to shreds after she laughs at his appearance. Bela Lugosi
appears in several scenes also rejecting Glenda and droning on repeatedly about "snips and snails and puppy-dog tails". The film was released under several regional titles such as Transvestite, I Led Two Lives, and He or She?.
. Originally called The Hidden Face, the title was inexplicably changed to Jail Bait, from an offhand reference in the script to an illegal hand gun. Wood also co-wrote the screenplay
with writer-producer friend Alex Gordon
. It was Gordon who introduced Wood to Bela Lugosi in 1952. (Gordon soon went on to help create American International Pictures
). Lugosi was originally cast as the father of the lead character, but dropped out due to illness. Around this time, Wood became friends with a group of B-movie actors who became part of his entourage and stock company, appearing in most of his later films. These included Kenne Duncan
, Lyle Talbot
, Conrad Brooks
, Duke Moore
, Timothy Farrell
, Swedish professional wrestler
Tor Johnson
, pin-up model and TV horror hostess Maila Nurmi
(aka Vampira
), the eccentric gay socialite Bunny Breckinridge
, and the psychic
Criswell
.
In 1955, he produced and directed his first horror film, Bride of the Monster
(originally titled Bride of the Atom). Although Wood took most of the writing credit, the original story, The Atomic Monster, was written by Alex Gordon. Wood contributed about half the dialogue, according to Gordon (in Starlog, November 1994). Bela Lugosi, in his last speaking role, stars as a mad scientist bent on creating an army of atomic supermen. The immense, 400-pound Tor Johnson plays Lobo, his lumbering henchman. Billy Benedict of The Bowery Boys
has a walk-on role as a newspaper seller. The female lead, Loretta King
, wears the same angora hat worn by Wood in Glen or Glenda.
The style and content of the film is highly reminiscent of the low-budget horror movies Lugosi made for Monogram Pictures
in the 1940s, particularly The Corpse Vanishes
. Wood's script even recreates a laboratory scene from that film (Lugosi's mad scientist flogging his henchman) with the same fake, painted stone wall backdrop. Budget-saving film library footage of lightning, explosions, a nuclear blast, and a giant "atomic" octopus
was also inserted. In one scene the hero, trapped in quicksand, is menaced by an obvious stock footage alligator. Contrary to what's seen in Ed Wood
, Lugosi's stunt double was reduced to thrashing about in the mud with a large rubber octopus when the motor needed to turn it into a flailing beast could not be located (Burton's film implies that Lugosi himself performed the stunt, however the performer playing Varnoff in this scene is clearly not Lugosi). Allegedly, the octopus's motor was left behind when Wood and the crew stole the octopus from a Warner Bros. prop warehouse.
and Lon Chaney, Jr.
were also attached to the project for a time. Wood could only raise enough money to shoot one day's worth of silent test footage. A few random scenes were filmed of Lugosi at a funeral, in front of Tor Johnson's house, and stalking about in his Dracula costume (possibly intended for The Vampire's Tomb, another unrealized film). The scenes were filmed to show to prospective financial backers. Lugosi died soon afterward on August 16 and the footage became the seed for Wood's next project.
Plan 9 from Outer Space
incorporated the final Lugosi scenes into a new story that combined horror and science fiction. Wood's chiropractor, his face hidden behind a cape, doubled for Lugosi in several scenes. Tor Johnson and wasp-waisted Vampira (Maila Nurmi
) are memorable, even iconic, as zombies risen from the grave by alien invaders. The film was shot over a five-day period in November 1956 on a budget of around $20,000. All of Nurmi's scenes were filmed in just two hours (she was paid the union minimum wage of $200). Resorting again to the "docu-fantasy" approach, Criswell, the flamboyantly inaccurate TV psychic, acts as on-screen host and narrator. He cryptically describes the story as "something more than a fact". Cost-free stock footage of airliners, explosions and fighter jets were edited in. The flying saucer
s (made from plastic toy store models) are fired upon by an artillery barrage taken from World War II newsreels. Although completed in 1956, the film was not released until 1959, due to the inability of the producer to secure distribution.
Most notably, for Plan 9 he convinced members of churches of the Southern Baptist Convention
(through his landlord at the time) to invest the initial capital, allegedly convincing them that a successful science fiction
picture would make enough money to fund their own pet project of 12 movies about the 12 Apostles. They reportedly changed the name of the movie from Grave Robbers from Outer Space and removed lines from the script which they considered profane; one source alleges they required the actors to accept their church's baptism as part of the deal. The grave-diggers in the picture are the two primary backers. Wood's frequently being overruled by producers and financiers was one factor contributing to his depression
and was something he personally blamed for his lack of commercial success.
Wood had planned to make another posthumous Lugosi collaboration to be called Ghouls of The Moon using additional unseen footage he had of the late actor. Described as "wild stuff" by one of Wood's friends, the material was found to have deteriorated beyond usage when Wood opened the film can it was stored in. Thus the project was cancelled, with Wood moving on to Night of the Ghouls
instead.
, an exploitation film
about a gang of juvenile delinquent high school girls. Directed by William M. Morgan, it starred first-time actress Jean Moorhead
, a former Playboy
Miss October 1955 centerfold model. The film is notable for its unusual girls-gone-bad premise and risqué abduction scene where a girl is bound and gagged with strips of her shredded dress while her boyfriend is sexually assaulted (off camera) by the lusty girl gang. This foreshadows Wood's fearless, anything-goes attitude seen in his later, racier novels and films.
In 1958, Wood's screenplay Queen of the Gorillas was released as The Bride and the Beast, a fantasy tale about a gorilla
reincarnated in the body of a beautiful woman. That same year Wood wrote, produced, and directed Night of the Ghouls (original title: Revenge of the Dead), an "old dark house" tale about a fake medium and evil spirits. The setting is the rebuilt house on Willows Lake that burned down in Bride of the Monster
. There are frequent references to the mad scientist (Lugosi) and monster from the previous film, and Tor Johnson reprises his Lobo role, his face now half-destroyed from the fire. Paul Marco makes his third appearance as Kelton, the cowardly, inept policeman. Criswell, billed as himself, returns as host and narrator, rising from his coffin to introduce this tale of "Monsters to be pitied. Monsters to be despised!" (Tim Burton's Ed Wood
biopic opens with a faithful recreation of this scene). Criswell also plays a character role as one of the vengeful ghosts seen at the climax of the film.
In one of the early scenes, a girl (wearing an angora sweater) and her boyfriend are attacked by the Black Ghost. Wood, his face hidden by a dark veil, doubles for the female ghoul in several shots. A fight scene from the unfinished Hellborn was edited in (more scenes from that project appeared in The Sinister Urge
). Most of Lieutenant Bradford's exploration of Dr. Acula's house was lifted from Wood's short film Final Curtain and given a voice-over by Criswell to integrate it into the current story. A publicity photo of Wood is seen on a wanted poster on the wall of the police station. The finale, with the ghouls reduced to skeletons and Criswell's epilogue, were used again in 1965 for Orgy of the Dead. For decades this remained a lost film that was never released to theaters. Wood lacked the funds to pay the film processing fees, so it languished in limbo until it was finally released on video in 1983.
from his Racket Queen script. This lurid exposé on the "smut picture racket" purports to warn against the dangers of pornography. The story concerns a police manhunt for a sex maniac psycho-killer. The police are played by Wood regulars Kenne Duncan, Duke Moore, and Carl Anthony. Filmed in five days in 1960, this is the last mainstream film that Wood directed. Ironically, his career would soon spiral downward into a blur of "smut racket" nudie flicks, softcore pornography
, and end with X-rated novels and films. The scenes of teenagers at a pizza place were shot in 1956 for the unfinished film Rock and Roll Hell aka Hellborn. This includes a fight scene performed by Ed Wood himself and Conrad Brooks.
In 1963, he wrote the screenplay for Shotgun Wedding, an exploitation film about hillbillies marrying child brides. Wood's transitional film, once again combining two genres, horror and grindhouse skin-flick, was Orgy of the Dead
(1965). Wood wrote the screenplay, originally called Nudie Ghoulies, and handled various production details while Stephen C. Apostolof directed under the pseudonym A.C. Stephen. The film begins with a re-creation of the opening scene from the then unreleased Night of the Ghouls. Criswell, wearing one of Lugosi's old capes, rises from his coffin to deliver an introduction taken almost word-for-word from the previous film. Set in a misty graveyard, the Lord of the Dead (Criswell) and his sexy consort, The Black Ghoul (a Vampira lookalike) preside over a series of macabre performances by topless dancers from beyond the grave (recruited by Wood from local strip clubs). Together, Wood and Apostolof went on to make a string of sexploitation flicks up to 1977. Wood co-wrote the screenplays and occasionally acted. Venus Flytrap
(1970), a US/Japan horror film
, was based on an unproduced screenplay of Wood's from the 1950s.
His remaining output until his death in 1978 was confined to writing lurid crime and sex novels, often featuring girl gangs and transvestites, and a dozen obscure, low-budget adult films, some with an occult theme. Titles include The Photographer (1969), Take It Out in Trade
(1970), The Only House in Town (1970), with Uschi Digard
, Necromania
(1971), The Undergraduate (1972), and Fugitive Girls (1974). As told in Nightmare of Ecstasy, Maila Nurmi
declined Wood's offer to do a nude scene sitting up in a coffin for Necromania.
, along with his 1970 film Take It Out In Trade, which exists only in outtake
s without sound (released by Something Weird Video
). Wood's 1971 film Necromania
was believed lost for years until an edited version resurfaced at a yard sale in 1992, followed by a complete unedited print in 2001. A complete print of the previously lost Wood pornographic film The Young Marrieds
was discovered in 2004.
income with hastily written pulp fiction
, including innumerable pulp crime, horror
, and sex
novels and occasional non-fiction
pieces. As he became increasingly unable to fund film projects, the novels seem to have become Wood's primary source of income.
Wood's novels frequently include transvestite
or drag queen
characters, or entire plots centering around transvestism
(including his angora fetish
), and tap into his love of crime fiction and the occult. Wood would often recycle plots of his films for novels, write novelization
s of his own screenplays, or reuse elements from his novels in scripts. His first novel, Black Lace Drag was published in 1963 and reissued in 1965 as Killer in Drag. Among his other books are Orgy of The Dead (1965), Devil Girls (1967), Death of a Transvestite (1967), The Sexecutives (1968) and A Study of Fetishes and Fantasies (1973).
From 1963 until his death in December 1978, Wood wrote at least 80 novels in addition to hundreds of short stories and non-fiction pieces for magazines.
In a December 2010 published article at Mondo Film & Video Guide
, indie print publisher Feral House, who in the last few years had re-printed dozens of Wood's novels, ended sales on all Wood titles. Feral House informed the online film magazine, that the estate of Ed Wood had requested a cease and desist, due to a lack of knowledge on the fact, that Wood may or may not have actually written all the novels that some claim he had.
, eating
, drinking
, and carrying on conversation
s while typing
. In his quasi-memoir
, Hollywood Rat Race, Wood advises new writers to "just keep on writing
. Even if your story
gets worse, you'll get better". But mostly the book concerns the pitfalls of Hollywood, and has advice
for those dreaming of making it in Hollywood. Wood does not candy coat the experience that a first-timer in the movie business will discover. He also devotes time in Hollywood Rat Race to making the reader wary of beauty pageant and modelling
scams and con games, both in Hollywood and the world over.
As Wood's most famous films of the 1950s are not explicitly sexual or violent, the outré content of his novels may shock the unprepared reader. Wood's dark side emerges in such sexual shockers as Raped in the Grass or The Perverts and in short stories such as Toni: Black Tigress, which exploit hot-button topics such as violence, rape, racial issues, juvenile delinquency
and drug culture
.
book is part primer for young actors and filmmakers, and part memoir
. In Hollywood Rat Race, Wood recounts tale
s of dubious authenticity
, such as how he and Bela Lugosi
entered the world of nightclub cabaret
.
(1970), a softcore take on Philip Marlowe
detective films, and Necromania
(1971).
Wood also made occasional appearances as an actor, appearing in two films produced by a Marine buddy, Joseph F. Robertson. Love Feast (1969), also known as Pretty Models All in a Row, was his first lead role in a film since 1953's Glen or Glenda, as a photographer using his position to engage in sexual antics with professional models. He had a smaller role in Robertson's ode to swinger
parties, Mrs. Stone's Thing. Wood appeared as a transvestite who spends his time at a party trying on lingerie in a bedroom. In Rudolph Grey's Nightmare of Ecstasy, Robertson makes a reference to Wood reappearing in a film called Misty, of which no other record remains.
His primary film work in the 1970s was working with friend Stephen C. Apostolof, usually cowriting scripts, but also serving as an assistant director and associate producer. His last known on-screen appearance was in Apostolof's Fugitive Girls (aka Five Loose Women), where he played a dual cameo as a gas station attendant called Pops and as the sheriff on the women's trail.
Wood's depression
worsened, and with it a serious drinking problem. Evicted from his Hollywood apartment on Yucca Street, Wood and his wife moved into the North Hollywood apartment of friend Peter Coe. On December 10, 1978, only days after the move, the 54-year old Edward D. Wood died of a heart attack
while watching a football game alone in Coe's bedroom. In Nightmare of Ecstasy, it was reported Wood yelled out "Kathy, I can't breathe!", a plea his wife in the living room ignored for 90 minutes before finally going in to find him dead; apparently, he frequently feigned heart attacks and screamed for help as a way of teasing her, and at one point she even shouted at him to shut up.
Wood was cremated, and his ashes were scattered at sea
. Wood's wife Kathy died on June 26, 2006, having never remarried.
s of kitsch
and bad cinema, Edward Wood Jr. is revered as one of the ultimate bad directors of all time for a variety of reasons. His cult status began two years after his death with his recognition in the Michael
and Harry Medved book The Golden Turkey Awards
, and has continued with the rediscovery of many of his long-lost works. In an essay paying homage to Wood in Incredibly Strange Films
, Jim Morton writes: "Eccentric and individualistic, Edward D Wood Jr was a man born to film. Lesser men, if forced to make movies under the conditions Wood faced, would have thrown up their hands in defeat."
The University of Southern California
holds an annual Ed Wood Film Festival, in which students of all disciplines are challenged to form teams to write, film and edit an Ed Wood-inspired short film based on a preassigned theme. Past themes have included Slippery When Wet (2006), What's That in Your Pocket? (2005), and Rebel Without a Bra (2004). 2007 saw a break in this tradition when the theme My eyes are killing me was accompanied by a theme object: a mirror.
Some of Wood's most famous films, including Glen or Glenda and Plan 9 from Outer Space have been remade as pornographic
movies (as Glen & Glenda and Plan 69 from Outer Space, respectively). They were not simply spoofed or referenced, but reshot, with the same or similar script, and sex scenes worked into the original plots.
In 1998, Wood's previously unfilmed script I Woke Up Early The Day I Died
was finally produced, starring Billy Zane
and Christina Ricci
, and has preserved the inept, goofy character that made Wood's films famous. Outside of a brief New York
theatrical engagement, the film did not receive a commercial release in the United States
, and was only available on video in Germany
due to contractual difficulties.
Three of his films (Bride of the Monster, The Violent Years, and The Sinister Urge) have been featured on the television series Mystery Science Theater 3000
, which has given those works wider exposure. Producers considered including Plan 9, but found it had too much dialogue for the show's format. Series head writer and host Michael J. Nelson
recorded an audio commentary for a 2005/2006 DVD
release of the film, which was newly colorized.
Reverend Steve Galindo of Sacramento, California, created a legally recognized religion in 1996 with Wood as its official savior. Originally founded as a joke, the Church of Ed Wood now boasts over 3,500 baptized followers. Woodites, as Steve's followers are called, celebrate Woodmas on October 10, which is Ed's birthday. Numerous parties and concerts are held worldwide to celebrate Woodmas. On October 4-5, 2003, horror host
Mr. Lobo
was canonized
as the "Patron Saint of late night movie hosts and insomniacs" in the Church of Ed Wood.
The cult status of Ed Wood's movies is also represented in the music industry. Horror film
director and heavy metal musician Rob Zombie
titled his 2001 album The Sinister Urge
after Wood's film
.
One of Wood's heroes was Orson Welles
for his cinematic ambition and passion
. Wood also prided himself on the fact that he was the only filmmaker of his era other than Welles to be writer
, director
, and actor
in his own films, although it is likely that Wood took on all of these functions to save time and money. Unlike the depiction in the Tim Burton
movie Ed Wood, Wood never actually met his hero Welles.
Bela Lugosi Jr. has been among those who felt Wood exploited the senior Lugosi's stardom, taking advantage of the fading actor when he could not refuse any work. Most documents and interviews with other Wood associates in Nightmare of Ecstasy suggest that Wood and Lugosi were genuine friends and that Wood helped Lugosi through the worst days of his depression and addiction
.
The 1994 film Ed Wood
, by director Tim Burton, tells the story of Wood and Lugosi and the making of their three films, (Glen or Glenda, Bride of the Monster, and Plan 9 from Outer Space), from a sympathetic point of view. Wood was played by Johnny Depp
and Lugosi by Martin Landau
, who won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor
. The film also won an Academy Award for Best Makeup for Rick Baker. Burton's successes for previous studios such as Warner Bros.
and 20th Century Fox
were at odds with his insistence on shooting the Wood film in black-and-white
, and the studios turned it down as a probable box office
failure. Eager to embrace Burton, Disney
accepted the project, monochrome and all. As others had anticipated, the film received mass critical acclaim, but did poorly at the box office. It has since become a cult classic.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
screenwriter
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...
, director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
, producer
Film producer
A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...
, actor
Actor
An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...
, author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
, and editor
Film editing
Film editing is part of the creative post-production process of filmmaking. It involves the selection and combining of shots into sequences, and ultimately creating a finished motion picture. It is an art of storytelling...
, who often performed many of these functions simultaneously. In the 1950s, Wood made a number of low-budget genre
Genre fiction
Genre fiction, also known as popular fiction, is a term for fictional works written with the intent of fitting into a specific literary genre in order to appeal to readers and fans already familiar with that genre....
films, now notable for their technical errors, unsophisticated special effects, large amounts of ill-fitting stock footage
Stock footage
Stock footage, and similarly, archive footage, library pictures and file footage are film or video footage that may or may not be custom shot for use in a specific film or television program. Stock footage is of beneficial use to filmmakers as it is sometimes less expensive than shooting new...
, idiosyncratic dialogue, eccentric
Eccentricity (behavior)
In popular usage, eccentricity refers to unusual or odd behavior on the part of an individual. This behavior would typically be perceived as unusual or unnecessary, without being demonstrably maladaptive...
casts and outlandish plot elements, although his flair for showmanship
Showmanship (performing)
Showmanship, concerning artistic performing such as in Theatre, is the skill of performing in such a manner that will appeal to an audience or aid in conveying the performance's essential theme or message....
gave his projects at least a modicum of critical success.
Wood's popularity waned soon after his biggest name star Bela Lugosi
Béla Lugosi
Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó , commonly known as Bela Lugosi, was a Hungarian actor of stage and screen. He was best known for having played Count Dracula in the Broadway play and subsequent film version, as well as having starred in several of Ed Wood's low budget films in the last years of his...
died. He was able to salvage a saleable feature from Lugosi's last moments on film, but his career declined thereafter. Toward the end of his life, Wood made pornographic movies
Pornography
Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...
and wrote pulp
Pulp magazine
Pulp magazines , also collectively known as pulp fiction, refers to inexpensive fiction magazines published from 1896 through the 1950s. The typical pulp magazine was seven inches wide by ten inches high, half an inch thick, and 128 pages long...
crime, horror, and sex novels. His infamy began two years after his death, when he was awarded a Golden Turkey Award
The Golden Turkey Awards
The Golden Turkey Awards is a 1980 book by film critic Michael Medved and his brother Harry Medved.The book awards the fictional "Golden Turkey Awards" to films judged by the authors as poor in quality, and to directors and actors judged to have created a chronically inept body of work...
as Worst Director of All Time. The lack of filmmaking ability in his work has earned Wood and his films a considerable cult following
Cult following
A cult following is a group of fans who are highly dedicated to a specific area of pop culture. A film, book, band, or video game, among other things, will be said to have a cult following when it has a small but very passionate fan base...
.
Following the publication of Rudolph Grey
Rudolph Grey
Rudolph Grey is a musician and writer.As an electric guitarist, Grey has recorded and performed under his own name, as well as leading various ad hoc ensembles called The Blue Humans. His music draws on no wave and free jazz....
's biography Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1992), Wood's life and work have undergone a public rehabilitation of sorts, with new light shed on his evident zeal and honest love of movies and movie production. Tim Burton
Tim Burton
Timothy William "Tim" Burton is an American film director, film producer, writer and artist. He is famous for dark, quirky-themed movies such as Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow, Corpse Bride and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet...
's biopic of the director's life, Ed Wood
Ed Wood (film)
Ed Wood is a 1994 American comedy-drama biopic directed and produced by Tim Burton, and starring Johnny Depp as cult filmmaker Edward D. Wood, Jr. The film concerns the period in Wood's life when he made his best-known films as well as his relationship with actor Bela Lugosi, played by Martin Landau...
, earned two Academy Awards.
Early years
Wood's father, Edward Sr., worked for the Postal ServiceUnited States Postal Service
The United States Postal Service is an independent agency of the United States government responsible for providing postal service in the United States...
and his family relocated numerous times around the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. Eventually, they settled in Poughkeepsie, New York, where Ed Wood, Jr. was born.
During his childhood, Wood was interested in the performing arts and pulp fiction. He collected comics
Comics
Comics denotes a hybrid medium having verbal side of its vocabulary tightly tied to its visual side in order to convey narrative or information only, the latter in case of non-fiction comics, seeking synergy by using both visual and verbal side in...
and pulp magazine
Pulp magazine
Pulp magazines , also collectively known as pulp fiction, refers to inexpensive fiction magazines published from 1896 through the 1950s. The typical pulp magazine was seven inches wide by ten inches high, half an inch thick, and 128 pages long...
s, and adored movies, most notably Westerns
Western (genre)
The Western is a genre of various visual arts, such as film, television, radio, literature, painting and others. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West, hence the name. Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of...
, and anything involving the occult
Occult
The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus , referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g...
. He would often skip school in favor of watching pictures at the local movie theater, where stills from the day's movie would often be thrown in the trash by theater staff, allowing Wood to salvage them to add to his extensive collection.
It is believed that Wood's mother, Lillian, always wanted a girl and would sometimes, until he was about 12 years old, dress her son in skirts and dresses. For the rest of his life, Wood was a heterosexual
Heterosexuality
Heterosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the opposite sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, heterosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, physical or romantic attractions to persons of the opposite sex";...
crossdresser
Cross-dressing
Cross-dressing is the wearing of clothing and other accoutrement commonly associated with a gender within a particular society that is seen as different than the one usually presented by the dresser...
.
On his 12th birthday, Wood received his first movie camera, a Kodak
Eastman Kodak
Eastman Kodak Company is a multinational imaging and photographic equipment, materials and services company headquarted in Rochester, New York, United States. It was founded by George Eastman in 1892....
"Cine Special". One of his first pieces of footage, and one that imbued him with pride, was the airship Hindenburg
LZ 129 Hindenburg
LZ 129 Hindenburg was a large German commercial passenger-carrying rigid airship, the lead ship of the Hindenburg class, the longest class of flying machine and the largest airship by envelope volume...
passing over the Hudson River
Hudson River
The Hudson is a river that flows from north to south through eastern New York. The highest official source is at Lake Tear of the Clouds, on the slopes of Mount Marcy in the Adirondack Mountains. The river itself officially begins in Henderson Lake in Newcomb, New York...
at Poughkeepsie, shortly before its famous fiery demise
Hindenburg disaster
The Hindenburg disaster took place on Thursday, May 6, 1937, as the German passenger airship LZ 129 Hindenburg caught fire and was destroyed during its attempt to dock with its mooring mast at the Lakehurst Naval Air Station, which is located adjacent to the borough of Lakehurst, New Jersey...
at Lakehurst, New Jersey
Lakehurst, New Jersey
Lakehurst is a Borough in Ocean County, New Jersey, United States. As of the United States 2010 Census, the borough population was 2,654.Lakehurst was incorporated as a borough by an Act of the New Jersey Legislature on April 7, 1921, from portions of Manchester Township, based on the results of a...
.
One of his first paid jobs was as a cinema usher, and he also sang and played drums in a band. He later fronted a singing quartet called Eddie Wood's Little Splinters, having learned to play a variety of string instruments.
Wood enlisted in the Marines
United States Marine Corps
The United States Marine Corps is a branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for providing power projection from the sea, using the mobility of the United States Navy to deliver combined-arms task forces rapidly. It is one of seven uniformed services of the United States...
at age 17, just months after the Attack on Pearl Harbor
Attack on Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941...
. He served from 1942–46 and claimed that he had participated in the Battle of Guadalcanal while secretly wearing a brassiere and panties beneath his uniform.
Fascinated by the exotic and bizarre, Wood joined a carnival
Carnival
Carnaval is a festive season which occurs immediately before Lent; the main events are usually during February. Carnaval typically involves a public celebration or parade combining some elements of a circus, mask and public street party...
following his discharge
Military discharge
A military discharge is given when a member of the armed forces is released from their obligation to serve.-United States:Discharge or separation should not be confused with retirement; career U.S...
from the Marines. His several missing teeth and disfigured leg (wounds suffered while in combat) combined with personal fetishes and acting skills made him a perfect candidate for the freak show
Freak show
A freak show is an exhibition of biological rarities, referred to as "freaks of nature". Typical features would be physically unusual humans, such as those uncommonly large or small, those with both male and female secondary sexual characteristics, people with other extraordinary diseases and...
. Wood played, among others, the geek
Geek
The word geek is a slang term, with different meanings ranging from "a computer expert or enthusiast" to "a carnival performer who performs sensationally morbid or disgusting acts", with a general pejorative meaning of "a peculiar or otherwise dislikable person, esp[ecially] one who is perceived to...
and the bearded lady
Bearded Lady
A bearded lady or bearded woman is a woman who has a visible beard. These women have long been a phenomenon of legend, curiosity, ridicule, and more recently, political statement and fashion statement. A small number of women are able to grow enough facial hair to have a distinct beard...
. As the bearded lady, he donned women's clothing and created his own prosthetic breast
Breast
The breast is the upper ventral region of the torso of a primate, in left and right sides, which in a female contains the mammary gland that secretes milk used to feed infants.Both men and women develop breasts from the same embryological tissues...
s. Carnivals would be frequently depicted in Wood's works, most notably the semi-autobiographical novel Killer in Drag.
Wood's other habits included soft drugs, alcohol, and sex. He was a womanizer
Promiscuity
In humans, promiscuity refers to less discriminating casual sex with many sexual partners. The term carries a moral or religious judgement and is viewed in the context of the mainstream social ideal for sexual activity to take place within exclusive committed relationships...
in his younger days, but in later life he was faithful to his girlfriends (most notably Dolores Fuller
Dolores Fuller
Dolores Agnes Fuller was an American actress and songwriter best known as the one-time girlfriend of the low-budget film director Edward D. Wood, Jr. She played the protagonist's girlfriend in Glen or Glenda, co-starred in Wood's Jail Bait, and had a minor role in Bride of the Monster...
) and wife (Kathy O'Hara). Wood had one child, a daughter named Kathleen Emily Wood.
Wood's first wife, Norma McCarty, kicked him out of their house not long after they were married. McCarty had a son, Michael ("Mac"), from a relationship prior to Wood.
Movies
- For a list of films involving Ed Wood, see Ed Wood Jr. Filmography.
Wood's film career began after moving to Hollywood in 1947. He wrote scripts and directed television pilots, commercials, and several forgotten micro-budget westerns with names such as Crossroads Of Laredo and Crossroad Avenger: The Legend of the Tucson Kid. Wood wrote, produced, directed, and starred in Casual Company, a play from his unpublished novel which was based on his service in the United States Marine Corps
United States Marine Corps
The United States Marine Corps is a branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for providing power projection from the sea, using the mobility of the United States Navy to deliver combined-arms task forces rapidly. It is one of seven uniformed services of the United States...
. The play opened at the Village Playhouse in Hollywood to disastrous reviews on October 25, 1948.
Glen or Glenda
Wood's big break came in 1953 when he was hired by producer George WeissGeorge Weiss (producer)
George Weiss was an American film producer who specialized in independent 'road show' exploitation Z movies during the 1950s and sexploitation shockers in the '60s that openly defied the motion picture production code of the day.-Glen or Glenda:Weiss is best known as the producer who funded the...
to make an exploitation film
Exploitation film
Exploitation film is a type of film that is promoted by "exploiting" often lurid subject matter. The term "exploitation" is common in film marketing, used for all types of films to mean promotion or advertising. These films then need something to exploit, such as a big star, special effects, sex,...
, I Changed My Sex, based on the life of transsexual Christine Jorgensen
Christine Jorgensen
Christine Jorgensen was the first widely known person to have sex reassignment surgery—in this case, male to female.-Early life:...
. After Jorgensen refused to collaborate on the film, Wood wrote a new autobiographical screenplay titled Glen or Glenda, a sincere and sympathetic study of transvestism
Transvestism
Transvestism is the practice of cross-dressing, which is wearing clothing traditionally associated with the opposite sex. Transvestite refers to a person who cross-dresses; however, the word often has additional connotations. -History:Although the word transvestism was coined as late as the 1910s,...
. Wood directed and, using the alias Daniel Davis, played the titular character who has a fetish for cross-dressing and angora sweaters.
Angora
Angora wool
Angora wool or Angora fibre refers to the downy coat produced by the Angora rabbit. While their names are similar, Angora fibre is distinct from mohair, which comes from the Angora goat. Angora is known for its softness, thin fibres, and what knitters refer to as a halo...
was regularly featured in his films. His wife Kathy O'Hara and others recall that Wood's transvestism was not a sexual inclination, but rather a neomaternal comfort derived mainly from angora fabric (Ann Gora also happened to be one of Wood's pen names). The medical experts in the film go to great lengths to stress that the transvestite is a perfectly normal heterosexual man who simply feels more comfortable and "more himself" when wearing women's apparel. There is even a fantasy vignette showing Glenda rebuffing the advances of a homosexual man. Even in his later years, Wood was not shy about going out in public dressed in drag as Shirley; his alter ego—female characters named Shirley also appear in many of his screenplays and stories.
Most of Wood's films have a rushed quality due to the tight shooting schedule and limited budgets. While most directors film only one scene per day (or just a fraction of one in more contemporary pictures), Wood might complete up to 30 scenes. He seldom ordered a retake, even if the original was obviously flawed. Glen or Glenda, shot in just four days for $26,000, was done in a semi-documentary style. Narration and voice-over dialog was added to generous amounts of film-library stock footage
Stock footage
Stock footage, and similarly, archive footage, library pictures and file footage are film or video footage that may or may not be custom shot for use in a specific film or television program. Stock footage is of beneficial use to filmmakers as it is sometimes less expensive than shooting new...
(a cost-saving trick he used in his later films). The love-interest role of Barbara was played by Wood's real-life girlfriend, Dolores Fuller. She went on to appear in his next two films. Bela Lugosi
Béla Lugosi
Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó , commonly known as Bela Lugosi, was a Hungarian actor of stage and screen. He was best known for having played Count Dracula in the Broadway play and subsequent film version, as well as having starred in several of Ed Wood's low budget films in the last years of his...
, who was not told the film was about a transvestite, was paid $1,000 in cash for one day of filming. In a dark haunted-house set, speaking in vague, baffling metaphors and nursery rhymes, he played a portentous, omnipotent narrator.
The centerpiece of the film is a 15-minute fantasy sequence that illustrates Glen's tormented state of mind. Wood utilizes a barrage of surreal, dream-like vignettes with personalized symbolism. Producer George Weiss
George Weiss (producer)
George Weiss was an American film producer who specialized in independent 'road show' exploitation Z movies during the 1950s and sexploitation shockers in the '60s that openly defied the motion picture production code of the day.-Glen or Glenda:Weiss is best known as the producer who funded the...
added to the confusion by inserting footage of flagellation and bondage, reminiscent of the fetish films of Irving Klaw
Irving Klaw
Irving Klaw was an American photographer and filmmaker.Klaw is best-known for operating a mail-order business selling photographs and film of attractive women from the 1940s to the 1960s...
, from another production. In this sequence, Barbara is pinned beneath a large tree (in her living room), and Glen rescues her; they are married with the Devil
Devil
The Devil is believed in many religions and cultures to be a powerful, supernatural entity that is the personification of evil and the enemy of God and humankind. The nature of the role varies greatly...
acting as best man; a shirtless man vigorously flogs a woman reclining on a couch; lewd burlesque dancers gyrate to blaring jazz music and tear at their clothes; a woman gagged and bound to a yoke-like pole is untied by another gagged woman; a lust-crazed man roughly assaults a seductress in a flimsy negligee; an enraged Glenda rips Barbara's blouse to shreds after she laughs at his appearance. Bela Lugosi
Béla Lugosi
Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó , commonly known as Bela Lugosi, was a Hungarian actor of stage and screen. He was best known for having played Count Dracula in the Broadway play and subsequent film version, as well as having starred in several of Ed Wood's low budget films in the last years of his...
appears in several scenes also rejecting Glenda and droning on repeatedly about "snips and snails and puppy-dog tails". The film was released under several regional titles such as Transvestite, I Led Two Lives, and He or She?.
Middle years: Jail Bait and Bride of the Monster
Wood's next project was a proposed TV series called Dr. Acula, to star Lugosi as an investigator into the supernatural. When this fell through, he directed and produced the low-budget Jail Bait (1954), a 1930s-style gangster film with a twist ending à la The Twilight ZoneThe Twilight Zone
The Twilight Zone is an American television anthology series created by Rod Serling. Each episode is a mixture of self-contained drama, psychological thriller, fantasy, science fiction, suspense, or horror, often concluding with a macabre or unexpected twist...
. Originally called The Hidden Face, the title was inexplicably changed to Jail Bait, from an offhand reference in the script to an illegal hand gun. Wood also co-wrote the screenplay
Screenplay
A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...
with writer-producer friend Alex Gordon
Alex Gordon (writer-producer)
Alex Gordon was a British writer and film producer.He produced eighteen films, including the American International Pictures films Day the World Ended and The She Creature...
. It was Gordon who introduced Wood to Bela Lugosi in 1952. (Gordon soon went on to help create American International Pictures
American International Pictures
American International Pictures was a film production company formed in April 1956 from American Releasing Corporation by James H. Nicholson, former Sales Manager of Realart Pictures, and Samuel Z. Arkoff, an entertainment lawyer...
). Lugosi was originally cast as the father of the lead character, but dropped out due to illness. Around this time, Wood became friends with a group of B-movie actors who became part of his entourage and stock company, appearing in most of his later films. These included Kenne Duncan
Kenne Duncan
Kenne Duncan , born Kenneth Duncan MacLachlan, was a well-known B-movie character actor. Hyped professionally as "The Meanest Man in the Movies," the vast majority of his over 250 appearances on camera were Westerns, but he also did occasional forays into horror, crime drama, and science fiction...
, Lyle Talbot
Lyle Talbot
Lyle Talbot , born Lisle Henderson, was an American actor on stage and screen, best known for his long career in movies from 1931 to 1960 and for his frequent appearances on TV in the 1950s and '60s, including his decade-long role as Joe Randolph on television's The Adventures of Ozzie and...
, Conrad Brooks
Conrad Brooks
Conrad Brooks is an American actor. He moved to Hollywood, California in the early 1950s to pursue a career in acting...
, Duke Moore
Duke Moore
Duke Moore, , is an American actor who has the distinction of spending his entire on-screen career in productions by Ed Wood.Between 1953 and 1970, Moore appeared in the following for Wood:...
, Timothy Farrell
Timothy Farrell
Timothy Farrell, real name Timothy Sperl, was an American film actor, best known for his roles in the Edward D. Wood, Jr. films Jail Bait, The Violent Years, and Glen or Glenda...
, Swedish professional wrestler
Professional wrestling
Professional wrestling is a mode of spectacle, combining athletics and theatrical performance.Roland Barthes, "The World of Wrestling", Mythologies, 1957 It takes the form of events, held by touring companies, which mimic a title match combat sport...
Tor Johnson
Tor Johnson
Tor Johansson , better known by the stage name Tor Johnson, was a Swedish professional wrestler and actor....
, pin-up model and TV horror hostess Maila Nurmi
Maila Nurmi
Maila Nurmi was a Finnish-American actress who created the campy 1950s characterVampira. She portrayed Vampira as TV's first horror host and in the Ed Wood cult film Plan 9 from Outer Space...
(aka Vampira
Maila Nurmi
Maila Nurmi was a Finnish-American actress who created the campy 1950s characterVampira. She portrayed Vampira as TV's first horror host and in the Ed Wood cult film Plan 9 from Outer Space...
), the eccentric gay socialite Bunny Breckinridge
Bunny Breckinridge
John Cabell "Bunny" Breckinridge was an American actor and drag queen, best known for his role as "The Ruler" in Ed Wood's film Plan 9 from Outer Space, his only film appearance.- Early life :...
, and the psychic
Psychic
A psychic is a person who professes an ability to perceive information hidden from the normal senses through extrasensory perception , or is said by others to have such abilities. It is also used to describe theatrical performers who use techniques such as prestidigitation, cold reading, and hot...
Criswell
The Amazing Criswell
Jeron Criswell King , born Jeron Criswell Konig, and known by his stage-name The Amazing Criswell , was an American psychic known for wildly inaccurate predictions...
.
In 1955, he produced and directed his first horror film, Bride of the Monster
Bride of the Monster
Bride of the Monster is a 1955 sci-fi horror film starring Bela Lugosi, along with Tor Johnson, Tony McCoy and Loretta King Hadler. It was produced, directed and co-written by Edward D. Wood, Jr....
(originally titled Bride of the Atom). Although Wood took most of the writing credit, the original story, The Atomic Monster, was written by Alex Gordon. Wood contributed about half the dialogue, according to Gordon (in Starlog, November 1994). Bela Lugosi, in his last speaking role, stars as a mad scientist bent on creating an army of atomic supermen. The immense, 400-pound Tor Johnson plays Lobo, his lumbering henchman. Billy Benedict of The Bowery Boys
The Bowery Boys
The Bowery Boys were fictional New York City characters who were the subject of feature films released by Monogram Pictures from 1946 through 1958....
has a walk-on role as a newspaper seller. The female lead, Loretta King
Loretta King Hadler
Loretta King Hadler was an American actress, best known for the brevity of her career and her relationship with director Ed Wood.-Career:...
, wears the same angora hat worn by Wood in Glen or Glenda.
The style and content of the film is highly reminiscent of the low-budget horror movies Lugosi made for Monogram Pictures
Monogram Pictures
Monogram Pictures Corporation is a Hollywood studio that produced and released films, most on low budgets, between 1931 and 1953, when the firm completed a transition to the name Allied Artists Pictures Corporation. Monogram is considered a leader among the smaller studios sometimes referred to...
in the 1940s, particularly The Corpse Vanishes
The Corpse Vanishes
The Corpse Vanishes is a 1942 American mystery and horror film directed by Wallace Fox. The screenplay was written by Harvey Gates. The film stars Bela Lugosi as a mad scientist who injects his aging wife with fluids from virginal young brides in order to preserve her beauty...
. Wood's script even recreates a laboratory scene from that film (Lugosi's mad scientist flogging his henchman) with the same fake, painted stone wall backdrop. Budget-saving film library footage of lightning, explosions, a nuclear blast, and a giant "atomic" octopus
Octopus
The octopus is a cephalopod mollusc of the order Octopoda. Octopuses have two eyes and four pairs of arms, and like other cephalopods they are bilaterally symmetric. An octopus has a hard beak, with its mouth at the center point of the arms...
was also inserted. In one scene the hero, trapped in quicksand, is menaced by an obvious stock footage alligator. Contrary to what's seen in Ed Wood
Ed Wood (film)
Ed Wood is a 1994 American comedy-drama biopic directed and produced by Tim Burton, and starring Johnny Depp as cult filmmaker Edward D. Wood, Jr. The film concerns the period in Wood's life when he made his best-known films as well as his relationship with actor Bela Lugosi, played by Martin Landau...
, Lugosi's stunt double was reduced to thrashing about in the mud with a large rubber octopus when the motor needed to turn it into a flailing beast could not be located (Burton's film implies that Lugosi himself performed the stunt, however the performer playing Varnoff in this scene is clearly not Lugosi). Allegedly, the octopus's motor was left behind when Wood and the crew stole the octopus from a Warner Bros. prop warehouse.
Plan 9 from Outer Space
Wood, in 1956, planned to follow Bride of the Monster with The Ghoul Goes West (a.k.a. The Phantom Ghoul), which would have been a combination of his two favorite genres: Horror and Westerns. The story was mainly a rehash of Bride of the Monster in a western setting (a synopsis of the screenplay was published in Filmfax no. 18, December/January 1989-90). Lugosi, recently out of rehab for morphine addiction, was to star as the undertaker/mad scientist. Gene AutryGene Autry
Orvon Grover Autry , better known as Gene Autry, was an American performer who gained fame as The Singing Cowboy on the radio, in movies and on television for more than three decades beginning in the 1930s...
and Lon Chaney, Jr.
Lon Chaney, Jr.
Lon Chaney, Jr. , born Creighton Tull Chaney, was an American character actor. He was best known for his roles in monster movies and as the son of famous silent film actor, Lon Chaney...
were also attached to the project for a time. Wood could only raise enough money to shoot one day's worth of silent test footage. A few random scenes were filmed of Lugosi at a funeral, in front of Tor Johnson's house, and stalking about in his Dracula costume (possibly intended for The Vampire's Tomb, another unrealized film). The scenes were filmed to show to prospective financial backers. Lugosi died soon afterward on August 16 and the footage became the seed for Wood's next project.
Plan 9 from Outer Space
Plan 9 from Outer Space
Plan 9 from Outer Space is a 1959 science fiction film written and directed by Edward D. Wood, Jr. The film features Gregory Walcott, Mona McKinnon, Tor Johnson and Maila "Vampira" Nurmi...
incorporated the final Lugosi scenes into a new story that combined horror and science fiction. Wood's chiropractor, his face hidden behind a cape, doubled for Lugosi in several scenes. Tor Johnson and wasp-waisted Vampira (Maila Nurmi
Maila Nurmi
Maila Nurmi was a Finnish-American actress who created the campy 1950s characterVampira. She portrayed Vampira as TV's first horror host and in the Ed Wood cult film Plan 9 from Outer Space...
) are memorable, even iconic, as zombies risen from the grave by alien invaders. The film was shot over a five-day period in November 1956 on a budget of around $20,000. All of Nurmi's scenes were filmed in just two hours (she was paid the union minimum wage of $200). Resorting again to the "docu-fantasy" approach, Criswell, the flamboyantly inaccurate TV psychic, acts as on-screen host and narrator. He cryptically describes the story as "something more than a fact". Cost-free stock footage of airliners, explosions and fighter jets were edited in. The flying saucer
Flying saucer
A flying saucer is a type of unidentified flying object sometimes believed to be of alien origin with a disc or saucer-shaped body, usually described as silver or metallic, occasionally reported as covered with running lights or surrounded with a glowing light, hovering or moving rapidly either...
s (made from plastic toy store models) are fired upon by an artillery barrage taken from World War II newsreels. Although completed in 1956, the film was not released until 1959, due to the inability of the producer to secure distribution.
Most notably, for Plan 9 he convinced members of churches of the Southern Baptist Convention
Southern Baptist Convention
The Southern Baptist Convention is a United States-based Christian denomination. It is the world's largest Baptist denomination and the largest Protestant body in the United States, with over 16 million members...
(through his landlord at the time) to invest the initial capital, allegedly convincing them that a successful science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
picture would make enough money to fund their own pet project of 12 movies about the 12 Apostles. They reportedly changed the name of the movie from Grave Robbers from Outer Space and removed lines from the script which they considered profane; one source alleges they required the actors to accept their church's baptism as part of the deal. The grave-diggers in the picture are the two primary backers. Wood's frequently being overruled by producers and financiers was one factor contributing to his depression
Depression (mood)
Depression is a state of low mood and aversion to activity that can affect a person's thoughts, behaviour, feelings and physical well-being. Depressed people may feel sad, anxious, empty, hopeless, helpless, worthless, guilty, irritable, or restless...
and was something he personally blamed for his lack of commercial success.
Wood had planned to make another posthumous Lugosi collaboration to be called Ghouls of The Moon using additional unseen footage he had of the late actor. Described as "wild stuff" by one of Wood's friends, the material was found to have deteriorated beyond usage when Wood opened the film can it was stored in. Thus the project was cancelled, with Wood moving on to Night of the Ghouls
Night of the Ghouls
Night of the Ghouls is a 1959 horror film written and directed by Ed Wood. It is a sequel of sorts to the 1955 film Bride of the Monster...
instead.
Later years: The Violent Years and Night of the Ghouls
Also in 1956, Wood's Teenage Girl Gang script was produced as The Violent YearsThe Violent Years
The Violent Years is a 1956 American exploitation film starring Jean Moorhead as Paula Parkins, the leader of a gang of juvenile delinquent high school girls. The film is notable for the input of Ed Wood, Jr...
, an exploitation film
Exploitation film
Exploitation film is a type of film that is promoted by "exploiting" often lurid subject matter. The term "exploitation" is common in film marketing, used for all types of films to mean promotion or advertising. These films then need something to exploit, such as a big star, special effects, sex,...
about a gang of juvenile delinquent high school girls. Directed by William M. Morgan, it starred first-time actress Jean Moorhead
Jean Moorhead
Jean Moorhead is an American actress and model. Using the name Jean Moorehead, she was Playboy magazine's Playmate of the Month for the October 1955 issue...
, a former Playboy
Playboy
Playboy is an American men's magazine that features photographs of nude women as well as journalism and fiction. It was founded in Chicago in 1953 by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother. The magazine has grown into Playboy Enterprises, Inc., with...
Miss October 1955 centerfold model. The film is notable for its unusual girls-gone-bad premise and risqué abduction scene where a girl is bound and gagged with strips of her shredded dress while her boyfriend is sexually assaulted (off camera) by the lusty girl gang. This foreshadows Wood's fearless, anything-goes attitude seen in his later, racier novels and films.
In 1958, Wood's screenplay Queen of the Gorillas was released as The Bride and the Beast, a fantasy tale about a gorilla
Gorilla
Gorillas are the largest extant species of primates. They are ground-dwelling, predominantly herbivorous apes that inhabit the forests of central Africa. Gorillas are divided into two species and either four or five subspecies...
reincarnated in the body of a beautiful woman. That same year Wood wrote, produced, and directed Night of the Ghouls (original title: Revenge of the Dead), an "old dark house" tale about a fake medium and evil spirits. The setting is the rebuilt house on Willows Lake that burned down in Bride of the Monster
Bride of the Monster
Bride of the Monster is a 1955 sci-fi horror film starring Bela Lugosi, along with Tor Johnson, Tony McCoy and Loretta King Hadler. It was produced, directed and co-written by Edward D. Wood, Jr....
. There are frequent references to the mad scientist (Lugosi) and monster from the previous film, and Tor Johnson reprises his Lobo role, his face now half-destroyed from the fire. Paul Marco makes his third appearance as Kelton, the cowardly, inept policeman. Criswell, billed as himself, returns as host and narrator, rising from his coffin to introduce this tale of "Monsters to be pitied. Monsters to be despised!" (Tim Burton's Ed Wood
Ed Wood (film)
Ed Wood is a 1994 American comedy-drama biopic directed and produced by Tim Burton, and starring Johnny Depp as cult filmmaker Edward D. Wood, Jr. The film concerns the period in Wood's life when he made his best-known films as well as his relationship with actor Bela Lugosi, played by Martin Landau...
biopic opens with a faithful recreation of this scene). Criswell also plays a character role as one of the vengeful ghosts seen at the climax of the film.
In one of the early scenes, a girl (wearing an angora sweater) and her boyfriend are attacked by the Black Ghost. Wood, his face hidden by a dark veil, doubles for the female ghoul in several shots. A fight scene from the unfinished Hellborn was edited in (more scenes from that project appeared in The Sinister Urge
The Sinister Urge (film)
The Sinister Urge is a 1961 crime drama film that was written and directed by Edward D. Wood, Jr. The film was featured in episode 613 of the cult television show, Mystery Science Theater 3000.- Synopsis :...
). Most of Lieutenant Bradford's exploration of Dr. Acula's house was lifted from Wood's short film Final Curtain and given a voice-over by Criswell to integrate it into the current story. A publicity photo of Wood is seen on a wanted poster on the wall of the police station. The finale, with the ghouls reduced to skeletons and Criswell's epilogue, were used again in 1965 for Orgy of the Dead. For decades this remained a lost film that was never released to theaters. Wood lacked the funds to pay the film processing fees, so it languished in limbo until it was finally released on video in 1983.
Final years: scriptwriting and adult films
In 1961, Wood worked on the script for another potboiler, Married Too Young, and wrote and directed The Sinister UrgeThe Sinister Urge (film)
The Sinister Urge is a 1961 crime drama film that was written and directed by Edward D. Wood, Jr. The film was featured in episode 613 of the cult television show, Mystery Science Theater 3000.- Synopsis :...
from his Racket Queen script. This lurid exposé on the "smut picture racket" purports to warn against the dangers of pornography. The story concerns a police manhunt for a sex maniac psycho-killer. The police are played by Wood regulars Kenne Duncan, Duke Moore, and Carl Anthony. Filmed in five days in 1960, this is the last mainstream film that Wood directed. Ironically, his career would soon spiral downward into a blur of "smut racket" nudie flicks, softcore pornography
Pornography
Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...
, and end with X-rated novels and films. The scenes of teenagers at a pizza place were shot in 1956 for the unfinished film Rock and Roll Hell aka Hellborn. This includes a fight scene performed by Ed Wood himself and Conrad Brooks.
In 1963, he wrote the screenplay for Shotgun Wedding, an exploitation film about hillbillies marrying child brides. Wood's transitional film, once again combining two genres, horror and grindhouse skin-flick, was Orgy of the Dead
Orgy of the Dead
Orgy of the Dead is an unrated 1965 film directed by Stephen C. Apostolof under the alias A. C. Stephen. The screenplay was adapted by cult film director Edward D. Wood, Jr from his own novel...
(1965). Wood wrote the screenplay, originally called Nudie Ghoulies, and handled various production details while Stephen C. Apostolof directed under the pseudonym A.C. Stephen. The film begins with a re-creation of the opening scene from the then unreleased Night of the Ghouls. Criswell, wearing one of Lugosi's old capes, rises from his coffin to deliver an introduction taken almost word-for-word from the previous film. Set in a misty graveyard, the Lord of the Dead (Criswell) and his sexy consort, The Black Ghoul (a Vampira lookalike) preside over a series of macabre performances by topless dancers from beyond the grave (recruited by Wood from local strip clubs). Together, Wood and Apostolof went on to make a string of sexploitation flicks up to 1977. Wood co-wrote the screenplays and occasionally acted. Venus Flytrap
Venus Flytrap (film)
Venus Flytrap is an American horror film also known as The Revenge of Doctor X , and The Revenge of Dr. X...
(1970), a US/Japan horror film
Horror film
Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...
, was based on an unproduced screenplay of Wood's from the 1950s.
His remaining output until his death in 1978 was confined to writing lurid crime and sex novels, often featuring girl gangs and transvestites, and a dozen obscure, low-budget adult films, some with an occult theme. Titles include The Photographer (1969), Take It Out in Trade
Take it Out in Trade
Take it Out in Trade is a 1970 softcore pornographic comedy, written and directed by Edward D. Wood, Jr.. The plot centers on a couple who hire a private investigator to locate their missing daughter. He finds her in a "house of ill-repute," full of various soft-core couplings...
(1970), The Only House in Town (1970), with Uschi Digard
Uschi Digard
Uschi Digard is a Swedish former softcore porn star and model known for her roles in Russ Meyer films.- Early years :...
, Necromania
Necromania
Necromania is a pornographic film by Edward D. Wood, Jr., released in 1971.-Production and rediscovery:...
(1971), The Undergraduate (1972), and Fugitive Girls (1974). As told in Nightmare of Ecstasy, Maila Nurmi
Maila Nurmi
Maila Nurmi was a Finnish-American actress who created the campy 1950s characterVampira. She portrayed Vampira as TV's first horror host and in the Ed Wood cult film Plan 9 from Outer Space...
declined Wood's offer to do a nude scene sitting up in a coffin for Necromania.
Documentaries
- Flying Saucers Over Hollywood: The Plan 9 Companion, was released in 1992. This exhaustive two-hour documentary by Mark Carducci chronicles the making of Plan 9 from Outer Space and features interviews with Maila Nurmi (Vampira), Paul Marco, Conrad Brooks, et al. In 2000, Image Entertainment included the documentary on the DVD reissue of Plan 9 from Outer Space (in a two-disc set with Robot MonsterRobot MonsterRobot Monster is a 1953 American science fiction film made in 3-D by Phil Tucker. It is frequently considered one of the worst films ever made.- Plot :...
).
- Ed Wood: Look Back In Angora, released in 1994 by Rhino Home Video, is a one-hour documentary on Wood's life and films. This includes rare outtakes and interviews with Dolores Fuller, Kathy Wood, Stephen Apostolof, and Conrad Brooks. Gary OwensGary OwensGary Owens is an American disc jockey and voice actor. His polished baritone speaking voice generally offers deadpan recitations of total nonsense, which he frequently demonstrated as the announcer on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In. Owens is equally proficient in straight or silly assignments and is...
narrates; Ted NewsomTed NewsomTed Newsom is an American writer, director, producer and actor.- Early life and education :Son of Vernon and Patricia Newsom; grew up in Portland, OR, Spokane, WA and the San Fernando Valley; served in the US Army 1972-75 as a surgical assistant in Heidelberg, Germany...
wrote and directed.
- The Haunted World of Edward D. Wood Jr., written and directed by Brett Thompson, came out in 1995. This documentary about the life and films of Ed Wood features interviews with Wood's friends and co-workers and closely resembles Wood's own style, albeit with slightly better miniatures.
- The Incredibly Strange Film Show presented by Jonathan Ross.
Lost films
Wood's 1972 film The Undergraduate is considered to be a lost filmLost film
A lost film is a feature film or short film that is no longer known to exist in studio archives, private collections or public archives such as the Library of Congress, where at least one copy of all American films are deposited and catalogued for copyright reasons...
, along with his 1970 film Take It Out In Trade, which exists only in outtake
Outtake
An outtake is a portion of a work that is removed in the editing process and not included in the work's final, publicly released version. In the digital era, significant outtakes have been appended to CD and DVD reissues of many albums and films as bonus tracks or features, in film often, but not...
s without sound (released by Something Weird Video
Something Weird Video
Something Weird Video is an American publisher of video tapes and DVDs, based in Seattle, Washington. They specialize in exploitation film, particularly the works of Harry Novak, Doris Wishman, David F. Friedman, and Herschell Gordon Lewis. SWV videos are available on demand to Comcast subscribers...
). Wood's 1971 film Necromania
Necromania
Necromania is a pornographic film by Edward D. Wood, Jr., released in 1971.-Production and rediscovery:...
was believed lost for years until an edited version resurfaced at a yard sale in 1992, followed by a complete unedited print in 2001. A complete print of the previously lost Wood pornographic film The Young Marrieds
The Young Marrieds (film)
The Young Marrieds is a pornographic film directed by Edward D. Wood, Jr. Reportedly, this was made after Necromania, thus being Ed Wood's last film before his death.-Preservation:...
was discovered in 2004.
Wood as an author
Beginning in the early 1960s, Wood supplemented his directing and screenwritingScreenwriting
Screenwriting is the art and craft of writing scripts for mass media such as feature films, television productions or video games. It is a freelance profession....
income with hastily written pulp fiction
Pulp magazine
Pulp magazines , also collectively known as pulp fiction, refers to inexpensive fiction magazines published from 1896 through the 1950s. The typical pulp magazine was seven inches wide by ten inches high, half an inch thick, and 128 pages long...
, including innumerable pulp crime, horror
Horror fiction
Horror fiction also Horror fantasy is a philosophy of literature, which is intended to, or has the capacity to frighten its readers, inducing feelings of horror and terror. It creates an eerie atmosphere. Horror can be either supernatural or non-supernatural...
, and sex
Sex
In biology, sex is a process of combining and mixing genetic traits, often resulting in the specialization of organisms into a male or female variety . Sexual reproduction involves combining specialized cells to form offspring that inherit traits from both parents...
novels and occasional non-fiction
Non-fiction
Non-fiction is the form of any narrative, account, or other communicative work whose assertions and descriptions are understood to be fact...
pieces. As he became increasingly unable to fund film projects, the novels seem to have become Wood's primary source of income.
Wood's novels frequently include transvestite
Transvestism
Transvestism is the practice of cross-dressing, which is wearing clothing traditionally associated with the opposite sex. Transvestite refers to a person who cross-dresses; however, the word often has additional connotations. -History:Although the word transvestism was coined as late as the 1910s,...
or drag queen
Drag queen
A drag queen is a man who dresses, and usually acts, like a caricature woman often for the purpose of entertaining. There are many kinds of drag artists and they vary greatly, from professionals who have starred in films to people who just try it once. Drag queens also vary by class and culture and...
characters, or entire plots centering around transvestism
Transvestism
Transvestism is the practice of cross-dressing, which is wearing clothing traditionally associated with the opposite sex. Transvestite refers to a person who cross-dresses; however, the word often has additional connotations. -History:Although the word transvestism was coined as late as the 1910s,...
(including his angora fetish
Sexual fetishism
Sexual fetishism, or erotic fetishism, is the sexual arousal a person receives from a physical object, or from a specific situation. The object or situation of interest is called the fetish, the person a fetishist who has a fetish for that object/situation. Sexual fetishism may be regarded, e.g...
), and tap into his love of crime fiction and the occult. Wood would often recycle plots of his films for novels, write novelization
Novelization
A novelization is a novel that is written based on some other media story form rather than as an original work.Novelizations of films usually add background material not found in the original work to flesh out the story, because novels are generally longer than screenplays...
s of his own screenplays, or reuse elements from his novels in scripts. His first novel, Black Lace Drag was published in 1963 and reissued in 1965 as Killer in Drag. Among his other books are Orgy of The Dead (1965), Devil Girls (1967), Death of a Transvestite (1967), The Sexecutives (1968) and A Study of Fetishes and Fantasies (1973).
From 1963 until his death in December 1978, Wood wrote at least 80 novels in addition to hundreds of short stories and non-fiction pieces for magazines.
In a December 2010 published article at Mondo Film & Video Guide
Mondo Film & Video Guide
The Mondo Film & Video Guide is a Detroit, Michigan based online film magazine. The website covers specifically B movies, horror, exploitation, silent era, experimental and cult films. The website is updated monthly, and features current and old film reviews, feature articles and interviews. .The...
, indie print publisher Feral House, who in the last few years had re-printed dozens of Wood's novels, ended sales on all Wood titles. Feral House informed the online film magazine, that the estate of Ed Wood had requested a cease and desist, due to a lack of knowledge on the fact, that Wood may or may not have actually written all the novels that some claim he had.
Hollywood Rat Race
Descriptions of Wood's working methods in Nightmare of Ecstasy indicate he would work on a dozen projects at once, simultaneously watching televisionTelevision
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
, eating
Eating
Eating is the ingestion of food to provide for all organisms their nutritional needs, particularly for energy and growth. Animals and other heterotrophs must eat in order to survive: carnivores eat other animals, herbivores eat plants, omnivores consume a mixture of both plant and animal matter,...
, drinking
Drinking
Drinking is the act of consuming water or a beverage through the mouth. Water is required for many of life’s physiological processes. Both excessive and inadequate water intake are associated with health problems.-Physiology:...
, and carrying on conversation
Conversation
Conversation is a form of interactive, spontaneous communication between two or more people who are following rules of etiquette.Conversation analysis is a branch of sociology which studies the structure and organization of human interaction, with a more specific focus on conversational...
s while typing
Typing
Typing is the process of inputting text into a device, such as a typewriter, cell phone, computer, or a calculator, by pressing keys on a keyboard. It can be distinguished from other means of input, such as the use of pointing devices like the computer mouse, and text input via speech...
. In his quasi-memoir
Memoir
A memoir , is a literary genre, forming a subclass of autobiography – although the terms 'memoir' and 'autobiography' are almost interchangeable. Memoir is autobiographical writing, but not all autobiographical writing follows the criteria for memoir set out below...
, Hollywood Rat Race, Wood advises new writers to "just keep on writing
Writing
Writing is the representation of language in a textual medium through the use of a set of signs or symbols . It is distinguished from illustration, such as cave drawing and painting, and non-symbolic preservation of language via non-textual media, such as magnetic tape audio.Writing most likely...
. Even if your story
Narrative
A narrative is a constructive format that describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount", and is related to the adjective gnarus, "knowing" or "skilled"...
gets worse, you'll get better". But mostly the book concerns the pitfalls of Hollywood, and has advice
Advice (opinion)
Advice is a form of relating personal or institutional opinions, belief systems, values, recommendations or guidance about certain situations relayed in some context to another person, group or party often offered as a guide to action and/or conduct...
for those dreaming of making it in Hollywood. Wood does not candy coat the experience that a first-timer in the movie business will discover. He also devotes time in Hollywood Rat Race to making the reader wary of beauty pageant and modelling
Model (person)
A model , sometimes called a mannequin, is a person who is employed to display, advertise and promote commercial products or to serve as a subject of works of art....
scams and con games, both in Hollywood and the world over.
As Wood's most famous films of the 1950s are not explicitly sexual or violent, the outré content of his novels may shock the unprepared reader. Wood's dark side emerges in such sexual shockers as Raped in the Grass or The Perverts and in short stories such as Toni: Black Tigress, which exploit hot-button topics such as violence, rape, racial issues, juvenile delinquency
Juvenile delinquency
Juvenile delinquency is participation in illegal behavior by minors who fall under a statutory age limit. Most legal systems prescribe specific procedures for dealing with juveniles, such as juvenile detention centers. There are a multitude of different theories on the causes of crime, most if not...
and drug culture
Drug subculture
Drug subcultures are examples of countercultures, which are primarily defined by recreational drug use.Drug subcultures are groups of people united by a common understanding of the meaning and value of the incorporation into one's life of the drug in question...
.
Unpublished
Some of Wood's books remained unpublished during his lifetime. Hollywood Rat Race, for example, was written in the 1960s, and finished in 1965, but was not finally published until 1998. The non-fictionNon-fiction
Non-fiction is the form of any narrative, account, or other communicative work whose assertions and descriptions are understood to be fact...
book is part primer for young actors and filmmakers, and part memoir
Memoir
A memoir , is a literary genre, forming a subclass of autobiography – although the terms 'memoir' and 'autobiography' are almost interchangeable. Memoir is autobiographical writing, but not all autobiographical writing follows the criteria for memoir set out below...
. In Hollywood Rat Race, Wood recounts tale
Tale
Tale may refer to:*Cautionary tale, a traditional story told in folklore, to warn its hearer of a danger*Fairy tale, a fictional story that usually features folkloric characters and enchantments*Folk tale, a story passed-down within a particular population, which comprises the traditions of that...
s of dubious authenticity
Authentication
Authentication is the act of confirming the truth of an attribute of a datum or entity...
, such as how he and Bela Lugosi
Béla Lugosi
Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó , commonly known as Bela Lugosi, was a Hungarian actor of stage and screen. He was best known for having played Count Dracula in the Broadway play and subsequent film version, as well as having starred in several of Ed Wood's low budget films in the last years of his...
entered the world of nightclub cabaret
Cabaret
Cabaret is a form, or place, of entertainment featuring comedy, song, dance, and theatre, distinguished mainly by the performance venue: a restaurant or nightclub with a stage for performances and the audience sitting at tables watching the performance, as introduced by a master of ceremonies or...
.
Later years and death
Wood had serious financial difficulties in his final years, often producing full movie scripts for as little as $100 in order to make ends meet. His career as a director had degenerated into making pornographic films such as Take It Out in TradeTake it Out in Trade
Take it Out in Trade is a 1970 softcore pornographic comedy, written and directed by Edward D. Wood, Jr.. The plot centers on a couple who hire a private investigator to locate their missing daughter. He finds her in a "house of ill-repute," full of various soft-core couplings...
(1970), a softcore take on Philip Marlowe
Philip Marlowe
Philip Marlowe is a fictional character created by Raymond Chandler in a series of novels including The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye. Marlowe first appeared under that name in The Big Sleep published in 1939...
detective films, and Necromania
Necromania
Necromania is a pornographic film by Edward D. Wood, Jr., released in 1971.-Production and rediscovery:...
(1971).
Wood also made occasional appearances as an actor, appearing in two films produced by a Marine buddy, Joseph F. Robertson. Love Feast (1969), also known as Pretty Models All in a Row, was his first lead role in a film since 1953's Glen or Glenda, as a photographer using his position to engage in sexual antics with professional models. He had a smaller role in Robertson's ode to swinger
Swinging
Swinging or partner swapping is a non-monogamous behavior, in which both partners in a committed relationship agree, as a couple, for both partners to engage in sexual activities with other couples as a recreational or social activity...
parties, Mrs. Stone's Thing. Wood appeared as a transvestite who spends his time at a party trying on lingerie in a bedroom. In Rudolph Grey's Nightmare of Ecstasy, Robertson makes a reference to Wood reappearing in a film called Misty, of which no other record remains.
His primary film work in the 1970s was working with friend Stephen C. Apostolof, usually cowriting scripts, but also serving as an assistant director and associate producer. His last known on-screen appearance was in Apostolof's Fugitive Girls (aka Five Loose Women), where he played a dual cameo as a gas station attendant called Pops and as the sheriff on the women's trail.
Wood's depression
Depression (mood)
Depression is a state of low mood and aversion to activity that can affect a person's thoughts, behaviour, feelings and physical well-being. Depressed people may feel sad, anxious, empty, hopeless, helpless, worthless, guilty, irritable, or restless...
worsened, and with it a serious drinking problem. Evicted from his Hollywood apartment on Yucca Street, Wood and his wife moved into the North Hollywood apartment of friend Peter Coe. On December 10, 1978, only days after the move, the 54-year old Edward D. Wood died of a heart attack
Myocardial infarction
Myocardial infarction or acute myocardial infarction , commonly known as a heart attack, results from the interruption of blood supply to a part of the heart, causing heart cells to die...
while watching a football game alone in Coe's bedroom. In Nightmare of Ecstasy, it was reported Wood yelled out "Kathy, I can't breathe!", a plea his wife in the living room ignored for 90 minutes before finally going in to find him dead; apparently, he frequently feigned heart attacks and screamed for help as a way of teasing her, and at one point she even shouted at him to shut up.
Wood was cremated, and his ashes were scattered at sea
Sea
A sea generally refers to a large body of salt water, but the term is used in other contexts as well. Most commonly, it means a large expanse of saline water connected with an ocean, and is commonly used as a synonym for ocean...
. Wood's wife Kathy died on June 26, 2006, having never remarried.
Legacy
Among connoisseurConnoisseur
A connoisseur is a person who has a great deal of knowledge about the fine arts, cuisines, or an expert judge in matters of taste.Modern connoisseurship must be seen along with museums, art galleries and "the cult of originality"...
s of kitsch
Kitsch
Kitsch is a form of art that is considered an inferior, tasteless copy of an extant style of art or a worthless imitation of art of recognized value. The concept is associated with the deliberate use of elements that may be thought of as cultural icons while making cheap mass-produced objects that...
and bad cinema, Edward Wood Jr. is revered as one of the ultimate bad directors of all time for a variety of reasons. His cult status began two years after his death with his recognition in the Michael
Michael Medved
Michael Medved is an American radio host, author, political commentator and film critic. His Seattle, Washington-based nationally syndicated talk show, The Michael Medved Show, airs throughout the U.S...
and Harry Medved book The Golden Turkey Awards
The Golden Turkey Awards
The Golden Turkey Awards is a 1980 book by film critic Michael Medved and his brother Harry Medved.The book awards the fictional "Golden Turkey Awards" to films judged by the authors as poor in quality, and to directors and actors judged to have created a chronically inept body of work...
, and has continued with the rediscovery of many of his long-lost works. In an essay paying homage to Wood in Incredibly Strange Films
Incredibly Strange Films
RE/Search No. 10: Incredibly Strange Films is a book about American underground and other films edited by V. Vale and Andrea Juno.Among the subjects covered are the work of filmmakers Russ Meyer, Herschell Gordon Lewis, Frank Henenlotter, Larry Cohen, Doris Wishman, David F. Friedman, Edward D....
, Jim Morton writes: "Eccentric and individualistic, Edward D Wood Jr was a man born to film. Lesser men, if forced to make movies under the conditions Wood faced, would have thrown up their hands in defeat."
The University of Southern California
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
holds an annual Ed Wood Film Festival, in which students of all disciplines are challenged to form teams to write, film and edit an Ed Wood-inspired short film based on a preassigned theme. Past themes have included Slippery When Wet (2006), What's That in Your Pocket? (2005), and Rebel Without a Bra (2004). 2007 saw a break in this tradition when the theme My eyes are killing me was accompanied by a theme object: a mirror.
Some of Wood's most famous films, including Glen or Glenda and Plan 9 from Outer Space have been remade as pornographic
Pornography
Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...
movies (as Glen & Glenda and Plan 69 from Outer Space, respectively). They were not simply spoofed or referenced, but reshot, with the same or similar script, and sex scenes worked into the original plots.
In 1998, Wood's previously unfilmed script I Woke Up Early The Day I Died
I Woke Up Early The Day I Died
I Woke Up Early The Day I Died is a camp comedy film written by Edward D. Wood, Jr.. The film, directed by Aris Iliopulos, stars Billy Zane, Tippi Hedren, Ron Perlman, and Christina Ricci, among many others.-Production:...
was finally produced, starring Billy Zane
Billy Zane
William George "Billy" Zane, Jr. is an American actor, producer and director. He is probably best known for his roles as Caledon Hockley in Titanic, The Phantom from The Phantom, John Wheeler in Twin Peaks and Mr...
and Christina Ricci
Christina Ricci
Christina Ricci is an American actress. Ricci received initial recognition and praise as a child star for her performance as Wednesday Addams in The Addams Family and Addams Family Values , and her role as Kat Harvey in Casper...
, and has preserved the inept, goofy character that made Wood's films famous. Outside of a brief New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
theatrical engagement, the film did not receive a commercial release in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, and was only available on video in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
due to contractual difficulties.
Three of his films (Bride of the Monster, The Violent Years, and The Sinister Urge) have been featured on the television series Mystery Science Theater 3000
Mystery Science Theater 3000
Mystery Science Theater 3000 is an American cult television comedy series created by Joel Hodgson and produced by Best Brains, Inc., that ran from 1988 to 1999....
, which has given those works wider exposure. Producers considered including Plan 9, but found it had too much dialogue for the show's format. Series head writer and host Michael J. Nelson
Michael J. Nelson
Michael John Nelson is a U.S. comedian and writer, most famous for his work on the cult television series Mystery Science Theater 3000 . Nelson was the head writer of the series for most of the show's 11-year run, and spent half of that time playing the on-air host, also named Mike Nelson...
recorded an audio commentary for a 2005/2006 DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
release of the film, which was newly colorized.
Reverend Steve Galindo of Sacramento, California, created a legally recognized religion in 1996 with Wood as its official savior. Originally founded as a joke, the Church of Ed Wood now boasts over 3,500 baptized followers. Woodites, as Steve's followers are called, celebrate Woodmas on October 10, which is Ed's birthday. Numerous parties and concerts are held worldwide to celebrate Woodmas. On October 4-5, 2003, horror host
Horror host
Horror hosts are a particular type of television presenter, often tasked with presenting low-grade films to television audiences. This tradition is primarily American, though there have been a few international hosts over the years.-Film Packages:...
Mr. Lobo
Mr. Lobo
Erik Lobo better known by his stage name Mr. Lobo is an American artist and comedic actor best known as the horror host of the nationally syndicated American television series Cinema Insomnia.-Career :...
was canonized
Canonization
Canonization is the act by which a Christian church declares a deceased person to be a saint, upon which declaration the person is included in the canon, or list, of recognized saints. Originally, individuals were recognized as saints without any formal process...
as the "Patron Saint of late night movie hosts and insomniacs" in the Church of Ed Wood.
The cult status of Ed Wood's movies is also represented in the music industry. Horror film
Horror film
Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...
director and heavy metal musician Rob Zombie
Rob Zombie
Rob Zombie is an American musician, film director, screenwriter and film producer. He founded the heavy metal band White Zombie and has been nominated three times as a solo artist for the Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance.Zombie has also established a career as a film director, creating the...
titled his 2001 album The Sinister Urge
The Sinister Urge (album)
-Credits:* Tom Baker - Mastering* Evelyne Bennu - Female Vocals* Blasko - Bass* Dan Burns - Assistant Engineer* Chris Chaney - Additional Bass* Marina Chavez - Photos* Josh Freese - Additional Drums* Gary Grant - Horns* Emm Gryner - Female Vocals...
after Wood's film
The Sinister Urge (film)
The Sinister Urge is a 1961 crime drama film that was written and directed by Edward D. Wood, Jr. The film was featured in episode 613 of the cult television show, Mystery Science Theater 3000.- Synopsis :...
.
One of Wood's heroes was Orson Welles
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...
for his cinematic ambition and passion
Passion (emotion)
Passion is a term applied to a very strong feeling about a person or thing. Passion is an intense emotion compelling feeling, enthusiasm, or desire for something....
. Wood also prided himself on the fact that he was the only filmmaker of his era other than Welles to be writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
, director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
, and actor
Actor
An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...
in his own films, although it is likely that Wood took on all of these functions to save time and money. Unlike the depiction in the Tim Burton
Tim Burton
Timothy William "Tim" Burton is an American film director, film producer, writer and artist. He is famous for dark, quirky-themed movies such as Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow, Corpse Bride and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet...
movie Ed Wood, Wood never actually met his hero Welles.
Bela Lugosi Jr. has been among those who felt Wood exploited the senior Lugosi's stardom, taking advantage of the fading actor when he could not refuse any work. Most documents and interviews with other Wood associates in Nightmare of Ecstasy suggest that Wood and Lugosi were genuine friends and that Wood helped Lugosi through the worst days of his depression and addiction
Substance dependence
The section about substance dependence in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders does not use the word addiction at all. It explains:...
.
The 1994 film Ed Wood
Ed Wood (film)
Ed Wood is a 1994 American comedy-drama biopic directed and produced by Tim Burton, and starring Johnny Depp as cult filmmaker Edward D. Wood, Jr. The film concerns the period in Wood's life when he made his best-known films as well as his relationship with actor Bela Lugosi, played by Martin Landau...
, by director Tim Burton, tells the story of Wood and Lugosi and the making of their three films, (Glen or Glenda, Bride of the Monster, and Plan 9 from Outer Space), from a sympathetic point of view. Wood was played by Johnny Depp
Johnny Depp
John Christopher "Johnny" Depp II is an American actor, producer and musician. He has won the Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild award for Best Actor. Depp rose to prominence on the 1980s television series 21 Jump Street, becoming a teen idol...
and Lugosi by Martin Landau
Martin Landau
Martin Landau is an American film and television actor. Landau began his career in the 1950s. His early films include a supporting role in Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest . He played continuing roles in the television series Mission: Impossible and Space:1999...
, who won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor
Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actor who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry. Since its inception, however, the...
. The film also won an Academy Award for Best Makeup for Rick Baker. Burton's successes for previous studios such as Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
and 20th Century Fox
20th Century Fox
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation — also known as 20th Century Fox, or simply 20th or Fox — is one of the six major American film studios...
were at odds with his insistence on shooting the Wood film in black-and-white
Black-and-white
Black-and-white, often abbreviated B/W or B&W, is a term referring to a number of monochrome forms in visual arts.Black-and-white as a description is also something of a misnomer, for in addition to black and white, most of these media included varying shades of gray...
, and the studios turned it down as a probable box office
Box office
A box office is a place where tickets are sold to the public for admission to an event. Patrons may perform the transaction at a countertop, through an unblocked hole through a wall or window, or at a wicket....
failure. Eager to embrace Burton, Disney
Walt Disney Pictures
Walt Disney Pictures is an American film studio owned by The Walt Disney Company. Walt Disney Pictures and Television, a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Studios and the main production company for live-action feature films within the Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group, based at the Walt Disney...
accepted the project, monochrome and all. As others had anticipated, the film received mass critical acclaim, but did poorly at the box office. It has since become a cult classic.
Acting
| Glen or Glenda |
Crossroad Avenger |
Jail Bait | Bride of the Monster Bride of the Monster Bride of the Monster is a 1955 sci-fi horror film starring Bela Lugosi, along with Tor Johnson, Tony McCoy and Loretta King Hadler. It was produced, directed and co-written by Edward D. Wood, Jr.... |
Final Curtain |
Plan 9 from Outer Space Plan 9 from Outer Space Plan 9 from Outer Space is a 1959 science fiction film written and directed by Edward D. Wood, Jr. The film features Gregory Walcott, Mona McKinnon, Tor Johnson and Maila "Vampira" Nurmi... |
Night of the Ghouls Night of the Ghouls Night of the Ghouls is a 1959 horror film written and directed by Ed Wood. It is a sequel of sorts to the 1955 film Bride of the Monster... |
The Sinister Urge The Sinister Urge (film) The Sinister Urge is a 1961 crime drama film that was written and directed by Edward D. Wood, Jr. The film was featured in episode 613 of the cult television show, Mystery Science Theater 3000.- Synopsis :... |
Take It Out in Trade Take it Out in Trade Take it Out in Trade is a 1970 softcore pornographic comedy, written and directed by Edward D. Wood, Jr.. The plot centers on a couple who hire a private investigator to locate their missing daughter. He finds her in a "house of ill-repute," full of various soft-core couplings... |
Necromania Necromania Necromania is a pornographic film by Edward D. Wood, Jr., released in 1971.-Production and rediscovery:... |
Crossroads of Laredo |
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| Criswell The Amazing Criswell Jeron Criswell King , born Jeron Criswell Konig, and known by his stage-name The Amazing Criswell , was an American psychic known for wildly inaccurate predictions... |
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| Carl Anthony Carl Anthony Carl Anthony is a pilot who flew airplanes thoroughly blindfolded in 1955. These stunts were performed twice in a seaplane over Biscayne Bay, Florida, which was televised on national news, and once over land for the “You Asked for It” television show... |
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| Conrad Brooks Conrad Brooks Conrad Brooks is an American actor. He moved to Hollywood, California in the early 1950s to pursue a career in acting... |
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| Kenne Duncan Kenne Duncan Kenne Duncan , born Kenneth Duncan MacLachlan, was a well-known B-movie character actor. Hyped professionally as "The Meanest Man in the Movies," the vast majority of his over 250 appearances on camera were Westerns, but he also did occasional forays into horror, crime drama, and science fiction... |
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| Harvey B. Dunn Harvey B. Dunn Harvey B. Dunn was an American television and film actor. Dunn was best known for his appearances in several 1950s B movies including three Ed Wood films, Bride of the Monster , Night of the Ghouls , and The Sinister Urge .-Filmography:-External links:... |
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| Dolores Fuller Dolores Fuller Dolores Agnes Fuller was an American actress and songwriter best known as the one-time girlfriend of the low-budget film director Edward D. Wood, Jr. She played the protagonist's girlfriend in Glen or Glenda, co-starred in Wood's Jail Bait, and had a minor role in Bride of the Monster... |
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| Tor Johnson Tor Johnson Tor Johansson , better known by the stage name Tor Johnson, was a Swedish professional wrestler and actor.... |
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| Tom Keene | |||||||||||
| Bela Lugosi Béla Lugosi Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó , commonly known as Bela Lugosi, was a Hungarian actor of stage and screen. He was best known for having played Count Dracula in the Broadway play and subsequent film version, as well as having starred in several of Ed Wood's low budget films in the last years of his... |
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| Paul Marco Paul Marco Paul Marco was an American actor who often appeared in movies made by Ed Wood, including the "Kelton Trilogy" of Bride of the Monster, Night of the Ghouls and Plan 9 from Outer Space, in which he played a bumbling, fearful policeman named Kelton.-Career:Born in Los Angeles, Marco started taking... |
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| Tom Mason Tom Mason Thomas Robert "Tom" Mason was a chiropractor who lived in Los Angeles in the 1950s.-Biography:He is best known as the stand-in for the then recently deceased Bela Lugosi in Edward D. Wood, Jr.'s infamous movie Plan 9 From Outer Space. Dr. Mason Thomas Robert "Tom" Mason (April 29, 1920 –... |
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| Duke Moore Duke Moore Duke Moore, , is an American actor who has the distinction of spending his entire on-screen career in productions by Ed Wood.Between 1953 and 1970, Moore appeared in the following for Wood:... |
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| Bud Osborne Bud Osborne Bud Osborne was an American film actor. He appeared in over 600 films and television programs between 1912 and 1963.Osborne was born in Knox County, Texas, and died in Hollywood, California from a heart attack... |
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| Lyle Talbot Lyle Talbot Lyle Talbot , born Lisle Henderson, was an American actor on stage and screen, best known for his long career in movies from 1931 to 1960 and for his frequent appearances on TV in the 1950s and '60s, including his decade-long role as Joe Randolph on television's The Adventures of Ozzie and... |
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| Ed Wood | |||||||||||
Other
- William C. ThompsonWilliam C. Thompson (cinematographer)William C. Thompson, was an American cinematographer.He started his career in the 1910s and is best remembered today as the cinematographer of many of the films of Edward D. Wood, Jr., including Glen or Glenda and Plan 9 from Outer Space...
was Wood's cinematographer for all but Take it Out in TradeTake it Out in TradeTake it Out in Trade is a 1970 softcore pornographic comedy, written and directed by Edward D. Wood, Jr.. The plot centers on a couple who hire a private investigator to locate their missing daughter. He finds her in a "house of ill-repute," full of various soft-core couplings...
. - Frank Worth composed music for Bride of the MonsterBride of the MonsterBride of the Monster is a 1955 sci-fi horror film starring Bela Lugosi, along with Tor Johnson, Tony McCoy and Loretta King Hadler. It was produced, directed and co-written by Edward D. Wood, Jr....
and Plan 9 from Outer SpacePlan 9 from Outer SpacePlan 9 from Outer Space is a 1959 science fiction film written and directed by Edward D. Wood, Jr. The film features Gregory Walcott, Mona McKinnon, Tor Johnson and Maila "Vampira" Nurmi...
.
See also
- B movieB movieA B movie is a low-budget commercial motion picture that is not definitively an arthouse or pornographic film. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified a film intended for distribution as the less-publicized, bottom half of a double feature....
- Ed WoodEd Wood (film)Ed Wood is a 1994 American comedy-drama biopic directed and produced by Tim Burton, and starring Johnny Depp as cult filmmaker Edward D. Wood, Jr. The film concerns the period in Wood's life when he made his best-known films as well as his relationship with actor Bela Lugosi, played by Martin Landau...
, a biopic on Wood's life - Edward D. Wood, Jr. bibliography
- Edward D. Wood, Jr. filmography
- List of films considered the worst
- Z movieZ movieThe term Z movie arose in the mid-1960s as an informal description of certain unequivocally non-A films. It was soon adopted to characterize low-budget pictures with quality standards well below those of most B movies and even so-called C movies...
External links
- The Hunt for Edward D. Wood, Jr. Exhaustive guide to Ed's films and their commercial releases.
- Ed Wood, Jr.'s magazine work (Caution: Adult images)
- Ed Wood: A Neighbor on the Boulevard of Broken Dreams
- The Church of Ed Wood