Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 280: 'Christine Jorgensen Reveals' (1957)

Trans woman Christine Jorgensen released a very interesting album in 1957!

Here's the damnedest thing about doing research. While you're looking for information about one subject, you're bound to find a bunch of other, unrelated material you'd never even heard of and weren't searching for. And suddenly, instead of just working on one topic, you'll be working on three or four. At least, that's what often happens to me. 

A most unusual LP from 1957.

Recently, for my Happy Days podcast, These Days Are Ours, I was delving into the history of actor Donny Most's self-titled 1976 pop album. We'd never reviewed an album on our show before, so I didn't know exactly where to start. But I have a book specifically about albums and singles recorded by celebrities: Goldmine's Celebrity Vocals (1994) by Ron Lofman. While leafing through this volume—a fun and informative book, by the way—I stumbled onto something I'd never known: pioneering trans woman Christine Jorgensen (1926-1989), whose life inspired Ed Wood's first feature film, had recorded a spoken-word album in 1957!

I knew I'd have to hear this LP for myself. Fortunately, it has been uploaded to the internet in all its crackly, monophonic glory. Six years after her highly-publicized surgery in Denmark and four years after Ed Wood turned her story into Glen or Glenda (1953), Christine released a 50-minute interview album simply titled Christine Jorgensen Reveals on J Records, a New York vanity label that existed only for this one album. (The J presumably stood for Jorgensen.) The liner notes declare:

Christine Jorgensen is unquestionably the most publicized, most controversial and interesting personality of this generation. 

In this album hear her PERSONALLY discuss in an open and frank interview the enigma of her transformation and the subsequent electrifying experiences of her phenomenal career. 

For the rare moment when your guests have become bored with musical sounds... give this LP a spin. Everyone will be delightfully entertained by this witty, exciting and informative interview.

Though she was making her living as a nightclub singer at that point, the LP contains no songs and no music at all apart from brief instrumentals at the beginning and end. Instead, for the better part of an hour, Christine fields questions from a male interviewer regarding her surgery, her stage act, her love life, her body, and the reaction she's gotten from the press and the public. She is remarkably plainspoken and forthcoming about all these topics.

This album is full of surprises, not the least of which is the identity of its mysterious host. The interviewer is listed on the record sleeve merely as "R. Russell." As confirmed by multiple sources, this is comedian and actor Nipsey Russell (1918-2005), noted for his many appearances on TV game shows and talk shows and for his role as the Tin Man in The Wiz (1978). Nipsey was already an established nightclub comedian by the time he made this record and was starting to make inroads into television and film but was not yet a household name. On Christine Jorgensen Reveals, he keeps his wisecracking comedic persona largely in check without being overly formal or self-serious. His responsibility here is to act as a surrogate for the listeners, asking Christine Jorgensen the questions they themselves would like to ask.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 279: 'The Valley Obscured by Smog' (2026)

W. Paul Apel's new novel catches up with Ed Wood in his later days.

The world is so small sometimes, it's a miracle we all fit in it. 

Ron Howard as Richie Cunningham.

If you read this blog for anything other than the Ed Wood content, you know that I cohost a podcast about the long-running nostalgic sitcom Happy Days, which originally aired from 1974 to 1984. The show stars actor-turned-director Ron Howard as Richie Cunningham, a mild-mannered Wisconsin lad navigating his high school and college years and dreaming someday of becoming a writer. 

After seven seasons, Ron left the series in 1980 to focus on his producing and directing career, so his Happy Days character is said to have "joined the Army." In the show's final season, Richie finally returns home to Wisconsin, a wife and family in tow. His father, Howard (Tom Bosley), announces he has lined up a job for Richie at the local newspaper, The Milwaukee Journal, but Richie has other plans: he's moving to Hollywood to make it as a screenwriter!

In real life, one of Ron Howard's earliest cinematic projects away from Happy Days was a romantic comedy called Leo and Loree (1980), which he co-wrote and executive produced for his own company, Major H Productions. The film, which stars fellow Happy Days alum Don Most, tells the story of an ambitious recent college graduate named Leo Greene who defies his father's wishes, forsakes a respectable teaching career, and moves to Hollywood to make it as an actor. Having no connections in town whatsoever, he crashes on the couch of an old friend of his named Dennis (David Huffman). Our in-depth review of Leo and Loree was released just yesterday. In fact, I was editing it while I was preparing this very article!

Given all this background, you can imagine my state of déjà vu when I received a copy of W. Paul Apel's new Ed Wood-inspired novel, The Valley Obscured by Fog (Bear Manor Media, 2026). The book centers around Alan Starkwell, a recent college graduate who disappoints his parents when he turns down a newspaper job his father has lined up and moves to Hollywood to become a screenwriter. Alan, too, crashes in the home of a former classmate. He even cites the film American Graffiti (1973) starring Ron Howard as inspiration for wanting to get into the movies!

Podcast Tuesday: "Little Movie 'Bout Leo and Loree"

Don Most and Linda Purl in Leo and Loree (1980).

Doing a podcast about Happy Days involves many hours of writing, research, and editing, but the actual recording of a typical episode is a mere blip. Every other Sunday, my cohost and I spend about an hour or so chatting over Zoom. This gets edited down to about 30-40 minutes of usable audio, to which I will then add various clips from movies, TV shows, and pop records. These Days Are Ours is a show that is largely made in editing, each episode pieced together from lots of little scraps.

These nearly ruined the show.

Recording is, by far, my favorite part of the process. It just goes by so quickly that it feels like a barely-remembered dream. At least, it usually does. But something strange happened when it was time to record our review of Leo and Loree (1980), a romantic comedy starring Donny Most and Linda Purl as young Hollywood hopefuls. I had chosen this movie as a topic for review, so I felt responsible for this particular installment of the podcast. The onus was on me to make this one work.

I'd woken up a couple of hours before we were set to record. My sinuses were acting up that day, so I took some allergy medicine. For some reason, the little pink pills kicked in especially hard and started messing with my head. Maybe it was because I hadn't eaten anything. By the time we were supposed to record, I was dizzy and drowsy and barely coherent. I couldn't talk about a Don Most movie for an entire hour in this condition! What was I going to do?

Fortunately, I have very little to say in the first few minutes of our show. I just have to say my name and the title of the movie or TV show we're reviewing, then my cohost launches into a detailed plot summary. This always gives me about 5-10 minutes where I'm off-mic. So to combat the effects of the allergy medicine, I just started drinking anything caffeinated I could find. When it was time for me to speak, I was keyed-up and nervous. The caffeine and the allergy medicine interacted oddly, and I struggled mightily to stay on topic and express myself in a coherent way.

I knew this episode was going to be a mess to edit, and it was. Hopefully, though, you won't even be able to tell because I've cut all of my unexpected, weirdly-timed pauses and rambling, meaningless sentences out of the finished product. Just know that, as you listen to this installment of our podcast, one of the hosts is fighting the battle of his life just to keep from babbling like an idiot or falling asleep.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 278: "A Child's Garden of Extroversion" (1939)

Two greats square off: Criswell and S.J. Perelman.

"I am not only witty in myself but the cause that wit is in other men."

-Falstaff in Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 2 (1600)

It's strange to think that the Amazing Criswell (1907-1982) did not arrive fully formed into this world. After all, the man seemed so innately himself, both in print and on camera, that it's difficult to imagine him doing anything else. But he was not always the pompadoured, tuxedoed showman we see in Ed Wood movies, confidently spouting (inaccurate) predictions and waxing philosophical about time and space. Long before the books, the movies, the newspaper columns, and the TV talk shows, he was merely Jeron Criswell King from Princeton, Indiana.

An ad for Criswell's books.

Much like his Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957) castmate Maila "Vampira" Nurmi, Cris cycled through various identities and professions before landing on the gimmick that would make him cultishly famous. In 1935, after a failed teaching career, he relocated to New York and spent a few years trying to establish himself as a radio personality, playwright, and stage actor. During this period in his life, he met and married the equally outlandish Myrtle Louise Stonesifer (1905-1985) aka Louise Howard aka Halo Meadows.

Cris and Halo wrote a series of utterly bizarre how-to guides, most of them about making it in show business. (On some of their books, a third author named Arthur Jones is listed.) Though they had not found much success in the entertainment field yet, they were cheerfully selling books about how to make it as an actor, a songwriter, or a playwright. Definitely a case of "fake it 'til you make it."

These books are not commonly found today on the secondary market, but I have a xeroxed copy of one: How to Crash Tin Pan Alley from 1939. It's ostensibly a how-to book for songwriters. It explains how newcomers can get their compositions published, recorded, and performed. Since Criswell and his cohorts knew absolutely nothing about songcraft, the book assumes you can handle that part of the process yourself without their help. Instead, they focus on the music industry and the many pitfalls that a young, inexperienced songwriter may encounter while navigating it, from skeptical publishers to egotistical singers. The tone of the book is very similar to Ed Wood's own posthumously-published showbiz guide, Hollywood Rat Race (1998). Somehow, Cris and Halo managed to wrangle an introduction from celebrated jazz bandleader Sammy Kaye (1910-1987).

Since neither Criswell nor Halo Meadows ever became a hit songwriter, I wasn't sure what kind of cultural impact How to Crash Tin Pan Alley ever had. My xeroxed edition of the book was made from a copy at the University of Illinois, where it had been checked out numerous times over the years, starting in 1943. The most recent stamp on the inside cover said February 18, 1999. Imagine that! As late as Bill Clinton's second term, someone was still taking highly dubious career advice from Criswell! 

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 277: "Edward D. Wood Jr.: Hollywood Underground" (1987)

Five years before his book came out, Rudolph Grey gave us a preview of Nightmare of Ecstasy.

Author Rudolph Grey.

When musician-turned-author Rudolph Grey published Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr. in 1992, it was a true breakthrough in the field of Woodology, one that has arguably never been matched. There had been numerous articles published about Wood and his movies by then, as well as the feature-length documentary On the Trail of Ed Wood (1990), but there was nothing with the scope and ambition of Grey's book. Nightmare contained not only the most complete filmography and bibliography for Ed Wood ever assembled to that time, but also interviews with numerous Wood associates and a whole host of rarely-seen photographs and other documents. Over 30 years after its publication, Nightmare remains the gold standard in its field.

A book like Nightmare of Ecstasy doesn't just happen overnight. In fact, the book was more than a decade in the making. When I attended a public appearance by Grey in 2014, he went into some detail about his working process. His research for Nightmare started in roughly the early 1980s. Eddie had just died, unfortunately, but plenty of his cohorts were still around. (Nearly all of them have since died.) And other authors shared their research with Grey, including interviews they'd conducted with Eddie toward the end of his life. It must have been a massive task, taking all this material and shaping it into a coherent book.

In 1987, Grey was still five years away from publishing Nightmare of Ecstasy, but he had accumulated enough material to write an article for Filmfax #6 called "Edward D. Wood Jr.: Hollywood Underground." And if you've already guessed that this article is the focus of today's column, you're right! Treat yourself to something nice! I thought it might be interesting to compare this article to the book and see where they overlap and where they diverge.

Podcast Tuesday: "You Wanna Get Jobs? Come On! Let's Get Jobs!"

Michael Keaton and Jim Belushi in the pilot for Working Stiffs.

What is it that makes one sitcom a hit and another one a flop? Why do some shows live on in reruns for decades while others simply evaporate from the prime time schedule without a trace? No one really knows. If there were a formula for this stuff, someone would have figured it out a long time ago and we'd have nothing but hits. And, as we all know, television history is littered with the corpses of unsuccessful programs.

Even with the best of planning, each new TV show is a gamble. You start with a premise that seems workable and could generate lots of compelling stories. Then you hire actors you think will connect with the audience, and you assemble a production team that can create a quality show while meeting strict deadlines. Once that's all in place, it's up to the marketing department to create promotions that will ignite the public's imagination and drive traffic to the show. Something could go wrong at any stage in this process, and it could be enough to sink the entire enterprise.

This week on These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast, we're covering the pilot for an extremely short-lived sitcom from 1979 called Working Stiffs. It was co-created by Happy Days showrunner Bob Brunner and tells the story of two bumbling brothers who convince their uncle to give them jobs as janitors in a Chicago office building. The brothers are played by two actors who went on to fame and fortune: Jim Belushi and Michael Keaton. The production team includes many sitcom veterans with long, successful careers in television. And CBS gave the show an enthusiastic promotional push. Working Stiffs was canceled after four weeks.

What went wrong? That's what we'll try to figure out as we review the show's pilot episode. Please do join us by clicking on the play button below.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 276: "Paul Marco Remembers Ed Wood Jr." (1987)

Friends 'til the end: Paul Marco (right) and Ed Wood.

Something wonderful has been happening recently in the online Ed Wood fan community. A gentleman named Jason Insalaco has been sharing some rarely-seen photographs of his great-uncle, eccentric character actor Paul Marco (1927-2006), to an Ed Wood discussion group on Facebook. We all remember Paul as the bumbling, cowardly Officer Kelton in three of Eddie's best-known films: Bride of the Monster (1955), Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957), and Night of the Ghouls (1959). Kelton reminds me of those wacky comic relief sidekicks they'd put into every action-adventure cartoon I watched as a kid. He's the Ed Wood equivalent of Snarf on Thundercats, Gleek on Superfriends, or Orko on He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.

But we should remember that there's more to Paul Marco than just being Officer Kelton. In addition to having a life and career all his own, he was a key member of Ed Wood's personal and professional circle for many years. In Tim Burton's Ed Wood (1994), Paul is portrayed by Doogie Howser star Max Casella as an eager but not-too-bright young man who will blindly follow Eddie (Johnny Depp) wherever he chooses to go, even if it's straight off a cliff. While this makes for some amusing scenes, it hardly gives us a complete picture of who Paul Marco was. The reality was more nuanced and complex than that.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 275: "Remembering Ed D. Wood, Jr." (1987)

Tor Johnson attacks Bela Lugosi in the pages of Filmfax.

A feature about Ed.

I was not a major reader of sci-fi and horror movie magazines when I was a kid. Oh, sure, I'd skim through Fangoria and the like at the local Walgreen's, but I rarely brought any issues home with me. What did I have to buy them with, my sparkling personality? If my parents gave me a couple of bucks to spend in those days, I'd buy comic books or MAD instead. Even as a teenager and young adult, I only bought movie magazines if they contained an article I really wanted. Any substantial story about John Waters, for instance, warranted an immediate purchase. By the late 1990s, when I was in college, I was largely getting my movie information from the internet.

As a result, I missed out on the print magazines that were so influential on other budding film fanatics, especially those of previous generations. This week, I'm choosing to spotlight just one of those gone-but-not-forgotten publications: Filmfax, which ran for 166 issues from 1986 to 2024. The creation of editor Michael Stein, Filmfax originally billed itself as "The Magazine of Unusual Film & Television." By the end of its run, that tagline had changed to "The Magazine of Unusual Film, Television & Retro Pop Culture." In its sixth issue, dated March/April 1987, Filmfax ran a sprawling,12-page feature about writer-director Edward D. Wood, Jr. It consisted of:

• a career overview, including quotes from actor and friend David Ward

• a preview of Rudolph Grey's then-untitled Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1992)

• an extended interview with actor and Wood associate Paul Marco (1927-2006)

• a filmography compiled by Jan Henderson

This wasn't even Filmfax's first Ed Wood feature, since they spotlighted Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957) in the very first issue. In those primitive, pre-internet days, a magazine like this must have been a veritable goldmine of valuable information for Wood fans. But does it still have anything to offer us in 2026? Let's find out.