Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 102: Eddie Parker and 'Bride of the Monster'

Eddie Parker (maybe) wrestles a rubber octopus in Bride of the Monster.

Eddie Parker's name comes up exactly once in Rudolph Grey's Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1992), and when it does, it's in square brackets. On page 87, in the midst of a chapter devoted to the making of Bride of the Monster (1955), Grey includes an anecdote from Ed Wood himself about the difficulty of matching shots of actor Bela Lugosi with footage of Lugosi's stunt double.

As usual in Nightmare, Rudolph Grey does not cite his source for this quote. Presumably, since Grey and Wood never met, it's from an archival interview with the director. The fact that Parker's name has been added in square brackets suggests that this detail was added by Grey rather than spoken aloud by Wood. Again, not another story in the book even mentions Parker. The laboriously researched book Scripts from the Crypt: Bride of the Monster (2015) by Gary D. Rhodes and Tom Weaver cautiously states: "Perhaps the double was Eddie Parker or Red Reagan, though no trustworthy evidence has surfaced to prove who exactly it was." Take note of the word "perhaps." The book never mentions Parker again.

The legendary Eddie Parker

Film critic and historian Tim Lucas must have been more confident in Eddie Parker's participation in Bride of the Monster. Issue #27 of Video Watchdog magazine from 1995 includes an elaborate, 15-page article by Lewis entitled "The Story Must Be Told: A Guide to Edward D. Wood, Jr. on Video." Released on the heels of Tim Burton's Ed Wood (1994), the article attempts to summarize and review all of the Wood-related material then available on VHS for home viewing. Lucas calls the biopic "highly fantasized" and offers as an example the scene in which Martin Landau as Bela Lugosi wrestles with a rubber octopus. The critic suggests that "incredulous Generation Xers" would be extremely "disappointed" to learn that "it was the frail Lugosi's double—Eddie Parker—who wrestled with himself in those lifeless tentacles!"

Rhodes and Weaver agree that it was not Lugosi wrestling the octopus. "Viewing the film makes it obvious that Wood used a double," they write, "just as a double was used for the lab scene when the Vornoff Monster (as the script calls the post-atomic doctor) struggles with his lumbering mute servant Lobo (Tor Johnson)." Wood's own story about Lugosi's double relates to that lab scene but does not mention the octopus battle. As for the scene in Ed Wood in which Lugosi himself wrestles the octopus, it seems to be a bit of wishful thinking on the part of screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski. It's possible they drew inspiration from a quote in Nightmare of Ecstasy by actor and notorious fabulist John Andrews, who remembers a stoned, drunken Bela Lugosi trudging into the cold water to film the crucial octopus scene in Griffith Park.

Whether or not he actually doubled for Bela Lugosi on Bride of the Monster, Eddie Parker nevertheless had a hell of a career in Hollywood, working very steadily in films for nearly 30 years, usually on low-budget Westerns and crime pictures but occasionally on more high profile projects. The prolific actor and stuntman was born on December 12, 1900 in St. Paul, Minnesota. Wikipedia alleges that Parker was born in Waukegan, IL, but both the Internet Movie Database and The Old Corral website correctly list St. Paul as his birthplace. This is confirmed by Parker's own draft card from 1942 in which he lists his occupation as "freelance actor." He gives his employer as the Screen Actors Guild.

Eddie Parker's draft card.

To give you some idea of the scope of Parker's prodigious movie career, the IMDb says he worked on over 430 films and TV shows between 1931 and 1960. Unfortunately, he was only credited onscreen a handful of times. He's the epitome of the "unknown stuntman" that Lee Majors sang about in the '80s. Always in demand, Eddie played plenty of guards, henchmen, outlaws, and cops over the years. The Old Corral says that Parker's "specialty was fisticuffs [and] screen brawls." If you needed someone to take (or dish out) a convincing punch, Eddie Parker was your man.

In a career cluttered with cut-rate cowboy pictures, some of which put him in close proximity to John Wayne and Johnny Mack Brown, a few of Eddie Parker's more unusual assignments stand out. He was a detective in Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954), a cop in Douglas Sirk's Imitation of Life (1959), and a slave in Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus (1960). He turns up in other places you wouldn't expect, too, like the Oscar-winning Around the World in 80 Days (1956) and the frothy Rock Hudson/Doris Day vehicle Pillow Talk (1959). He also doubled for Robert J. Wilke in the Disney version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954).

Among comic book aficionados, Eddie Parker is known for his work on two different Batman serials of the 1940s. In Batman (1943), Parker doubled for lead actor Lewis Wilson in some of the Caped Crusader's fight scenes, showcasing his talent for brawling. In Batman and Robin (1949), Parker doubled for House Peters, Jr. in the role of Earl and occasionally played another character named Holt. The latter serial is of particular interest to Ed Wood fans as the cast includes Wood regular Lyle Talbot and Plan 9 morgue attendant Johnny Duncan. As for the first serial, Batman experts say they can always tell when it's Parker donning the cape and cowl.



But Parker's career in serials is hardly limited to Batman. As fan Bill Shute reported on Facebook:

"He's in a number of 1940s Columbia serials in acting roles besides the Batman ones, though that was probably because he was already on the set as a stunt man. Even when he is unbilled as an actor, as he often is, his distinctive voice always gives him away. When he gets a good amount of dialogue, he handles it well and has a natural screen presence. I was just watching him the other day in the 1947 serial The Vigilante with Ralph Byrd and Lyle Talbot."

To horror movie buffs, the most important aspect of Eddie Parker's career is his work in the famed Universal monster series. He was a mainstay of the Abbott and Costello franchise, playing the mummified Klaris in Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955), receiving a rare onscreen credit for the role! Before that, he'd done stuntwork in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) and Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1953). Parker's other Universal horror credits include Tarantula (1955), Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942), Werewolf of London (1935), Curse of the Undead (1959), and The Mummy's Tomb (1942).

Cynthia Patrick in the arms of a mole person.

According to the 2006 book Introducing Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man by Greg Roza, Parker "played the role of Frankenstein's Monster for the more active and strenuous parts" of the 1943 film and "can be seen playing both monsters in the final battle." So Bride of the Monster wouldn't have been Parker's only time doubling Lugosi. Parker doubled for Boris Karloff, too, performing as Mr. Hyde in the Abbott and Costello film.

Parker's association with Universal Pictures lasted for decades. The stalwart stuntman even donned an uncomfortable costume to portray one of the titular underground dwellers in The Mole People (1956). In this well-known Universal shocker, he fleetingly worked with actress Cynthia Patrick, who played the ingenue Adad. Throughout the film, the mole people reach up through the dirt and grab victims by the legs to pull them down into the darkness. In the 2009 book Screen Sirens Scream! by Paul Parla and Charles P. Mitchell, Patrick explains that this indelible effect was created through the use of "a hydraulic lift." The actress maintains she suffered "many cuts and bruises" from this process, despite the fact that Eddie Parker "was ever so gentle with me."

When asked if she "enjoyed working with the stuntmen," Patrick clarifies: "My relationship with Eddie Parker was brief. He was very caring and nice to me during filming. I had worked with Eddie on some other films and I knew him through another friend, Jock Mahoney." I can find no other instance of Patrick and Parker working together on any other films, but Mahoney was a famed stuntman and actor perhaps best known for playing the lead in two early '60s Tarzan films.

Edwin G. "Eddie" Parker died of a heart attack on January 20, 1960 in Sherman Oaks. He was 59. His body was interred at Cavalry Cemetery in Los Angeles, where his modest headstone denotes him only as "Beloved Son," though he did have a spouse named Bess. A wire service article by gossip columnist Harrison Carroll in the January 29, 1960 edition of The Wilkes-Barre Record stated that "Hollywood was saddened by the death of veteran stuntman Eddie Parker. He had come out of retirement to work on a TV show and complained of feeling bad. In the night, he died." I can find no significant gaps in the stuntman's resume, so I'm not sure if Parker truly "retired," but he did work on plenty of TV shows near the end of his life, including M Squad, Alcoa Theatre, Lassie, and The Untouchables.

Maybe there aren't more stories about Eddie Parker because he was the kind of competent professional who showed up, did what he was told, and went home, whether he was working on a Dick Tracy picture (he did at least three of those) or an episode of The Cisco Kid. For some actors, wrestling an octopus in an Ed Wood movie would be the most memorable moment of their careers. For Eddie Parker, if that truly was him in the swamp, it was barely a blip.