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| Conrad Brooks, Ed Wood, Criswell, some graffiti, and Tor Johnson figure in this documentary. |
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| A somewhat forgotten documentary. |
"No, I don't think so. No, Mr. Kane was a man who got everything he wanted and then lost it. Maybe Rosebud was something he couldn't get, or something he lost. Anyway, it wouldn't have explained anything. I don't think any word can explain a man's life. No, I guess Rosebud is just a piece in a jigsaw puzzle. A missing piece."
I flashed back to Citizen Kane while watching the little-loved 1990 documentary On the Trail of Ed Wood. This humble, hour-long film, made by Michael Copner and Buddy Barnett of Cult Movies magazine, is essentially an extended interview with Conrad Brooks (1931-2017), Eddie's close friend and an actor in several of his films, including Glen or Glenda (1953) and Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959).
Conrad is a lot like the interview subjects in Citizen Kane, ruminating on the life of a famous dead man and trying to glean some meaning from the chaos. The difference is, the remembrances in Kane are full of drama, comedy, intrigue, tragedy, philosophy, etc. while Conrad Brooks' stories are often vague and slow-paced. Connie spent a lot of time with Ed Wood but doesn't seem to possess any special insight into the eccentric filmmaker. As a result, On the Trail of Ed Wood plays like the footage Orson Welles (or Jerry Thompson, for that matter) might have cut from Citizen Kane.
But that's not to say On the Trail is without merit. The documentary turns 30 this year, so this is as good a time as any to look back on it. If nothing else, it offers a snapshot of the Wood cult as it stood a decade after the publication of Harry and Michael Medved's The Golden Turkey Awards and four years before the release of Tim Burton's biopic Ed Wood. This was an in-between time for Eddie's fandom. The initial wave of curiosity provoked by the Medveds had cooled off, but the second, more scholarly wave of Woodmania hadn't really begun yet. In particular, Rudolph Grey's Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1992) was still two years away from publication, so the closest thing to a career-spanning Wood biography was the homemade 1981 chapbook Edward D. Wood Jr.: A Man and His Films by superfans Randy Simon and Harold Benjamin.
Besides Grey's book and Burton's movie, the 1990s also saw the release of three distinctive, stylized documentaries about Eddie: Ted Newsom's Look Back in Angora (1994), Mark Patrick Carducci's Flying Saucers Over Hollywood (1992), and Brett Thompson's The Haunted World of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1995). Crude as it is, On the Trail of Ed Wood predates all of these, not to mention Grey's book. As far as I know, it's the first full-length documentary about Ed Wood of any real substance. For that alone, it deserves better than its current 3.8 rating at the IMDb.
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| The DVD version that I reviewed. |
After these credits, On the Trail offers us some goofy man-on-the-street interviews shot in Hollywood, with Copner asking passersby what they know about Ed Wood and Plan 9. Perhaps coincidentally, this is also how Flying Saucers Over Hollywood starts. While I'm not hugely enthusiastic about this material in either film, this footage at least allows us to see what the busy intersection of Hollywood Blvd. and Cherokee Ave. looked like 30 years ago. (Side note: The legendary Musso & Frank Grill, a key location in Ed Wood and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, is just offscreen.)
"We have just seen the evidence," says Copner to the camera in the style of Criswell. "There are still people out there in the world today who have no idea who Edward D. Wood, Jr. really was. Now we hope to change all that with this videotape." On the Trail was originally marketed as a mail-order VHS tape in the pages of Cult Movies magazine, but the version I reviewed was a DVD edition from Alpha Video.
Copner gives us a very perfunctory, pre-Wikipedia description of Ed Wood (back when people thought Eddie made only six movies), then explains that he and Barnett ran into Conrad Brooks while doing research on a horror movie book. According to Copner, Brooks allowed the Cult Movies team to see rare pictures and other documents from Connie's own personal archives. Throughout the film, we glimpse various posters, lobby cards, and press kits related to Ed's movies, with Orgy of the Dead (1965) being the most recent film thus featured. There are also plenty of photographs, including behind-the-scenes pictures, headshots and promotional photos, and even some personal snapshots. I don't think any (or many) of these were new to me, but maybe this was all virgin territory in 1990. This was pre-internet and pre-Nightmare of Ecstasy.
The vast majority of On the Trail consists of Conrad Brooks, dressed casually in a red sweatshirt and dark blue slacks, slumped on a couch, reminiscing at great length (but not great depth) about Ed Wood. Buddy Barnett occasionally chimes in with questions or prompts. Connie is not exactly a natural raconteur, with his slow, halting delivery, and the slack editing here does him no favors. On the Trail really makes you appreciate those other '90s Ed Wood documentaries I mentioned, all of which feature multiple interview subjects rather than just one. I can imagine clips from this film being used in another, more focused movie.
As it is, Copner and Barnett's discussion with Conrad Brooks is divided into a few major sections, interrupted by occasional field trips to significant locations in Los Angeles. I've done what I can to find interesting or useful information in these parts of the documentary.
PART ONE: THE EARLY DAYS AND GLEN OR GLENDA
According to Conrad Brooks, he and Ed Wood met in 1948 at a coffee shop they both frequented on Sunset Blvd. Conrad had just arrived in Hollywood from Baltimore at that time and had no connections in the industry. The shop was not far from Monogram Studios, where Connie made Jalopy and Clipped Wings in 1953. Ed was living nearby in a combination office and apartment (dubbed "Ed Wood Productions") over the Vista Theatre on Sunset and was then promoting a production of his military comedy Casual Company. In fact, Ed was putting up handbills for the play in the coffee shop. Ed and Conrad started talking about showbiz, and Eddie promised to put his new friend in his next film.
"The only way to make it in Hollywood," Ed told Connie, "you've gotta make your own pictures."
That next film turned out to be Glen or Glenda, produced by George Weiss and based on the life of Christine Jorgensen. Conrad was skeptical about the project when he learned that Weiss made movies "for third-rate theaters" where "people slept for a quarter," but he was encouraged that his "favorite actor" Bela Lugosi would be appearing in Glen or Glenda, along with Oscar nominee Lyle Talbot.
Ed told Conrad Brooks "he was gonna be another Orson Welles" and that Paramount would buy Glen or Glenda. (The studio actually did buy the film in the 1980s, but Ed didn't live to see it.) Ed Wood's ambition gave budget-conscious George Weiss some anxiety. Eddie demanded four or five days to film Glenda, much longer than Weiss' usual two-day shooting schedule. Weiss was also worried about having well-known actors in the film, fearing that would drive up the cost. Ed saved money by serving as the writer, director, and lead actor in the film, which was secretly based on his own life.
Conrad was impressed that the film managed to secure some bookings in mainstream theaters due to its unusual subject matter and well-known cast. Connie was also pleased that Ed made sure all the cast and crew were paid upfront for their work. "He was strictly a good union man." As for costar "Tommy" Haines, who plays Alan/Anne, Brooks describes him as a "half-man, half-woman" who "used to play drums in a band."
The conversation hits a lull when Buddy Barnett asks, "Do you think [Ed Wood] was a happy person?" Conrad ponders this for a while before answering, "I think so. I don't see any reason why he would be unhappy." The actor reasons that Eddie accomplished his goal of making movies in Hollywood, which is more than many can say.
PART TWO: PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE
This portion of the documentary kicks off with the now-familiar trailer for Plan 9, Ed Wood's most famous film and Connie's biggest claim to fame. In Ed Wood (1994), Conrad Brooks is portrayed as extremely naive and in awe of everything Eddie does. It wasn't that way in reality, especially in regards to Plan 9.
"Well, at first, I was very critical of these pictures," Brooks admits. "In spots, [Plan 9] was good, then it would get flat." The young actor thought that the presence of so many stars (Bela Lugosi, Tor Johnson, Tom Keene, Criswell, Vampira, etc.) in one film would result in "something a little special," but the final result "wasn't exactly my type of picture." He estimates the film's budget was $15,000. "No more than 20," he clarifies.
Brooks attributes the film's latter-day success to Harry and Michael Medved, though he gets the name of their book wrong. (He calls it The 10 Worst Motion Pictures of All Time. In reality it was The Golden Turkey Awards.) "That really started everything," Connie says. "That was the beginning when the book came out." The actor says he saw the book and accepted its judgment that Plan 9 from Outer Space had been the worst film of all time. A common motif in this interview is that Conrad Brooks simply accepted whatever happened to him without a great deal of critical thought.
Brooks' opinion of Plan 9 began to change when the film started airing frequently on Los Angeles television. And not always in the middle of the night either! Brooks' friend, author Richard Bojarski (The Films of Bela Lugosi), further informed him that the movie had played on New York TV "every second Saturday for three long years." Connie really started to change his stance on Plan 9 when he was invited to screenings of the film to introduce it. There, he saw how people reacted to the movie. "They were having a lot of fun. They really enjoyed it," he explains. "After that, I enjoyed it. They converted me. Now I like the picture."
In the long run, Brooks says, it was good that Ed Wood continued making low-budget pictures.With more money at his disposal, he would have been "just another movie producer. Now he's somebody!"
PART THREE: TOR JOHNSON
Conrad Brooks and Tor Johnson met during the making of Bride of the Monster (1955) and remained close friends thereafter, frequently visiting each other's homes. Tor considered himself a gourmet chef and would give Conrad's then-wife Ruthie cooking lessons. According to Connie, one of Tor's unrealized dreams was to open a pizza parlor. "He would be known as the King of Pizzas," Brooks enthuses. "He was always one to promote something."
Conrad describes Tor as "a very big man" with "a big heart." The 400-pound Swede came to New York and worked as a piano and furniture mover for several years before becoming a professional wrestler. Tor succeeded in wrestling, becoming a headliner and earning the nickname The Swedish Angel. He even wrestled for the championship in Hong Kong in front of 140,000 people. Eventually, though, he started getting older and decided to move to Hollywood to make it in movies. He thought this would be a windfall. "Tor always wanted to get in where there's a chance to make some big money," Brooks explains.
In Hollywood, Tor Johnson played bit parts for years before finally getting connected with Ed Wood. Eddie promised to give the wrestler leading parts, but Tor thought that this would mean bigger salaries. Unfortunately, Eddie could only pay Tor $100 a day, which the wrestler found unacceptable. Occasionally, Tor would demand more money from Ed, and production would come to a halt for several hours as Eddie scrambled to raise the cash. This made Ed Wood hesitant to use Tor in his movies.
"Actually," says Conrad, "he thought Ed had a lot of money." This was again due to Eddie's relatively luxurious shooting schedules and his casting of "name players," the same problems that had plagued him on Glen or Glenda. In the end, though, Conrad Brooks concludes that Tor Johnson was "a wonderful guy, a good friend, and I miss him."
PART FOUR: A VISIT TO TED ALLAN STUDIOS
At this point in the documentary, Conrad Brooks takes Michael Copner and Buddy Barnett on a veritable Cook's tour of significant Los Angeles locations in the story of Ed Wood. The first stop is the corner of Yucca and Argyle, the former location of Ted Allan Studios, where the interiors of Bride of the Monster were filmed. Allan (1910-1993) was a renowned portrait photographer who briefly served as the original cinematographer on Bride. Ed ran out of money after one day, so filming was temporarily halted. When Bride resumed production, William Thompson (of Glen or Glenda) had taken over as cinematographer.
In Nightmare of Ecstasy, Allan described his studio:
Indeed, by the time the crew of On the Trail of Ed Wood arrived here in 1990, the building was being used by radio station KFWB. Flanked by such Hollywood landmarks as the Capitol Records building and the Pantages Theatre, it's a large white structure with a unique domed roof. In the documentary, it looks a little worse for wear but still functional.
While standing in the adjacent parking lot, Conrad Brooks reminisces, "There was a parking lot, right in here." Then he gestures to a large building with a ramp leading up to the back door. "That was the soundstage," he explains. "And you can see it was a good sized studio. Like I said before, it was Ted Allan Studios. He was a pretty popular photographer in those days. And this is exactly where I saw Bela Lugosi, and it brings back a lot of wonderful memories."
As for those "wonderful memories," the actor recalls the day he met Bela Lugosi and shook his hand. "Bela was just coming up the hill in his coat, his black hat, and his cane," Brooks says. "At other times, he wouldn't talk to you unless he knew your name. He had to call you by your name first. A real fine gentleman."
This building at Argyle and Yucca stood until at least 2011 but has since been demolished and replaced with a luxury apartment building called Argyle House. I guess that makes a better name than "Yucca House." Thanks to Bob Blackburn for helping me sort out some of the Los Angeles geography and pinpoint this location. The good news is that, if you look up the intersection of Yucca and Argyle on Google Maps and set the year back to 2009, you get to see this facility looking the way it used to.
PART FIVE: EDDIE'S OLD APARTMENT
The next stop on the tour is Ed Wood's old apartment on Mariposa Ave. This was where Eddie was living when he convinced his landlord, J. Edward Reynolds, to finance Plan 9 from Outer Space. Connie explains that Reynolds "was interested in Ed Wood's background. When Ed Wood moved here, he was a movie producer, so [Reynolds] wanted to know all about Hollywood." According to Brooks, "Ed really had to convince him, because he was behind on his rent like six months, and that was the only way to work it off. So if the guy would finance the picture, he could take that off the top, so he could get caught up on all his back rent money. So this was a lucky place for Ed Wood."
Connie also tells a story about Ed Wood's predilection for cross-dressing:
Conrad Books says that Ed Wood lived on Mariposa "for pretty close to a whole year. and from here, he moved into the Valley. It was a beautiful place. Incidentally, Ed told me that Marilyn Monroe also lived in this place at one time in her early days in Hollywood."
PART SIX: YUCCA FLATS
The documentary's final and most poignant field trip is to the corner of Yucca and Cahuenga, where Ed and Kathy Wood had their final apartment together before Eddie's death in December 1978. In this film, at least, the building looks decrepit and depressing, though not nearly as chaotic or dangerous as it apparently had been during the late '70s. Conrad and Buddy walk down the narrow, dimly lit hallway to Ed's old apartment, #115, as Michael films them. Connie says he hasn't been there in 12 years. "In fact," he says, "this is the last place where I saw Ed Wood."
Brooks then leads Michael and Buddy to a grim-looking courtyard behind the building and instructs Michael to aim his camera at the back windows of Ed and Kathy's former apartment. The screens on these windows are wildly askew. Elsewhere in the courtyard, the phrase "HAPPY BIRTHDAY WENDY" has been crudely spray painted on a brick wall.
"Before I forget to tell you," says Connie, "Kathy lives not too far from here." The actor also says that the Woods were occasionally visited by some friends. "Some old gal would come over." I wonder if this was actress Nona Carver, who appeared in Ed's Take It Out in Trade (1970).
Maybe my favorite moment in On the Trail of Ed Wood occurs when Conrad Brooks notices that he and his companions are being watched by a young dark-haired boy perched on a stairway at the back of the building. "Hi, sonny!" Conrad chirps. The boy does not respond but keeps staring at the small film crew.
PART SEVEN: ED'S CROSS DRESSING
In any documentary about Ed Wood, you have to deal with the fact that Eddie liked to dress in women's clothing. On the Trail gets to this topic relatively late in the game. Conrad Brooks admits that "it was strange" but does not seem overly bothered by it. Again, it's something he simply accepted as a fact of life. As he explains:
Buddy then asks Conrad why Eddie liked angora sweaters so much. Surprisingly, Connie's answer is very similar to the narration from Glen or Glenda, insisting that drag made Eddie more comfortable and productive:
PART EIGHT: BELA LUGOSI
The famed Hungarian actor is mentioned throughout On the Trail, naturally, but this brief segment of the film is devoted exclusively to him. Buddy Barnett asks whether or not Lugosi and Ed Wood got along well. Conrad replies that they must have, since they made three films together. Brooks describes Lugosi as a man who was "up in age" by the 1950s and "wasn't getting that much work." Ed allegedly took on the role of being Bela's "regular promoter" and got him some bookings in Las Vegas, including a stint at the Silver Slipper. Wood got on Lugosi's good side by reminding him, "You're a legend and you're a well-known man. Why not try Vegas?" That must have been good enough for Bela. (NOTE: I realize that Ed Wood's exact involvement in The Bela Lugosi Revue is contested. In this article, I'm presenting Conrad Brooks' version of events.)
According to Connie, Wood had more grandiose plans for promoting Bela Lugosi and was going to take the famed screen vampire on a coast-to-coast tour. Bela was to wear his Count Dracula outfit, and they'd even bring along the original coffin from the 1931 Universal movie. But little of this came to fruition. "I think they started out making a few appearances," says Connie, "but they never made it out to the East Coast."
Publicity was of prime importance to Ed Wood, Brooks attests. That's why the director would not be embarrassed by his current, ironic fame. "Nothing embarrassed Ed Wood," he says, adding that the filmmaker would be happy to see his name in print under any circumstances, good or bad.
PART NINE: JAIL BAIT AND CRISWELL
Without giving any context or explanation of what we're seeing, the documentary then cuts to the trailer for Jail Bait (1954), in which Connie has a small, uncredited role. The preview makes the film look like a standard crime thriller and barely hints at the plot's plastic surgery gimmick. A booming announcer says that this is a film about "the most feared of our modern underworld, men who hate the law and abuse even those they love." Cue the footage of Timothy Farrell slapping Theodora Thurman. Eagle-eyed viewers will note that the trailer manages to give away most of the major plot points, including the final twist.
This is followed by another haphazard montage of posters and publicity stills, then some discussion of Criswell, who acted alongside Conrad Brooks in Plan 9 from Outer Space and Night of the Ghouls (aka Revenge of the Dead). Connie calls Criswell a "showman" and "a very nice man," pointing out that the prognosticator was extremely popular in the 1950s and 1960s and appeared frequently on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Brooks also remembers that Cris was quite tall.
As far as Conrad is concerned, the only one of Criswell's predictions that ever came true is that Plan 9 from Outer Space would be a huge success. Cris had a show on Los Angeles TV every Sunday and would mention the film without including the fact that he himself was in it! You might call that plausible deniability.
PART TEN: EDDIE'S DIRECTING STYLE AND LATER YEARS
On the Trail of Ed Wood ends with a rather scattershot but intermittently fascinating discussion of Ed Wood's directorial style and his final, impoverished years. Conrad Brooks describes Eddie as a laissez-faire filmmaker who loved working with "old timers" but rarely gave his actors a lot of guidance or instruction, other than to remind them of a line of dialogue here or there. "He seldom ever told an actor what to do," Connie explains. "He more or less left it up to you. He figured, hey, look, you're an actor, you're a pro, that's why I hired you, for you to do it."
Buddy then asks Conrad how Ed Wood made money in the 1960s and '70s. The actor says that Eddie "worked as a cab driver for Yellow Cab," which is a story I have not been able to confirm or deny. Connie also mentions that Ed Wood worked for Los Angeles mayor Sam Yorty, "sending out literature, you know, campaigning and things like that." For more on the Wood/Yorty connection, I refer you to this article.
The conversation then turns to Eddie's writing career and whether or not he wrote hardcore pornographic books. (For the record, the answer is yes. Many of them.) Conrad Brooks is diplomatic here, saying that Ed started out writing for movie magazines. "They weren't actually X-rated. They were nudies. They weren't considered X-rated stuff. They were movie magazines and layouts. He was doing these short stories." Seemingly referring to publisher Bernie Bloom, Connie says that "one guy was very impressed with Ed's material and Ed came in and I think he did a couple of books, the whole layout. Books with girlies and stories."
Connie seems genuinely impressed with how much money Ed made as a writer and how quickly he worked in those days. (Eddie's superhuman productivity in the early 1970s attests to this.) According to Brooks, Ed Wood wrote Burn Baby Burn (1967) in three days and was paid a thousand dollars for his troubles, more than he ever made in movies. If Brooks is to be believed, Eddie was earning $700 or more for each of his books, and he was turning them out as fast as he could because he desperately needed money to support his heavy drinking and his relatively cushy lifestyle.
As it is, Copner and Barnett's discussion with Conrad Brooks is divided into a few major sections, interrupted by occasional field trips to significant locations in Los Angeles. I've done what I can to find interesting or useful information in these parts of the documentary.
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| Bela Lugosi and "Tommy" Haines in Glen or Glenda. |
According to Conrad Brooks, he and Ed Wood met in 1948 at a coffee shop they both frequented on Sunset Blvd. Conrad had just arrived in Hollywood from Baltimore at that time and had no connections in the industry. The shop was not far from Monogram Studios, where Connie made Jalopy and Clipped Wings in 1953. Ed was living nearby in a combination office and apartment (dubbed "Ed Wood Productions") over the Vista Theatre on Sunset and was then promoting a production of his military comedy Casual Company. In fact, Ed was putting up handbills for the play in the coffee shop. Ed and Conrad started talking about showbiz, and Eddie promised to put his new friend in his next film.
"The only way to make it in Hollywood," Ed told Connie, "you've gotta make your own pictures."
That next film turned out to be Glen or Glenda, produced by George Weiss and based on the life of Christine Jorgensen. Conrad was skeptical about the project when he learned that Weiss made movies "for third-rate theaters" where "people slept for a quarter," but he was encouraged that his "favorite actor" Bela Lugosi would be appearing in Glen or Glenda, along with Oscar nominee Lyle Talbot.
Ed told Conrad Brooks "he was gonna be another Orson Welles" and that Paramount would buy Glen or Glenda. (The studio actually did buy the film in the 1980s, but Ed didn't live to see it.) Ed Wood's ambition gave budget-conscious George Weiss some anxiety. Eddie demanded four or five days to film Glenda, much longer than Weiss' usual two-day shooting schedule. Weiss was also worried about having well-known actors in the film, fearing that would drive up the cost. Ed saved money by serving as the writer, director, and lead actor in the film, which was secretly based on his own life.
Conrad was impressed that the film managed to secure some bookings in mainstream theaters due to its unusual subject matter and well-known cast. Connie was also pleased that Ed made sure all the cast and crew were paid upfront for their work. "He was strictly a good union man." As for costar "Tommy" Haines, who plays Alan/Anne, Brooks describes him as a "half-man, half-woman" who "used to play drums in a band."
The conversation hits a lull when Buddy Barnett asks, "Do you think [Ed Wood] was a happy person?" Conrad ponders this for a while before answering, "I think so. I don't see any reason why he would be unhappy." The actor reasons that Eddie accomplished his goal of making movies in Hollywood, which is more than many can say.
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| Excerpt from the Plan 9 press book, touting Bela's participation. |
This portion of the documentary kicks off with the now-familiar trailer for Plan 9, Ed Wood's most famous film and Connie's biggest claim to fame. In Ed Wood (1994), Conrad Brooks is portrayed as extremely naive and in awe of everything Eddie does. It wasn't that way in reality, especially in regards to Plan 9.
"Well, at first, I was very critical of these pictures," Brooks admits. "In spots, [Plan 9] was good, then it would get flat." The young actor thought that the presence of so many stars (Bela Lugosi, Tor Johnson, Tom Keene, Criswell, Vampira, etc.) in one film would result in "something a little special," but the final result "wasn't exactly my type of picture." He estimates the film's budget was $15,000. "No more than 20," he clarifies.
Brooks attributes the film's latter-day success to Harry and Michael Medved, though he gets the name of their book wrong. (He calls it The 10 Worst Motion Pictures of All Time. In reality it was The Golden Turkey Awards.) "That really started everything," Connie says. "That was the beginning when the book came out." The actor says he saw the book and accepted its judgment that Plan 9 from Outer Space had been the worst film of all time. A common motif in this interview is that Conrad Brooks simply accepted whatever happened to him without a great deal of critical thought.
Brooks' opinion of Plan 9 began to change when the film started airing frequently on Los Angeles television. And not always in the middle of the night either! Brooks' friend, author Richard Bojarski (The Films of Bela Lugosi), further informed him that the movie had played on New York TV "every second Saturday for three long years." Connie really started to change his stance on Plan 9 when he was invited to screenings of the film to introduce it. There, he saw how people reacted to the movie. "They were having a lot of fun. They really enjoyed it," he explains. "After that, I enjoyed it. They converted me. Now I like the picture."
In the long run, Brooks says, it was good that Ed Wood continued making low-budget pictures.With more money at his disposal, he would have been "just another movie producer. Now he's somebody!"
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| Would-be "King of Pizzas" Tor Johnson. |
Conrad Brooks and Tor Johnson met during the making of Bride of the Monster (1955) and remained close friends thereafter, frequently visiting each other's homes. Tor considered himself a gourmet chef and would give Conrad's then-wife Ruthie cooking lessons. According to Connie, one of Tor's unrealized dreams was to open a pizza parlor. "He would be known as the King of Pizzas," Brooks enthuses. "He was always one to promote something."
Conrad describes Tor as "a very big man" with "a big heart." The 400-pound Swede came to New York and worked as a piano and furniture mover for several years before becoming a professional wrestler. Tor succeeded in wrestling, becoming a headliner and earning the nickname The Swedish Angel. He even wrestled for the championship in Hong Kong in front of 140,000 people. Eventually, though, he started getting older and decided to move to Hollywood to make it in movies. He thought this would be a windfall. "Tor always wanted to get in where there's a chance to make some big money," Brooks explains.
In Hollywood, Tor Johnson played bit parts for years before finally getting connected with Ed Wood. Eddie promised to give the wrestler leading parts, but Tor thought that this would mean bigger salaries. Unfortunately, Eddie could only pay Tor $100 a day, which the wrestler found unacceptable. Occasionally, Tor would demand more money from Ed, and production would come to a halt for several hours as Eddie scrambled to raise the cash. This made Ed Wood hesitant to use Tor in his movies.
"Actually," says Conrad, "he thought Ed had a lot of money." This was again due to Eddie's relatively luxurious shooting schedules and his casting of "name players," the same problems that had plagued him on Glen or Glenda. In the end, though, Conrad Brooks concludes that Tor Johnson was "a wonderful guy, a good friend, and I miss him."
PART FOUR: A VISIT TO TED ALLAN STUDIOS
At this point in the documentary, Conrad Brooks takes Michael Copner and Buddy Barnett on a veritable Cook's tour of significant Los Angeles locations in the story of Ed Wood. The first stop is the corner of Yucca and Argyle, the former location of Ted Allan Studios, where the interiors of Bride of the Monster were filmed. Allan (1910-1993) was a renowned portrait photographer who briefly served as the original cinematographer on Bride. Ed ran out of money after one day, so filming was temporarily halted. When Bride resumed production, William Thompson (of Glen or Glenda) had taken over as cinematographer.
In Nightmare of Ecstasy, Allan described his studio:
Indeed, by the time the crew of On the Trail of Ed Wood arrived here in 1990, the building was being used by radio station KFWB. Flanked by such Hollywood landmarks as the Capitol Records building and the Pantages Theatre, it's a large white structure with a unique domed roof. In the documentary, it looks a little worse for wear but still functional.
While standing in the adjacent parking lot, Conrad Brooks reminisces, "There was a parking lot, right in here." Then he gestures to a large building with a ramp leading up to the back door. "That was the soundstage," he explains. "And you can see it was a good sized studio. Like I said before, it was Ted Allan Studios. He was a pretty popular photographer in those days. And this is exactly where I saw Bela Lugosi, and it brings back a lot of wonderful memories."
As for those "wonderful memories," the actor recalls the day he met Bela Lugosi and shook his hand. "Bela was just coming up the hill in his coat, his black hat, and his cane," Brooks says. "At other times, he wouldn't talk to you unless he knew your name. He had to call you by your name first. A real fine gentleman."
This building at Argyle and Yucca stood until at least 2011 but has since been demolished and replaced with a luxury apartment building called Argyle House. I guess that makes a better name than "Yucca House." Thanks to Bob Blackburn for helping me sort out some of the Los Angeles geography and pinpoint this location. The good news is that, if you look up the intersection of Yucca and Argyle on Google Maps and set the year back to 2009, you get to see this facility looking the way it used to.
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| Conrad Brooks visits KFWB, where Bride of the Monster was once filmed |
PART FIVE: EDDIE'S OLD APARTMENT
The next stop on the tour is Ed Wood's old apartment on Mariposa Ave. This was where Eddie was living when he convinced his landlord, J. Edward Reynolds, to finance Plan 9 from Outer Space. Connie explains that Reynolds "was interested in Ed Wood's background. When Ed Wood moved here, he was a movie producer, so [Reynolds] wanted to know all about Hollywood." According to Brooks, "Ed really had to convince him, because he was behind on his rent like six months, and that was the only way to work it off. So if the guy would finance the picture, he could take that off the top, so he could get caught up on all his back rent money. So this was a lucky place for Ed Wood."
Connie also tells a story about Ed Wood's predilection for cross-dressing:
"One of the most shocking things that did ever happen to me when I did come to see Ed Wood, I came here one evening around 11:00 in the evening. And I ring the bell, rap on the door, and I hear a voice. 'Who's there?' And I looked up. It was strange. I'm outdoors, right? Ed's usually inside. And I looked up, and he was sitting on the roof in drag and he was staring up at the sky, at the stars, and he was just enjoying himself up there for a few minutes. And he said, 'I'll be right down.'"
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| Conrad found Ed Wood on this roof... in full drag, no less! |
Conrad Books says that Ed Wood lived on Mariposa "for pretty close to a whole year. and from here, he moved into the Valley. It was a beautiful place. Incidentally, Ed told me that Marilyn Monroe also lived in this place at one time in her early days in Hollywood."
PART SIX: YUCCA FLATS
The documentary's final and most poignant field trip is to the corner of Yucca and Cahuenga, where Ed and Kathy Wood had their final apartment together before Eddie's death in December 1978. In this film, at least, the building looks decrepit and depressing, though not nearly as chaotic or dangerous as it apparently had been during the late '70s. Conrad and Buddy walk down the narrow, dimly lit hallway to Ed's old apartment, #115, as Michael films them. Connie says he hasn't been there in 12 years. "In fact," he says, "this is the last place where I saw Ed Wood."
Brooks then leads Michael and Buddy to a grim-looking courtyard behind the building and instructs Michael to aim his camera at the back windows of Ed and Kathy's former apartment. The screens on these windows are wildly askew. Elsewhere in the courtyard, the phrase "HAPPY BIRTHDAY WENDY" has been crudely spray painted on a brick wall.
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| Ed and Kathy Wood's back windows at their Yucca Flats apartment. |
"Before I forget to tell you," says Connie, "Kathy lives not too far from here." The actor also says that the Woods were occasionally visited by some friends. "Some old gal would come over." I wonder if this was actress Nona Carver, who appeared in Ed's Take It Out in Trade (1970).
Maybe my favorite moment in On the Trail of Ed Wood occurs when Conrad Brooks notices that he and his companions are being watched by a young dark-haired boy perched on a stairway at the back of the building. "Hi, sonny!" Conrad chirps. The boy does not respond but keeps staring at the small film crew.
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| Ed Wood in drag in Glen or Glenda. |
In any documentary about Ed Wood, you have to deal with the fact that Eddie liked to dress in women's clothing. On the Trail gets to this topic relatively late in the game. Conrad Brooks admits that "it was strange" but does not seem overly bothered by it. Again, it's something he simply accepted as a fact of life. As he explains:
"It was strange at first, because I was very naïve. I didn't know much about these things. Young guy at 17, I figured, 'Better learn now. It's now or never.' So it didn't bother me. I never gave it a thought. Ed's a friend of mine, so whatever he wants to run around with clothes, without clothes, that's fine."Brooks says that, the first time he went to visit Ed Wood, the director was wearing "regular clothes." Eddie didn't feel comfortable dressing in drag in front of Conrad until the actor's second visit to his home. "He said he wanted to go up to his dressing room and dress. We thought maybe he was just going to switch shirts or something or maybe we're going out someplace. And he stepped out as a girl."
Buddy then asks Conrad why Eddie liked angora sweaters so much. Surprisingly, Connie's answer is very similar to the narration from Glen or Glenda, insisting that drag made Eddie more comfortable and productive:
"Well, he liked those bright colors. And plus, he did say they're very furry. Incidentally, I think he did mention that. When he put that sweater on, he loved it very much. It was very furry. Made him feel good. And he was able to work better. He was able to get at that typewriter. It seemed like when he was dressed as a woman, he would get into his work, typing scripts, stories, and ideas would come to him. It would inspire him. Well, if that's what it took to do it."Connie points out that Ed was a handsome man who didn't need to hide behind women's clothes. "But I suppose he tried it to see if he would be a good-looking woman." As for Ed's underlying reasons for cross-dressing, Connie traces it back to Eddie's childhood without specifically implicating Ed's mother Lillian. The actor also dispels the notion that Eddie directed while in drag, saying he did so only during Glen or Glenda when he needed to be in women's clothing for the scene.
PART EIGHT: BELA LUGOSI
The famed Hungarian actor is mentioned throughout On the Trail, naturally, but this brief segment of the film is devoted exclusively to him. Buddy Barnett asks whether or not Lugosi and Ed Wood got along well. Conrad replies that they must have, since they made three films together. Brooks describes Lugosi as a man who was "up in age" by the 1950s and "wasn't getting that much work." Ed allegedly took on the role of being Bela's "regular promoter" and got him some bookings in Las Vegas, including a stint at the Silver Slipper. Wood got on Lugosi's good side by reminding him, "You're a legend and you're a well-known man. Why not try Vegas?" That must have been good enough for Bela. (NOTE: I realize that Ed Wood's exact involvement in The Bela Lugosi Revue is contested. In this article, I'm presenting Conrad Brooks' version of events.)
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| An ad for Bela Lugosi's Las Vegas show. |
According to Connie, Wood had more grandiose plans for promoting Bela Lugosi and was going to take the famed screen vampire on a coast-to-coast tour. Bela was to wear his Count Dracula outfit, and they'd even bring along the original coffin from the 1931 Universal movie. But little of this came to fruition. "I think they started out making a few appearances," says Connie, "but they never made it out to the East Coast."
Publicity was of prime importance to Ed Wood, Brooks attests. That's why the director would not be embarrassed by his current, ironic fame. "Nothing embarrassed Ed Wood," he says, adding that the filmmaker would be happy to see his name in print under any circumstances, good or bad.
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| Criswell was "a very nice man." |
Without giving any context or explanation of what we're seeing, the documentary then cuts to the trailer for Jail Bait (1954), in which Connie has a small, uncredited role. The preview makes the film look like a standard crime thriller and barely hints at the plot's plastic surgery gimmick. A booming announcer says that this is a film about "the most feared of our modern underworld, men who hate the law and abuse even those they love." Cue the footage of Timothy Farrell slapping Theodora Thurman. Eagle-eyed viewers will note that the trailer manages to give away most of the major plot points, including the final twist.
This is followed by another haphazard montage of posters and publicity stills, then some discussion of Criswell, who acted alongside Conrad Brooks in Plan 9 from Outer Space and Night of the Ghouls (aka Revenge of the Dead). Connie calls Criswell a "showman" and "a very nice man," pointing out that the prognosticator was extremely popular in the 1950s and 1960s and appeared frequently on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Brooks also remembers that Cris was quite tall.
As far as Conrad is concerned, the only one of Criswell's predictions that ever came true is that Plan 9 from Outer Space would be a huge success. Cris had a show on Los Angeles TV every Sunday and would mention the film without including the fact that he himself was in it! You might call that plausible deniability.
PART TEN: EDDIE'S DIRECTING STYLE AND LATER YEARS
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| Ed Wood in his later years. |
Buddy then asks Conrad how Ed Wood made money in the 1960s and '70s. The actor says that Eddie "worked as a cab driver for Yellow Cab," which is a story I have not been able to confirm or deny. Connie also mentions that Ed Wood worked for Los Angeles mayor Sam Yorty, "sending out literature, you know, campaigning and things like that." For more on the Wood/Yorty connection, I refer you to this article.
The conversation then turns to Eddie's writing career and whether or not he wrote hardcore pornographic books. (For the record, the answer is yes. Many of them.) Conrad Brooks is diplomatic here, saying that Ed started out writing for movie magazines. "They weren't actually X-rated. They were nudies. They weren't considered X-rated stuff. They were movie magazines and layouts. He was doing these short stories." Seemingly referring to publisher Bernie Bloom, Connie says that "one guy was very impressed with Ed's material and Ed came in and I think he did a couple of books, the whole layout. Books with girlies and stories."
Connie seems genuinely impressed with how much money Ed made as a writer and how quickly he worked in those days. (Eddie's superhuman productivity in the early 1970s attests to this.) According to Brooks, Ed Wood wrote Burn Baby Burn (1967) in three days and was paid a thousand dollars for his troubles, more than he ever made in movies. If Brooks is to be believed, Eddie was earning $700 or more for each of his books, and he was turning them out as fast as he could because he desperately needed money to support his heavy drinking and his relatively cushy lifestyle.
"Things were getting higher, much higher [in price]. And Ed had a pretty nice place where he lived. It had a swimming pool. He had his three little dogs. He enjoyed animals. And he was married to Kathy, and he did have a nice little home he was renting in North Hollywood."In those days, Eddie's many friends, mostly show folk, would come to his Hollywood home to drink his liquor, eat his food, and hit him up for favors. Connie was among them and remembers crashing on Eddie's couch several times. But Eddie's fortunes soon changed for the worse. As Brooks puts it:
"For a while he was working a lot. And then all of a sudden, maybe about a year later, he wasn't doing hardly anything. Then he just finally went kaput. He had that nice place, he lost it, that little house. I came there and he was gone. Then I checked with Duke Moore, who was also one of Ed's actors and friends. Most of Ed's actors were his buddies and good friends."The Woods lived with actor Duke Moore for a short time, but Duke's small apartment couldn't accommodate two more people and three dogs,. Moore informed Brooks that Ed and Kathy had moved to the apartment at the corner of Yucca and Cahuenga in Hollywood. Connie was wary of the place. What he found was not promising.
"When I went over there, I gave it a second thought if I should enter that building. Bad. I felt, geez, I better have a gun if I go in that building. I mean it was all these strange looking characters. Weirdos. I don't know. It was just a strange place."
The actor initially thought he'd come to the wrong address, but this was indeed the sad, new home of Edward D. Wood, Jr. Brooks reports that Eddie himself was looking poorly in those days, "puffy and blown-up from all his drinking." The apartment "was a mess, like a cyclone hit that place." Nevertheless, despite his straitened circumstances, Ed Wood chatted and performed as though nothing were wrong. "He was in good spirits," remembers Connie. "He wasn't that far down."
The next and final time Conrad Brooks visited Ed and Kathy at Yucca Flats, however, he found that the director had hit "rock bottom." He remembers thinking, "I hope this guy pulls out of it." By then, both Ed and Kathy were drinking heavily and had no money to their name. After that, Brooks heard from some unknown third party that Eddie had died. "That was it," Brooks muses. "Ed Wood's gone. But we have his pictures, his motion pictures."
The film gives us one last montage of posters, stills, and personal snapshots, set to sentimental music. The documentary's final image is of Ed Wood, still young and in his prime, flanked by Conrad Brooks on one side and Connie's brother Henry on the other. The photograph sums up the tone of On the Trail of Ed Wood. This is a sweet, nostalgic, and guileless film that offers up Conrad Brooks' own personal memories of Ed Wood, a man he claimed to love like "a brother." From a technical standpoint, it is not on a par with the other Wood documentaries, and it invites easy dismissal for being slow-moving, disorganized, or dull. But for those with an hour to kill and an abiding interest in Wood, it offers a few valuable insights and some tempting glimpses of key Wood locations. You won't find Ed Wood's "Rosebud" moment here but you may find a few missing pieces in the jigsaw puzzle of his life.
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| Henry Bederski, Ed Wood, and Conrad Brooks. |