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| A young woman admires herself in Ed Wood's "Last Laugh." |
Edward D. Wood, Jr. wrote an insane amount of material for adult sex magazines between the early 1960s and his passing in late 1978 -- the better part of his adult life, really. This week, Joe Blevins joins me on The Ed Wood Summit Podcast to dissect a mere one of Ed's hundreds (possibly thousands) of short stories from this timeframe.
First appearing in the spring of 1972, the tail end of his most prolific period as a writer, Ed's "Last Laugh" is a representative example of the short stories he was penning for Pendulum Publishing at that time. It's even credited to one of his most-favored pseudonyms, Shirlee Lane. "Last Laugh" hails from the April/May '72 issue of Pendulum's lesbian-themed magazine Two Plus Two, graciously supplied to us for review by the co-heir of the Kathy Wood estate, Bob Blackburn.
As we discussed "Last Laugh," we couldn't help from veering into a multitude of related matters. The following conversation also includes an overview of the scope of Ed's magazine work, a foundational element of his work still requiring far more rigorous study.
CLARIFICATION: During our conversation, Joe implies that Bob Blackburn may have specifically chosen more accessible stories for the collections Blood Splatters Quickly and Angora Fever. Bob responded to that at length by email:
To be honest, I was not ever selective with the stories that got published, except that for BSQ, I wanted all 33 stories to have Ed Wood's [real] name attached to them to [prove] their authenticity. At that point, I may have had 50 or so stories total that I knew to be Ed's, going off his resume. Some were the "Dick Trent" or "Ann Gora" stories, but all the stories in that first book -- and I had no idea if there would ever be a second one -- were verifiably Ed's. It was the OR publisher John Oakes who suggested the title, so I was fine with that. I was just glad to get it out.
Over the next couple of years, I continued to get as many mags and stories as I could, even finding a few with Ed's name on them that were not on the resume. So when it came time to do the second book, I approached John at OR, and he passed. I then found Ben at Bear Manor, who was interested, and that's how Angora came about. Really, those 66 stories were all the rest, including whatever newly found ones I had, so I basically got everything I had at the time out there. I didn't not release anything, and there wasn't any kind of thematic arc to them.
Now, for the [upcoming] "articles" books, I did do the chapters more or less by themes, like "S&M," "Lesbianism," "General Observations," Ed as Dr. Ed sex professor, etc., and I am using song lyrics as chapter headings. I know it's kind of cheesy, but I have a music background. So for the "S&M" chapter, it's called "When The Whip Comes Down," after the Rolling Stones song. Or when the topic is films, the chapter heading is "They're Gonna Put Me in the Movies."
Thanks for setting the record straight, Bob. We look forward to that next book.
For bonus material this week, here is the contents page from that issue of Two Plus Two. The editorial at the right was almost certainly written by Ed Wood. And never you mind what's underneath all that blurring.
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| Ed Wood wrote some or perhaps all of this magazine. |
God help us in the future!
All episodes of The Ed Wood Summit Podcast can be found here.