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| Ed Wood gets to review himself in the pages of Young Beavers magazine! |
NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex (BearManor Media, 2021).
The article: "Book Reviews." Originally published in Young Beavers (Pendulum Publishing), vol. 2, no. 6, February/March 1969. No author credited.
Excerpt: "Author Ed Wood, Jr. has pulled out all the stops in recreating the story in prose form which is intended for a strictly adult audience. His smooth style and machine gun action dialogue carry the reader along to a smashing climax which won't be divulged here."
Reflections: Adult magazine and book publisher Bernie Bloom was always willing to experiment with new formats in the hopes of separating horny customers from their money. Give 'em something new, something they haven't seen before. Among Bernie's most baffling and outrageous publications were the Pendulum Pictorials he began releasing in 1968. Each one boasted a cover price of $1.75 (that's fifteen bucks in today's money) and promised the reader "80 PHOTOS."
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| Some classic Big Little Books. |
These books are real oddities, even by 1960s porn standards. They're not exactly novels, and they're not exactly magazines either. Instead, they combine photographs and text to tell very convoluted stories—sort of like fumetti, but not formatted like a comic book. Instead, think of them as the pornographic equivalent of Big Little Books. Remember those from your childhood? I wonder if that's where Bernie got the idea.
The Pendulum Pictorials of which I am aware are the following:
PP01 Bye Bye Broadie (1968) credited to Ed Wood, Jr.
PP02 Raped in the Grass (1968) credited to Ed Wood, Jr.
PP03 The Erotic Spy (1968) credited to Abbott Smith
PP04 Prison Passion (1968) credited to Harmon Wold, Jr.
PP05 The Nazi Field Whores (1968) credited to Michael Snow
PP06 The Svengali of Sex (1968) credited to Edgar Andrews
Some have speculated that Abbott Smith, Harmon Wold, Jr., Michael Snow, and Edgar Andrews are all pseudonyms for Ed Wood. Others dispute this, in whole or in part. That's another article for another time. For now, let's concentrate on the first two Pendulum Pictorials, Bye Bye Broadie and Raped in the Grass. Both of these are credited to Ed, so their place in the canon is secure.
The Pendulum Pictorials were marketed as adaptations of film scripts, but this was pure hogwash, strictly ballyhoo. No such movies exist. Apparently, the way they were made is that a photographer would shoot a series of related pictures, and then a writer would concoct a story around them.
Having read through a few of these, I'm sure the photographs must have come first. No writer—not even Ed Wood at his booziest and most delirious—would create plots as nonsensical and far-fetched as these out of thin air. The Pendulum Pictorials also stand out for combining sex and violence in particularly depraved and extreme ways. This series brought out Ed's nastiest tendencies as a writer. If you want to wallow in filth, start here. If you're limiting yourself to just one, make it Bye Bye Broadie, whose ending is so absurd that even I was caught off-guard by it.
Naturally, Bernie Bloom wanted to promote his Pendulum Pictorials, and what better place than in the pages of Pendulum's own magazines? Therefore, the February/March 1969 issue of Young Beavers contained glowing, albeit unsigned, reviews of both Raped in the Grass and Bye Bye Broadie. Essentially, Ed Wood is reviewing himself. (And now, I'm reviewing Ed Wood reviewing himself!)
Although presented as reviews, these are really advertisements. I'd like to think Eddie had some fun patting himself on the back. "In bringing out two titles so close to one another," he writes, "it is a distinct tribute to his not inconsiderable powers as a novelist with a demonstrated ability to handle a variety of subjects." This is the Eddie-as-huckster we see so often in Tim Burton's Ed Wood (1994), the consummate salesman shamelessly pitching projects to producers and backers.
Next: "16MM Beaver" (1971)