Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex: "The Sweater Girl" (1973)

"Was it the girl or the sweater?"

NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex (BearManor Media, 2021).

The article: "The Sweater Girl." Originally published in Gallery (Gallery Press), vol. 2, no. 2, April/May 1973. Credited to Edward D. Wood, Jr.

Excerpt: "Sex in a minor way had once more found its way to the screen . . . and not through nudity. The girls were fully clothed yet they were oozing sex and few males in the audience could do little but sit on their hands in anticipation . . . and of course movies being what they were then . . . the trend was set and the ladies raced out to buy the latest number."

The shot of Lana Turner that obsessed Ed Wood.

Reflections: When publishing magnate Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles) dies in Citizen Kane (1941), the last thing he ever says is the word "Rosebud," referring to a sled he'd had as a small child. History does not record the last utterance of filmmaker and writer Edward Davis Wood, Jr. (1924-1978), but it might well have been the word "sweaters." They were apparently never far from his mind.

You have never loved anything in your life the way Ed Wood loved women's sweaters. Not only did Eddie put them into his films as often as possible, he wrote about them in his novels, his nonfiction books, his short stories, and his magazine articles. He wore them and cherished them in real life, too. In Nightmare of Ecstasy, his widow Kathy Wood says that, when she and Eddie were evicted from their apartment in December 1978, the few items they managed to save were the script for I Woke Up Early the Day I Died and "this one angora sweater that he loved so much."

Sweaters have already been a motif throughout When the Topic is Sex, and today they finally get an article all to themselves. In "The Sweater Girl," Ed Wood examines the entire history of these garments, from their humble origins (when they were "bulky" and "shapeless") to their glamorous Hollywood heyday. As Ed Wood sees it, movie producers of the 1930s put actresses in tight sweaters as a way of getting sex onto the big screen without offending the censor too much. Eventually the censors got wise and put an end to the era of the "sweater girl."

In addition to the movies themselves, Ed has fond memories of publicity stills of actresses Lana Turner and Ann Sheridan. And I mean very specific publicity stills. For Turner, he remembers a shot of her "sitting on one hip in front of a short fence" while wearing a "short sleeved, white angora slip over." Meanwhile, he recalls a photo of Sheridan "leaning out of the window of her studio bungalow" while modeling a green angora creation. I believe I located the Turner picture, but the Sheridan one eluded me.

The popularity of these actresses and other sweater-wearers caused young women everywhere to rush to the nearest department store and imitate the style themselves. Back then, sweaters were available in "all the colors and the styles." Eddie has particular nostalgia for a type of sweater he calls "La Conga." I checked some old newspapers from the 1940s, and sure enough, there were a few ads for these items. Here's one from the November 1, 1940 edition of The St. Louis Star and Times.

"Buy them both, have smart twins."

Why is Ed Wood writing an entire article about sweaters in April 1973? Well, according to him, sweaters had made a comeback during the previous holiday season. Presumably, he's referring to Christmas 1972. I checked this assertion also, and it seems to be accurate. The December 27, 1972 edition of The Charlotte Observer has a large feature story by Tavay Able called "Old or New, the Sweater is in Style." Sample quote from the article: "Local retailers say this is the biggest year for sweaters in a long time and report that sales have been extremely heavy since November." 

Sweaters were hot in 1972.

No one would have been happier to hear this news than Ed Wood.

Next: "When Then the Topic is Sex" (1971)