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| Perhaps our young college students have some thoughts on sexuality they'd like to share. |
NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex (BearManor Media, 2021).
The article: "College Interview." Originally published in Cherry (Gallery Press), vol. 3, no. 2, January/February 1974. Credited to "Ann Gora."
Excerpt: "With the girls today going to college as I am I suspect there are very few that would ever consider going to an all girl's school . . . unless they were dyed-in-the-wool lesbians . . . but even then few of the lesbians, at this point in their life will completely admit that they are lesbians, and besides there is no problem in their finding lesbian affairs in a co-ed school . . . the same with the male homosexual element."
Reflections: The counterculture of the 1960s and '70s was supposedly about effecting political and social change—stopping the war in Vietnam, combatting racism and sexism, and just generally challenging the long-held beliefs of previous generations on a number of topics. In short, it was a very idealistic movement. At least, in theory it was. In reality, the counterculture was often hedonistic and irresponsible in ways that undercut the message. Simply put, hippies took a lot of drugs and had a lot of sex... not for political reasons, but because it was fun.
Men of Ed Wood's generation looked at this new generation with a combination of contempt, confusion, and undeniable jealousy. I don't think Ed had much affinity for the antiwar movement, and he probably didn't care much about challenging raical prejudice or gender norms either, but he couldn't resist drooling a little when he thought about those college kids screwing like rabbits on every campus across America.
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| A poster advertising The Drunkard. |
And so we get articles like "College Interview," in which Eddie (or "Ann Gora") pretends to interview a liberated young woman, Dolores S.—named, I suspect, in honor of Dolores Fuller—about her active and varied sex life. By an amazing coincidence, Dolores thinks and talks just like Edward Davis Wood, Jr. She even uses one of Eddie's pet expressions: "the rubber room at the happy farm." I don't know if I've ever mentioned that phrase before, but it's one that turns up a lot in Ed Wood's books and articles.
Before we meet this college student, however, there's a brief preamble about the state of the world. Just as in Glen or Glenda (1953), Ed Wood uses the airplane and automobile as examples of how much life has changed in the 20th century. But this time, there's a twist! In 1974, the United States was suffering through an energy crisis. Gasoline was scarce. The car might be on its way out, Ed says, replaced by the horse and buggy. Somehow, Eddie frets that this could also mean a return to the stifling values and morals of the early 1900s.
Dolores S. doesn't think so. To paraphrase a hit song from the 1970s, she knows too much to go back and pretend. Specifically, she knows about birth control and contraceptives. After that, what's there to fear? Again, this is the 1970s; AIDS hadn't happened. Like so many other Ed Wood characters, Dolores expresses contempt for those old bugaboos, puritanism and the missionary position. She'd rather change things up occasionally, as she discusses in this passage:
Sure I've experienced just about every form of sex there is. I don't have to discuss here which is my preference but I've tried them all and I've rejected some and maybe in the future I'll reject more. But those are things which must happen in trial and error. Just because I don't want one form the first time out I won't condemn it for myself I'll try it again and possibly more times until I'm sure. But just because I reject it it doesn't mean that I should condemn anyone else who possibly might like the action.
It's that freedom to choose one's path that so captivates Eddie. I think, when he was growing up in Poughkeepsie in the 1920s and '30s, people really didn't have a lot of choice when it came to sex. You pursued a "normal" heterosexual relationship, got married, had children, and didn't think much about it. As someone with a strong desire to cross-dress and an insatiable fur fetish, Ed probably had to keep a lot of his thoughts to himself until he got to Los Angeles and started hanging around with more free-thinking people in the entertainment industry. No wonder that, in this and other articles, he marvels at how we discuss sex so openly these days.
I mentioned earlier that Dolores S. talks suspiciously like Ed Wood. She has the same set of cultural references, too. In this interview, she talks about how the old days of sexual repression probably led a lot of men to alcoholism. "There were never more drunks in the history of the world than there was in that period," she insists. As proof, she refers to the existence of "songs about the drunken father" and "plays like The Drunkard and The Blackguard." The latter title should be familiar to all Ed Wood fans, as Eddie's participation in this obscure 1940s play by Alice C. and Leonard C. Newman was a key milestone in his early acting career. Were it not for Ed, this particular work may have been forgotten entirely.
William H. Smith's temperance play The Drunkard, on the other hand, had much more cultural impact. Debuting in 1844, this "moral domestic drama in five acts" focused on the evils of alcohol and the ruinous effect it has on a family. A favorite of prudes, puritans, and teetotalers everywhere, it ran for decades and was being produced well into the 1960s. Ed Wood certainly would have been familiar with this play, although he manifestly ignored its message. I only learned about The Drunkard when I reviewed a merciless parody of it called The Villain Still Pursued Her (1940). Even though this drama was one of the most popular stage shows in American history, my exposure to it was by pure happenstance.
P.S. "College Interview" is one of the articles in When the Topic is Sex that I had reviewed previously. Here is my original assessment from 2019. At the time, I called it "minor but interesting."
Next: "Greenwich Village Lure (by Someone Who's Been There)" (1971)