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| Just in time for Valentine's Day, Ed Wood gives us an article about kissing. |
NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex (BearManor Media, 2021).
The article: "Let's Swap Spits." Originally published in Gold Diggers (Pendulum Publishing), vol. 4, no. 2, May/June 1972. Credited to "Dick Trent."
Excerpt: "We wonder where the motion picture industry would be if it had not been for that fortuitous happenstance of history. It is most certain that watching the beautiful Lana Turner shaking hands with some leading man wouldn't have the effect which happens when she parts those luscious lips and the male star lays his on hers."
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| Ed Wood kisses Dolores Fuller. |
Reflections: How much research did Ed Wood do for his nonfiction books and articles? It varies wildly from project to project. A few months ago, when I was mainlining as many of Wood's paperbacks as possible in a short amount of time, I noticed that he could go pages and pages without citing a single source. He was completely comfortable making up "facts" for his books, pulling entire chapters out of his ass, often with the confident pomposity of a college professor. I am reminded of the great scene early in Cormac McCarthy's Western novel Blood Meridian (1985) when the villainous Judge Holden interrupts a tent revival and makes some damning claims about the reverend who is conducting it:
Ladies and gentlemen I feel it my duty to inform you that the man holding this revival is an imposter. He holds no papers of divinity from any institution recognized or improvised. He is altogether devoid of the least qualification to the office he has usurped and has only committed to memory a few passages from the good book for the purpose of lending to his fraudulent sermons some faint flavor of the piety he despises.
Ironically, the reverend in the novel is actually innocent of all the charges Holden levels against him. But the above speech fits Ed Wood pretty well. Some of the time, that is. Eddie was a world-class bullshitter when he needed to be.
As I've made my way through When the Topic is Sex, however, I've found a great many instances of Ed Wood citing actual books and articles, ranging from tomes by licensed physicians to articles printed in bottom-of-the-barrel tabloids. I get the impression that Eddie kept up with all forms of sexually-oriented literature, way more than the average person would. Writing about sex was his job, after all, and he took it seriously. Sometimes.
In the case of Ed's 1972 article "Let's Swap Spits," my guess is that he was entirely guided by research when he chose to write it. Basically, the main reason this piece exists is to pass on information from another article: "The History of the Kiss" by Charles Golden. I was not able to track down this particular source, but, based on my previous experience with When the Topic is Sex, I am certain that both Golden and his article are quite real. It seems like Eddie read this piece somewhere, possibly in a tabloid (that would explain it not being indexed anywhere), and decided to appropriate huge chunks of it, adding his own commentary along the way.
Anyone who's read Ed Wood's novels and short stories will know there's a lot of passionate kissing in them. Ed often describes the "lashing" and "slashing" of lovers' tongues with great gusto. It was only a matter of time before he devoted an entire article to the topic of osculation. Drawing heavily from "Mr. Golden," Eddie gives us a capsule history of kissing, including how the practice was once suppressed by the church, and waxes philosophical about the significance that kissing plays in our lives and in our art. Given Eddie's morbid imagination, I knew there would be a passage about the possibility of spreading germs through mouth-to-mouth contact. He largely shrugs off the danger of the act, but he does manage to work in one of his trademark references to death:
And it must also be pointed out, facts being facts, that many have heard that harmful germs pass from one person to the other while in the act of kissing each other. This would seem, if true, to prove that every person who has ever kissed should be calling the undertaker in advance of the act.
Only Ed Wood could write an article about kissing and somehow manage to include the word "undertaker." (He even repeats this word later in the article.)
As I indicated previously, Charles Golden's "The History of the Kiss" was Eddie's main source for "Let's Swap Spits," but he also quotes a psychiatrist named David H. Fink, who says that kissing is an "accurate barometer" of a male-female relationship. (Just as Betty Everett tried to warn us: "If you want to know if he loves you so, it's in his kiss.") Although Ed doesn't specifically name any of Dr. Fink's books or articles, it's possible he's referring to David Harold Fink (1894-1968), author of Release from Nervous Tension (1943) and For People Under Pressure (1956). Or maybe Golden quoted Fink and now Eddie is quoting Golden quoting Fink. Gosh, this gets confusing sometimes.
Next: "That Lingering Social Disease" (1972)