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| Nona Carver in Rudolph Grey's Nightmare of Ecstasy. |
One of the most arresting images in Rudolph Grey's Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1992) is a snapshot of burlesque performer and actress Nona Carver, who played "old whore" Sleazy Maisie Rumpledinck in Ed's obscure adult film Take it Out in Trade (1970). The picture, credited to Grey himself, shows a late-middle-aged Carver in her home, proudly gesturing to a room absolutely packed with random junk: hats, pillows, framed artwork, artificial flowers, old clothes, blankets, and more. Most of this is simply piled on the floor in large heaps, giving the impression that Carver (clad in a tank top and short shorts) is a delusional hoarder.
Nona Carver is one of the many intriguing side characters in Nightmare, and the book gives us a few more scraps of information about her. Makeup man Harry Thomas tells us, for example, that Nona performed at the Gayety Theatre on Main Street in Los Angeles. He also offers this memorable description of her: "Big bazooms but very thin little legs. Chewing gum all the time."
Ed's wife Kathy states that Nona was the girlfriend of actor Kenne Duncan, the cantankerous B-Western baddie who became Ed Wood's close friend and a member of Eddie's repertory company. Nona herself says that she "met Ed Wood quite a few times at Kenne's house." It's worth noting that Nona starred in the softcore feature Revenge of the Virgins (1959), which Kenne narrated. The screenplay for that film has frequently been attributed to Ed Wood. My colleague Greg Dziawer disputes this and says that the film's credited screenwriter, Pete La Roche, was a very real person and separate from Ed Wood.
The longest quote attributed to Nona Carver in Nightmare of Ecstasy is this anecdote about her visits to Ed and Kathy Wood's downtrodden apartment on Yucca and Cahuenga in Los Angeles.
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| Nona Carver talks of "strangers on the mooch to drink" at Ed Wood's apartment. |
I recently learned a little more about Nona Carver when the unstoppable Rob Huffman sent me some vintage news clippings about her. This article from the November 29, 1956 edition of The Los Angeles Mirror suggests that Nona almost played an even more prominent role in the Ed Wood saga. Entertainment columnist Dick Williams says that Nona would play "a Martian from space" in Plan 9 from Outer Space, then still known as Grave Robbers from Outer Space (or Grave Robbers of Outer Space). Nona's role ultimately went to Joanna Lee, who came to resent her association with the film.
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| Nona Carver could have played Tanna in Plan 9. |
The next Nona story that Rob sent me is even stranger, if you can believe it. It comes to us from The Modesto Bee, January 8, 1961 and tells us about the time Nona Carver was busted after attending a "marijuana party" at the beachfront Malibu home of former child star Jackie Coogan. This was well after Coogan's days of acting alongside Charlie Chaplin in The Kid (1921) but a few years before he played the role for which he is most famous today: Uncle Fester on The Addams Family (1964-66).
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| Nona and Fester? Who'd have guessed? |
The article yields some interesting information about Nona Carver, including the fact that she was 40 years old at the time of this incident and retired from exotic dancing. She gives her profession as "film extra." Other than Virgins and Trade, however, the only film role I can find for her is in 1962's Terrified, a suspense thriller that looks like a a cheapjack imitation of Psycho (1960).
The next article that Rob sent me comes from Ed Wood's hometown paper, The Poughkeepsie Journal, May 2, 1967. It concerns Eddie, his brother Bill, and their father.
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| Ed's brother Bill (pictured at left) visited his ailing father in 1967. |
It seems that both Ed Wood and his younger brother Bill returned briefly to New York State in 1967 to visit their ailing father, Edward D. Wood, Sr., who was in an Albany hospital. Sadly, the Wood family patriarch died just four days after this article was printed. He was 72 years old. I can't help but imagine what Ed's last visit with his father was like. I keep picturing that extremely subdued scene from Alice's Restaurant (1969) in which Arlo Guthrie (playing himself) visits a dying, still-smoking Woody Guthrie (Joseph Boley) in the hospital. Arlo is respectful but taciturn, as he really has nothing to say to his father at this moment. In the hallway outside Woody's room, Arlo talks to his mother Marjorie (Sylvia Davis).
ARLO: He's gotten a lot worse since I saw him.MARJORIE: Well, let's say no better.(Arlo glances around awkwardly, unsure of what to do in this situation, then leans in and kisses his mother. He turns around and walks away without another word, passing a nurse pushing an old man in a wheelchair as he leaves.)
Or who knows? Maybe it was nothing like that. Maybe Ed Wood, Jr. and Sr. had a deeply satisfying, far-ranging conversation and got to resolve whatever issues they had between them, allowing the elder Wood to slip into death with a clear conscience.
I have one last item for you today. Rob Huffman hipped me to this remarkable 2001 blog post by renowned science-fiction editor Earl Kemp (1929-2020). In the 1960s, Kemp worked at a publishing company called Greenleaf Classics, which released a few of Ed's books, including the novelization of Orgy of the Dead (1966). Because of this, Earl got to meet and interact with both Ed Wood and Criswell. He says the two were constant companions and could even finish each other's sentences.
I don't want to spoil any of the article, so I'd advise you to go read it for yourself. Suffice it to say, it's a wonderfully descriptive and evocative passage, detailing what it was like to spend time with these two extraordinary human beings. As a bonus, Kemp also includes the entire Greenleaf style manual, which is surprisingly nitpicky and even stodgy at times. Having read much of Ed Wood's prose, I doubt our man followed guides like these very closely. Or at all.