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| "Ed Wood and the Mystery Tower Sitter" mixes fact with fiction. |
NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's Warm Angora Wishes and Rubber Octopus Dreams (Arcane Shadows Press, 2024).
The story: "Ed Wood and the Mystery Tower Sitter" by Gregory William Mank
Synopsis: It is October 1957, and Los Angeles television station KTLA is staging a unique publicity stunt to advertise its Nightmare Theatre program and the premiere broadcast of James Whale's Frankenstein (1931) starring Boris Karloff. Each night, a mysterious masked man hired by the station climbs up the famous KTLA broadcast tower and sits from dusk until midnight, while fans below gather and speculate about his identity. This has been going on for 21 days. Some think that the sitter may be Karloff himself, but this is unlikely, as Karloff is quite aged and too distinguished for such a stunt.
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| Actor Glenn Strange. |
Young director Edward D. Wood, Jr. is among the gawkers at KTLA. One night, he brings a woman with him: a college student named Madeline whom Eddie has paid $35 to dress as Vampira. Madeline is quite snobbish and holds Eddie in utter contempt; she also sees phallic and sexual imagery in nearly everything, especially horror movies. The KTLA security guards shoo the onlookers away after midnight, but Eddie lingers a while to strike up a conversation with the sitter. He has correctly guessed that the masked man is actually actor Glenn Strange. Eddie wants Strange to double for the late Bela Lugosi in a film to be called Graverobbers from Outer Space. Strange is cordial but turns Eddie down, deeming himself unworthy.
Undefeated, Eddie goes to a Hollywood bar where showbiz types—many of them washed-up—habitually gather. There, he spots horror star Lon Chaney, Jr. Eddie boldly approaches Chaney and starts his pitch all over again.
Excerpt:
A rowdy crowd gathered this Saturday night on the grounds of KTLA, consumed with Frankenstein fever. Nature itself seemingly smiled on the revels—a huge moon, three nights from being full, had ascended above the tower, glowing approvingly over this Hollywood Gothic sideshow.
Reflections: At the beginning of Martin Scorsese's The King of Comedy (1982), wannabe comedian Rupert Pupkin (Robert De Niro) waits impatiently outside the Manhattan TV studio where a nightly talk show called The Jerry Langford Show is being taped. He is apparently hoping to catch a glimpse of Langford (Jerry Lewis) himself or one of Langford's celebrity guests. Numerous diehard fans gather at Langford's stage door each night, and they all know Rupert by name. He is obviously a regular at such gatherings. This is our first clue that something is seriously amiss with Rupert. What kind of man waits outside a talk show studio every night, clutching an autograph book? Later, when the delusional Pupkin concocts an audacious scheme to kidnap and replace Langford, we find our suspicions were more than justified.
There is something distinctly Pupkinesque about Ed Wood as he is depicted in "Ed Wood and the Mystery Tower Sitter." Perhaps he has no ill intentions for Glenn Strange or Lon Chaney, Jr., but his actions in this story seem uncomfortably desperate and pushy. He invites himself into other people's lives with little regard for such concepts as privacy or personal space. Eddie's argumentative relationship with Madeline even mirrors the uneasy, quarrelsome relationship between Rupert Pupkin and his accomplice Sasha (Sandra Bernhard) in The King of Comedy. Perhaps, if no classic horror star will agree to be in Graverobbers from Outer Space, Eddie will have to kidnap one.
Incidentally, the author points out that the KTLA "mystery tower sitter" publicity stunt was quite real, though Eddie was not involved and did not meet Lon Chaney, Jr. either. It is still interesting how the author of this story managed to take a colorful but obscure anecdote from showbiz history and weave it into the legend of Ed Wood.