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| Last man standing: Conrad Brooks was one of the last-surviving members of Ed Wood's inner circle. |
NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's Warm Angora Wishes and Rubber Octopus Dreams (Arcane Shadows Press, 2024).
The story: "Ridin' the Sunset Trail with the Plan 9 Kid" by George "E-Gor" Chastain
Synopsis: Artist and film fanatic George "E-Gor" Chastain shares his memories of actor Conrad Brooks (1931-2017), whom he first met at a Famous Monsters of Filmland convention in 1989. By that time, Conrad was a regular on the convention circuit, signing autographs, selling memorabilia, and meeting fans whenever he could. Chastain and Brooks found they had a great deal in common, including a love of classic Westerns, and the two remained friends until Brooks' death in 2017.
Though most famous for appearing in the 1950s films of Ed Wood, including Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957), Conrad Brooks had dozens of screen credits as an actor and became a low-budget director in his own right during the 1990s and 2000s. According to Chastain, Brooks loved to reminisce about the actors he'd worked with, and he had colorful anecdotes about Jack Warden, Timothy Carey, Lawrence Tierney, and Joseph Wiseman. Chastain was happy to create promotional posters and buttons free of charge for Brooks.
In 2004, Brooks moved to a trailer in West Virginia, but he and Chastain stayed in touch through frequent phone calls. In his final years, Brooks became somewhat isolated and had neither cable nor internet access, but Chastain kept him in the loop regarding which celebrities had died and which classic movies were airing on TCM. He frequently mailed DVDs to Conrad's trailer so that the actor would never be without the old movies he loved.
Excerpt:
All my life I've been searching for evidence of a more vibrant, stimulating world than the one I was born into, and I've found it on rare occasions, in the memories of older people (or deceased writers) talking about the long-gone world of their youth. It's strange that I could be so nostalgic for the world THEY lived in—but it's been a great comfort to me to imagine it existed, and still exists, if only in their memories. I'll always be grateful to Conrad Brooks and my many other inner-childhood heroes, mentors and good friends for sharing so much with me for so long.
Reflections: George Chastain's "Ridin' the Sunset Trail with the Plan 9 Kid" is the kind of fond, uncritical reminiscence you'd expect to hear at a testimonial dinner or a memorial service. Indeed, it reads like an extended eulogy for Conrad Brooks. If you were expecting a complicated, warts-and-all portrayal of the late actor-director, you won't find it here. This is strictly a wholesome, affectionate tribute from a fan. It was difficult to synopsize this piece, since it's not really even structured like a story. There's no "plot" here, per se, just a lot of random memories strung together in the order that they occurred to the author.
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| Monster kid George "E-Gor" Chastain |
Conrad Brooks is the nominal subject of this article, but "Ridin' the Sunset Trail" functions as a mini-autobiography of George Chastain as well. We learn about George's childhood as a Navy brat, his early love of movies and other media, and the long-lasting friendships he forged with other movie fanatics. Over the decades, when he wasn't attending to his own aging parents, Chastain attended a lot of conventions and expos, met many of his heroes, co-edited a fanzine, posted to online forums regularly (especially The Classic Horror Film Board), and started a website devoted to TV horror hosts.
While reading "Ridin' the Sunset Trail," I was reminded of Lem Dobbs' unproduced screenplay Edward Ford (1978), based on the life of actor (and Ed Wood associate) David Ward. That script is also about the strange, insular world of cinephiles who obsess over ancient Hollywood trivia and idolize Z-list actors the rest of the world has forgotten. One wonders what would have happened if David Ward and George Chastain ever met and started exchanging fun facts about the old, cheap Westerns and horror movies they loved. Their conversation might never have ended. I mean, here are just some of the many topics that Chastain discusses with great enthusiasm in this article:
- the ultimate fate of Peter Lorre, Jr., an actor who falsely claimed to be Peter Lorre's son
- Tor Johnson's numerous appearances on Western television shows
- the legacy of Florida horror host Charlie "M.T. Graves" Baxter
- the attendees of Bela Lugosi's funeral and whether or not they made tasteless jokes about Bela at the time
- Bela's stunt double(s) in Bride of the Monster (1955)
- Conrad Brooks' appearances in two Bowery Boys movies and a Vincent Price movie
- the plot of Roy Rogers' The Trail of Robin Hood (1950), which brought together numerous cowboy stars
- cowboy actor Ken Maynard's thwarted singing career
Although Warm Angora Wishes and Rubber Octopus Dreams is ostensibly an Ed Wood book, Eddie is merely a supporting player in "Ridin' the Sunset Trail." We get some description of Range Revenge (1948), the primitive, never-finished film that Ed and Conrad made when both were just starting out in Hollywood. Chastain also discusses Wood's working relationship with writer-producer Alex Gordon, through whom he met Bela Lugosi.
Mostly, though, this article discusses Eddie through his connection to the world of B-grade Westerns. Both Eddie and Conrad, for instance, visited cowboy star Ken Maynard during his waning years. In his various films and unsold TV pilots, Eddie employed such Western actors as Bud Osborne, Johnny Carpenter, Kenne Duncan, Lyle Talbot, and Tom Keene. This was Ed's way of staying in touch with the cowboy films he had so loved as a child in Poughkeepsie. You'd really never guess any of this from Tim Burton's Ed Wood (1994), in which we only hear of Eddie's love of horror and sci-fi. Westerns were extremely important to Conrad Brooks, too, and Chastain laments the fact that neither Eddie nor Connie made their living from this genre.
"Ridin' the Sunset Trail" is a strange way to begin Ed Wood's Warm Angora Wishes and Rubber Octopus Dreams, since it's not really representative of the rest of the book. Nevertheless, it was instructive for me to read this article because it's a deep (deep) dive into the world of fan magazines and sci-fi conventions. Those things haven't really been a part of my life at all, but they played an important role in building and nurturing the cult of Ed Wood.
Harry and Michael Medved often get the credit for making a posthumous star out of Wood with The Golden Turkey Awards (1980), but Chastain points out that Eddie and his movies were being publicized in the pages of Famous Monsters many years before the Medveds came along. In a way, then, "Ridin' the Sunset Trail" brings us back to the true origins of Woodology. Call it Roots.