Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 277: "Edward D. Wood Jr.: Hollywood Underground" (1987)

Five years before his book came out, Rudolph Grey gave us a preview of Nightmare of Ecstasy.

Author Rudolph Grey.

When musician-turned-author Rudolph Grey published Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr. in 1992, it was a true breakthrough in the field of Woodology, one that has arguably never been matched. There had been numerous articles published about Wood and his movies by then, as well as the feature-length documentary On the Trail of Ed Wood (1990), but there was nothing with the scope and ambition of Grey's book. Nightmare contained not only the most complete filmography and bibliography for Ed Wood ever assembled to that time, but also interviews with numerous Wood associates and a whole host of rarely-seen photographs and other documents. Over 30 years after its publication, Nightmare remains the gold standard in its field.

A book like Nightmare of Ecstasy doesn't just happen overnight. In fact, the book was more than a decade in the making. When I attended a public appearance by Grey in 2014, he went into some detail about his working process. His research for Nightmare started in roughly the early 1980s. Eddie had just died, unfortunately, but plenty of his cohorts were still around. (Nearly all of them have since died.) And other authors shared their research with Grey, including interviews they'd conducted with Eddie toward the end of his life. It must have been a massive task, taking all this material and shaping it into a coherent book.

In 1987, Grey was still five years away from publishing Nightmare of Ecstasy, but he had accumulated enough material to write an article for Filmfax #6 called "Edward D. Wood Jr.: Hollywood Underground." And if you've already guessed that this article is the focus of today's column, you're right! Treat yourself to something nice! I thought it might be interesting to compare this article to the book and see where they overlap and where they diverge.

Interestingly, the divergences start right away. "Hollywood Underground" begins with a lengthy excerpt from Ed Wood's 1966 novelization of Orgy of the Dead. (The selected passage begins: "Bob looked to the sun, then surveyed the sky.") This specific quote does not appear in Nightmare of Ecstasy. For the book, Grey chose an entirely different passage from Wood's novel. After this, Kathy Wood weighs in with some thoughts about Eddie's early days in Poughkeepsie, complete with the (dubious) claim that Eddie's singing group, Ed Wood's Little Splinters, appeared on the Major Bowes Amateur Hour radio show. Kathy's quote does appear in the book, word for word, on page 16.

But this is followed by an anecdote from Conrad Brooks' brother, Henry Bederski, that does not appear anywhere in Nightmare of Ecstasy. He talks of visiting Ed Wood's office on Sunset Blvd., only to find it abandoned. The property owner apparently gave Henry the opportunity to claim a workprint of Eddie's first film, The Streets of Laredo aka Crossroads of Laredo, but he didn't do it and now regrets that decision. Fortunately, Laredo survived anyway and was even (after a fashion) completed and released in the '90s. Conrad himself weighs in with a story about meeting Ed Wood in a coffee shop. Connie's anecdote made it into Nightmare, albeit trimmed slightly.

If you have your copy of Nightmare of Ecstasy handy, turn to page 22. You'll see there is a newspaper clipping about sisters Suzi and Jeanne Stevens appearing in Ed's play, The Casual Company. Well, the article in Filmfax includes the text from that clipping (minus the picture) and tells us the story appeared in something called The Graph on October 28, 1948. This is followed by a lengthy anecdote from George Weiss about producing Glen or Glenda (1953). It's similar to a quote from Weiss that appears on pgs. 42-43, but the version in Filmfax adds some passages while removing others. Perhaps the only fair way to demonstrate this is to show you the two passages side-by side. The portion in the red box appears more or less intact in both versions.

(left) A quote from George Weiss in Nightmare; (right) a quote from Weiss in Filmfax.

The Filmfax article continues with another quote from Henry Bederski that didn't make it to Nightmare of Ecstasy. Henry talks about how Ed was boasting about himself to his neighbors and living like a quasi-celebrity without making many movies. "He must be pulling that confidence man stuff," Henry figured. After this, Anthony Cardoza tells a story about Eddie saving him from drowning in a swimming pool. This same quote appears on page 121 of Nightmare.

Maila "Vampira" Nurmi is up next with her experiences of working on Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957). Her quote in this article is basically the same as the one that appears on page 77 of Nightmare, but it adds a few more sentences about Nurmi riding the bus in full costume and getting unwanted attention from other passengers. "They didn't have the hippies yet," she says. "They had beatniks." This portion of the article also includes a news clipping that didn't make it into Nightmare. The clipping is totally unidentified, but I've tracked it down to the August 2, 1954 edition of The Los Angeles Times. It is presented below:

A press clipping about Dolores Fuller from 1954.

The article continues with an anecdote from actress Mona McKinnon that does not appear in Nightmare of Ecstasy, which is a shame because it's good stuff. She talks about what it was like to work with wrestler Tor Johnson on Plan 9. According to Ms. McKinnon, the hulking Swede took a liking to her and decided to pick her up and carry her away from one of Ed's parties. "It took five guys to get him to let me down," she recalls. "He was really strange when he was drunk." There are other colorful anecdotes about Tor in the book but not that one.

This is followed by yet more material exclusive to Filmfax:

• Wood's friend, artist-writer Don Fellman then chimes in with a quote about how Ed Wood used to "blow the titles of his own films," referring to Plan 9 by its working title, Grave Robbers from Outer Space until he was corrected by his wife Kathy. It seems Eddie never got used to that switcheroo.

• Kathy herself then talks about "some of the good days" she and Eddie shared. At one point in their marriage, they were able to afford a two-story home in the San Fernando Valley. Ed converted the downstairs into a makeshift screening room and would invite his friends over and show them old Westerns and sci-fi serials. This sometimes attracted unwanted attention from "jealous" neighbors.

• Larry Keefe, who managed the Lanai Apartments when Ed lived there in the 1950s, has another anecdote about Tor Johnson's alcohol-fueled shenanigans. Of particular note are Keefe's synonyms for inebriated: "drunker than a lord" and "half swackoed." Keefe didn't make it into the final edit of Nightmare of Ecstasy at all.

After that, we get some quotes that did make it into Nightmare of Ecstasy. Don Fellman talks about Tor Johnson's traffic accident. This appears on page 113 of the book. Makeup man Harry Thomas talks about Eddie's penchant for calling old friends late at night to talk about whatever was on his mind. This story appears in slightly different form on page 156, but the Filmfax version is longer and more detailed. Henry Bederski then talks about Eddie's often-desperate fundraising methods. This quote appears intact on page 54. Mona McKinnon talks about Ed's reaction to Arthur Lennig's book The Immortal Count: The Life and Films of Bela Lugosi (1974). This also appears on page 127 of Nightmare, but the Filmfax version is a little more fleshed-out.

Then, it's right back into the material that's exclusive to this article:

• Harry Thomas talks about how it was a lack of funds that really killed Ed Wood. "He was always fighting the money belt," Harry says.

• Conrad Brooks says that Eddie's charm and likeability would have served him well as a car salesman or a real estate agent.

After that, Henry Bederski talks about how Ed Wood liked to use the word "idiots" to describe his adversaries. That story appears on page 117 of Nightmare. Anthony Cardoza talks about Eddie being a "pioneer" who "did it all." This is included on page 55 of the book. 

This portion of the Filmfax article ends with two rather poignant stories about Ed Wood's final days, neither one of which is included in Nightmare of Ecstasy. They're brief, so I'll include them both below:

Stories of Ed Wood's final days that did not end up in Nightmare of Ecstasy.

Following this, we get an Ed Wood filmography compiled by prolific Los Angeles author Jan Alan Henderson. Though wildly outdated today, the filmography shows what people knew about Eddie's career in 1987, well before the dawn of the internet. Henderson's chronology only covers the years between 1953, when Ed made Glen or Glenda, and 1965, when he wrote Orgy of the Dead for director Stephen C. Apostolof. Night of the Ghouls (1959) is shunted to the end of the list because it was only released on videotape in 1981. (I've seen the date listed as 1983, but that's another matter.)

Jan Alan Henderson.

Henderson includes the following films: Glen or Glenda (1953), The Lawless Rider (1954), Jail Bait (1954), Bride of the Monster (1955), The Violent Years (1956), Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957), The Bride and the Beast (1958), Night of the Ghouls (1959), The Sinister Urge (1960), and Orgy of the Dead (1965). The writer calls Orgy Ed's "last 'legit' screen credit." So obviously the pornographic features Eddie made in the 1970s are out, as are the softcore films he made with Joe Robertson and all of his post-Orgy films with Steve Apostolof. Also missing: any short films or made-for-TV projects, any of the 8mm loops, and various films he scripted for other directors.

But this isn't just a dry listing of titles, dates, and actors' names. Instead, Jan Henderson weighs in with his thoughts on each of these movies. Glen or Glenda, he says, is both "the greatest schlock movie ever made" and "a plea for understanding." The Outlaw Rider, which he has conflated with Son of the Renegade (1953) is "a standard B-Western." He compares Jail Bait to E.C. Comics stories and allows the film "has some good moments." 

When the subject turns to Bride of the Monster, Henderson says the film features recognizable props from the 1935 Gene Autry serial The Phantom Empire. He also says that Bela Lugosi turns his victims "into Tor Johnson," which does not actually happen in the film. He calls The Violent Years "a classic bad girl movie" with "all the proper Woodsian touches." As for Plan 9, it is "more fun to watch than many others made with more money." Henderson predicts a remake, which actually did happen in 2015. He then says The Bride and the Beast is "probably the biggest budget film Ed ever worked on." (That's something to look into.)

Henderson describes The Sinister Urge as "Ed Wood's ironic opus on pornography" and points out the posters for other Wood movies that appear in the background. The article considers this movie Eddie's last directorial effort, which was the general understanding in the 1980s. Orgy of the Dead is hailed as "a nudie movie with a twist" and "a classic." And Night of the Ghouls is described as a sequel to Bride of the Monster that went unreleased due to unpaid lab fees. Henderson is under the impression that Vampira is in the movie; he may be thinking of Jeanne Stevens' Black Ghost character.

The Ed Wood coverage in Filmfax #6 finally ends with "Biographical Notes" in which Rudolph Grey briefly describes the lives and careers of the people he interviewed. For the most part, this is the same as the "Biographical Notes" section (pages 163-169) in Nightmare of Ecstasy, but certain biographies (Conrad Brooks, David Ward) are more robust in the Filmfax version. Also, Larry Keefe is entirely missing from Nightmare but is listed here.

I'm glad I decided to delve into this vintage issue of Filmfax and its extensive Ed Wood coverage, even if it took me three articles to do it. Much of this material was quite familiar to me, but there was much more I hadn't seen before. It also made me realize that, over the years, there have been many such articles about Ed and his movies published in various and sundry film magazines. Do you think it would be possible to assemble much of this material into one big book? The Ed Wood Reader or something?