Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex: "Problems and the Sex Change" (1972)

This is like a cubist version of the Glen or Glenda poster artwork.

NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex (BearManor Media, 2021).

The article: "Problems and the Sex Change." Originally published in Ecstasy (Pendulum Publishing), vol. 4, no. 1, February/March 1972.

Excerpt: "The male nose has always been more prominent than most females. Therefore the transsexual who wishes to have the complete features of the female will also find that plastic surgery to the proboscis is all important. The ears follow a close second. The male has always had larger and stronger looking ears. We find that in nearly all of the transsexuals, no matter how effeminate he might be the ears are a stand out along with the Adams apple."

Reflections: In Tim Burton's Ed Wood (1994), there's a scene in which producer George Weiss (Mike Starr) complains to Eddie (Johnny Depp) that the much-touted sex change operation in Glen or Glenda only occurs "five pages before it ends." He adds, huffily: "The rest is about some schmuck who likes angora sweaters!" Ed's weak rejoinder: "I don't think he's a schmuck!"

I've never actually seen the Glen or Glenda screenplay, so I can't do an exact page count. By my calculations, however, the sequence involving Alan/Ann ("Tommy" Haynes), the male-to-female transsexual, occurs about 80% of the way through the movie. This is significant, since Glen or Glenda's entire reason for existing was to cash in on the Christine Jorgensen sex change story. Audiences had to wait for nearly an hour to get to this part of the film.

When this sequence finally arrives, it focuses with grim intensity on the ordeal that Alan went through to become Ann. Dr. Alton (Timothy Farrell) tells us about the emotional agony Alan suffered as a child, shunned by both his classmates and his own father (Captain DeZita). Once Alan was drafted, he had to hide his cross-dressing from his fellow soldiers. Eventually, he learned about sex change operations and decided to have one himself. But this is no easy way out, as Dr. Alton explains:

During the following two years, he was to go through the tortures of the damned, but never was there a whimper from him because he knew that at the end of it all, he would at last be that which he had always dreamed. Hundreds of hormone shots were injected into various parts of his body. Alan's face was worked on with plastic surgery to smooth out the female elements... long, tedious hours of work. The big day... or the starting of many big days, for it was to take many. The series of operations are performed, slowly and at intervals, to prevent any unnecessary shock to the nervous system. Still, the hormone shots continue... day after day, week after week, month after month, and even then, when the operation is over, the sex is changed, the shots must continue as long as Alan lives.

And that's just the medical part of it! Ann had to learn how to do her own makeup and hair. She also had to learn "the duty of a woman in her sex life." It sounds grueling, but Dr. Alton insists that Ann "loved every minute of it." Okay, doc, if you say so.

Reading material for Ed Wood.

Ed Wood's 1972 article "Problems and the Sex Change" is very much in this same vein. Twenty years had elapsed since George William Jorgensen, Jr. became Christine Jorgensen, but male-to-female transsexuals still faced a series of medical, emotional, societal, and even legal hurdles. Eddie wants us to know—really wants us to know—that it's not all "peaches and cream" for the Christines of the world. 

In this story, Ed revisits many of the same tribulations he'd mentioned in Glen or Glenda, including those hormone injections and the need for plastic surgery, but he adds a few more. Silicone, for instance, may cause cancer. Surgically-constructed vaginas may grow together "which would mean another very painful operation." Then, there is the legal hassle of being recognized by the government as a female. Even once you get past all those hurdles, there is the possibility that orgasms will either be nonexistent or extremely uncomfortable. Ed further alleges that transsexuals are not supportive of one another. "So many are jealous of their sisters under the knife ever becoming their equal," he writes. Doesn't exactly make you want to run to your surgeon, does it?

Throughout "Problems and the Sex Change," Eddie repeatedly cites the 1966 book Sex-Driven People by R.E.L. Masters. I was not familiar with this book or its author, so I knew I had to find out more. As it turns out, Robert E.L. Masters (1927-2008) was a prolific sexologist of the 1960s and 1970s whose books include The Homosexual Revolution (1962), Patterns of Incest (1963), Sexual Self-Stimulation (1967), and Eros and Evil: The Sexual Psychopathology of Witchcraft (1974). He is not to be confused with gynecologist William H. Masters (1915-2001), though both Masters were influences on Ed Wood.

Here's another obituary for Robert Masters. It doesn't mention Sex-Driven People specifically, but it does say he "published eight books in the field of sexology and natural history which became classics in their field." It also mentions his friendship with Elvis Presley and the fact that one of his books inspired a John Lennon song. (And this story checks out!)

Ed Wood concludes this article on what I guess could be called a note of hope:

So many who have had the operation have looked to the hopeful in the angora sweater and skirt and said, "What makes you really think you want to be a girl? You've got to be sure you know. I mean. Not everyone that I've met really want to go through with the operation like I did. After all. The psychiatrists told me for sure that I was the right type. That's the key word you know girl, you've got to be the right type." Then she might flip her own skirt and sip her martini. She'd made the scene.

I'm not exactly sure what any of that means, but I'd like to congratulate Eddie on managing to work two of his loves, angora sweaters and martinis, into this article at the last possible opportunity. A buzzer-beater, so to speak.
 

Next: "Indecent Exposure" (1971)

Ed Wood Wednesdays: The Glen or Glenda Odyssey, Part 8 by Greg Dziawer

"Not half man-half woman, but nevertheless, man and woman in the same body."

It must have been shocking to the so-called "normal" people of the Truman-Eisenhower era when the headlines announced that, in mere months, a man named George Jorgensen was about to become a woman named Christine Jorgensen. While far from the first to undergo sex reassignment surgery, Christine was the first to dominate the headlines. Her successful reassignment was confirmed in the papers in early December 1952. By February of 1953, Christine made her heralded return to the states. 

In the interim, a fledgling filmmaker named Edward D Wood Jr had shot his first feature, Glen or Glenda, partially inspired by the Jorgensen case. Although the project was intended as quickie exploitation, Ed would imbue it with his own personal travails regarding sexual identity. While the film would wind up as a cult favorite, Christine became a pop culture icon and fixture of newspaper and magazine articles. To some extent, she remains a household name three decades after her death. 

I've shared details of Christine's fame previously, including some of those aforementioned articles. This week, I invite you to have a look at another article, deriving from that cataclysmic moment in 1953 when Christine Jorgensen took the world by storm. Sir! claimed to be a "magazine for males." It devoted the cover of its May 1953 issue (vol. 1, no. 8) to Christine. Like other magazines of the era aimed squarely at the average joe, Sir! featured a stew of the weird and the exotic, including plenty of sex and violence. One article warns that water is actually bad for you, while another details the sex lives of eunuchs. There's a pinup photo feature about the all-but-forgotten Linda Lombard, plus a clutch of pulp fiction short stories. An article called "The Effeminate Killers" even asks this daunting question: "Are bullfighters homosexual?" It's a dizzying array of overheated content.

Amid all this is "The Real Truth About Christine," credited to Dr. Albert A. Brandt. Here is the article in its entirety. You may have to click on these images to see them at a larger size. 

Pages 6 and 7.

Pages 8 and 9.

Pages 64 and 66.

You can check out the entire May 1953 issue of Sir! here.

Ed Wood Wednesdays: The Glen or Glenda Odyssey, Part Four by Greg Dziawer

The Christine Jorgensen case brought Ed Wood some publicity in 1953.

Christine Jorgensen in 1953.

Back in 2016, I shared with you an interesting wire service story about Ed Wood's debut feature Glen or Glenda. Written by prolific UPI staffer Aline Mosby, this piece explained how Wood's film—which it referred to as I Changed My Sex—shrewdly capitalized on the sensational saga of trans woman Christine Jorgensen. The article was syndicated to papers across (most of) the country on February 19-20, 1953, just a few days after Jorgensen's attention-grabbing return to the United States.

Arriving by jet from Copenhagen, Jorgensen had touched down at Idlewild Airport (now JFK) in Queens on February 13. Mere months prior, on December 1, 1952, the Daily News had run this blaring headline: EX-GI BECOMES BLONDE BEAUTY. And, with that, Christine Jorgensen became the most famous person in the world to have ever undergone sexual reassignment surgery. The native New Yorker's transformation, in fact, would take another year to be complete. For his inaugural directing gig, Edward D. Wood, Jr. utilized the real life Jorgensen drama as a jumping-off point for his highly unique and extremely personal one-of-a-kind masterpiece, Glen or Glenda.

While I was certain at the time that Mosby's article was the earliest public ink ever devoted to Wood's film, I recently found another that had been published only two days earlier. This one had been penned by Los Angeles Times drama critic Edwin Schallert, father of the incredibly prolific and beloved character actor William Schallert. In Edwin's column on February 17, 1953, we read:

ODD SCIENCE FANTASY ON FOOT

LUGOSI TO APPEAR AS WEIRD SCIENTIST

That veteran portrayer of mysterious scoundrels and what-not, Bela Lugosi, will soon be visible on the screen again in a weird science fiction subject titled "Transvestite," which concerns the transformation of men into women in their apparel and other outward manifestations but which does not deal with any sex issue. It's sponsor, Edward D. Wood Jr., declares it has no relation to a case much spotlighted in the news. Lugosi will be the mastermind in the science phase of the picture, which is said to incorporate much symbolism. Others in the cast are Dolores Fuller, whose fiance falls under the Lugosi influence, while Lyle Talbot will be seen as a police inspector and Tim Farrell as a psychiatrist. Roles of the victims are minor. The film is being finished at the Jack Miles studio.

Was Lugosi filmed at Jack Miles Studio?

For such a relatively short blurb, there's a lot to mull over here. 

Edwin Schallert, for instance, refers to Wood's film as Transvestite rather than I Changed My Sex. Although he got to press first, Schallert presumably wrote his column sometime after Aline Mosby had written hers—certainly not by much, likely a few days. The evidence of this is that Schallert states that the film was "being finished at the Jack Miles studio." Mosby, on the other hand, had trailed the production to W. Merle Connell's Quality Studios in Hollywood, where we know the bulk of the interiors for Glen or Glenda were shot. 

Some sources claim that Bela Lugosi's sequences were filmed separately at Jack Miles' Los Angeles studio. If so, it's fair to assume that these scenes were shot last. In her 2009 autobiography A Fuller Life, Dolores Fuller notes that Glen or Glenda was "shot in only five days with no budget." Under those circumstances, it's not difficult to imagine that Wood and company simply moved from Quality Studios to the Jack Miles studio because the latter location possessed the right set for Lugosi's scenes.

It's also interesting to note that, as in the Mosby article, the science-fiction aspect of the production is foregrounded in the Schallert column, and there's a deliberate statement to distance the film from Christine Jorgensen. In Schallert's article, the subject is so obvious that she is not even mentioned by name. My favorite statement, though—and we are doubtless reading Ed's thoughts and/or words throughout both of these articles—is that the film "does not deal with a sex issue." 

For its part, the IMDb notes the film's shooting locations as both the Quality and Jack Miles Studios, along with the Columbia/Sunset Gower Studios in Hollywood. Incidentally, Jack's studio is also credited in the Wood-scripted The Violent Years from 1956, and Miles himself is credited for "settings" or as art director or production designer, depending on the source, for Glen or Glenda. 

Christine at the Silver Slipper

Jorgensen was frequently in the news throughout December 1952, right through the winter of 1953. On the same day as the Schallert article, she appeared in a syndicated photo feature, which noted that she had "changed her sex." And on February 25, 1953, Oakland Tribune staffer Wood Soanes lifted from the Mosby article, adding fresh details, including producer George Weiss being one of Poverty Row's most successful producers and agent Al Rosen offering Christine Jorgensen the lead in the film. A charming piece, it appears to have resulted from talking to Weiss, himself, sans Eddie. 

I've always wondered if the tale of Jorgensen being offered the lead in Glen or Glenda were apocryphal. This article suggests it wasn't. Connecting the dots, we'll surmise that Weiss himself offered the property to Rosen, who had initiated a seemingly failed attempt to represent Jorgensen in the States within less than two weeks of the BLONDE BEAUTY headline that had started it all. Why do I think this? A syndicated article on December 11, 1952 notes that: 

[Jorgensen] confirmed she had received an offer to star in a new Hollywood version of the comedy "Mary Had A Little," planned by producer Al Rosen. Although Christine denied she already had signed to appear in the picture and make personal stage appearances with it, her Danish manager, Blicher Hansen, indicated the one-time soldier had signed other American contracts. 

Mary Had a Little..., if the same film, was finally made—without Jorgensen—in the UK in 1961. As for Christine herself, she continued on in the entertainment industry but never became the star she had hoped. 

Likewise Ed Wood. A year or so after shooting Glen or Glenda, Ed landed Bela Lugosi a live burlesque gig at the Silver Slipper in Las Vegas. Ironically, this precluded Lugosi from appearing in Wood's next feature, The Hidden Face (better known as Jail Bait). According to Dolores Fuller, Eddie immediately began filming that crime drama as soon as the funding came through. The role intended for Lugosi was instead essayed by the mind-bogglingly prolific Herbert Rawlinson, a former leading man from the silent era, in what would prove to be his final role.

Despite Eddie's claim of Glen or Glenda having no relation to the Christine Jorgensen story, Wood and Jorgensen have been entangled ever since, their careers intersecting in various ways. In December of 1955, for instance, Jorgensen appeared in her own live show at—you guessed it—the Silver Slipper. And in the 1960s, she would be a subject of writer Carlson Wade, whose work is commonly mis-Ed-tributed to our Eddie. Continuing to conflate the transgendered with transvestites, Jorgensen even appeared in drag stage shows with legendary cross-dresser T.C. Jones, who had been "cast" by Ed in his screenplay for the never-filmed 7 Rue Pigalle.

Alas, these are subjects for other odysseys on other days.

Left: T.C. Jones. Right: A poster for Mary Had a Little... (1961).

   
Bonus: There's a generous selection of newspaper clippings about Christine Jorgensen and Glen or Glenda at the Ed Wood Wednesdays Tumblr.

Ed Wood Wednesdays: The 'Glen Or Glenda' Odyssey, Part One by Greg Dziawer

These posters weren't exactly subtle about what inspired Ed's movie.

"A lady is a lady, whatever the case may be."

-Dr. Alton (Timothy Farrell) in Glen Or Glenda

Christine Jorgensen holds the Daily News.

Born just a year and half after Ed Wood, only in the Bronx instead of Poughkeepsie, George Williamson Jorgensen likewise enlisted in the military in his late teens, having been drafted shortly after graduating high school in 1945. By 1946, both discharged, Ed began pursuing the creative life while George began pursuing Christine.

Finally, after knocking around Hollywood for a half dozen years, Ed landed his big break. A feature. And even better, impossibly, a feature about a subject through which he could Trojan Horse his own story, a plea for transvestism. We all know that's Glen or Glenda, but the rapid-fire sequence of events in getting the film to market is worth mentioning. It's even worth opening a new Odyssey, and sharing a key document that, already in early 1953, months before Glen or Glenda was even released, reveals Ed's awareness as Outside Artist.

"EX-GI BECOMES BLONDE BEAUTY": That Daily News headline from December 1, 1952 started it all, launching Christine Jorgensen into the staid 1950s, where she remained celebrated and, owing to her class and wit, rarely derided. Her return to the United States from Sweden, landing at Idlewild Airport (now JFK) in Queens—the busiest international air passenger gateway in the US at the time—was the largest press gathering to date. She was, for a spell, arguably the most famous woman in the world.



Beating just about everyone to the punch, low-budget exploitation film producer George Weiss hired a hungry young Ed Wood to write and direct Glen or Glenda, a film intended to cash in on the Christine Jorgensen case, in early 1953. Although Wood veered far from the nominal source, he turned the assignment quickly, which was all that mattered. Inside of a week from the time that Christine landed in the States, this newspaper article credited to UPI correspondent Aline Mosby was already in syndication. The following clipping originally appeared in the February 19, 1953 edition of the Daily Herald in Provo, Utah.

"A sort of Orson Welles of low-budget pictures."

As much as I'd like to comment
...on this unbelievably early tie of Ed to Orson Welles, as kindred maverick artists by implication, as well as this early recognition of Welles' ultimate place in film history
...on the "tiny studio"
...on Ed and Martha Graham
I'll try to stop and let it speak for itself. Weiss clearly managed quick placement of a promotional piece, the content clearly provided almost if not entirely by Ed. It makes it his first (perhaps only) nationally syndicated newspaper interview.

By April, Glen or Glenda premiered across drive-ins and hardtop fleapits, adopting different titles for different regions. It continued playing these venues for a full decade.

Christine Jorgensen remained a staple of the pop culture throughout the 1950s, appearing in men's adventure magazines (interesting to imagine the average joe's reaction), as spokesperson for the transgendered and belatedly as subject of her own movie bio. She died in 1989 at the age of 62, felled by bladder and lung cancer.

As for Ed, we'll explore more in future Ed Wood Wednesdays!

Special Thanks: The scan of the article above is from The Scene Of Screen 13, a blog where you will additionally find a ton of Ed-related movie ads in local papers, and a veritable mountain of ads from the world of ex- and sexploitation during Ed's era. And for more about Christine Jorgensen, make sure to check out the Ed Wood Wednesdays Tumblr.