Ed Wood (Johnny Depp) looks guilty in this scene from Ed Wood.
It just isn't true, okay?
The "Dolores Fuller" character in Tim Burton's movie Ed Wood (1994)—the temperamental, ambitious-to-a-fault ingenue played by a peroxided Sarah Jessica Parker—is not a fair or accurate depiction of Indiana-born actress and songwriter Dolores Agnes Fuller (1923-2011) who dated Edward D. Wood, Jr. in the early 1950s and appeared in three of his best-known movies. In transforming Eddie's messy, complicated life into a tidy, two-hour biopic, screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski streamlined certain aspects of the story and exaggerated others. Somehow, along the way, Dolores got turned into a cartoon. I honestly think the culprit was this extended quote from Rudolph Grey's Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1992):
One of Ed Wood's Christmas cards, with Ed himself as Jesus.
Thanks in large part to Rudolph Grey's Nightmare of Ecstasy (1992), Ed Wood's homemade Christmas cards from the early '50s have taken on something of a mythical status among his fans. On page 34 of the book, Grey includes three vintage photographs: two glamour shots of actress Dolores Fuller in an angora sweater and one picture of Ed himself, incongruously dressed as Jesus Christ, complete with a long-haired wig and a glued-on beard. The caption is equally intriguing: "Ed Wood's 3-D Christmas Card, featuring Ed as the Jewish carpenter."
It turns out that this amazing image is part of a series of Christmas cards that Ed had printed when he was dating Dolores, circa Glen or Glenda (1953) and Jail Bait (1954). The actress talks about those cards on page 33: "We made up a 3-D Christmas card where I was the Virgin Mary. We had some children around. Ed wanted to recreate the nativity scene. We sent those Christmas cards out with 3-D glasses. Ed played Jesus Christ."
Philip Chamberlin, who eventually married Dolores Fuller, adds this: "In a way, the Christmas cards are kind of a parable. He was, no doubt, a martyr for his art."
A few pages later, actor John Andrews—the source of many of Nightmare's most colorful (and disputed) anecdotes—talks about how Eddie was sharing an apartment with his early creative partner, Alex Gordon. "I think they were the original odd couple," Andrews muses. Anyway, Alex got scared off by the wild drag parties Eddie was always throwing and moved out. Here, I'll just let John tell the story from there:
John Andrews talks about Ed Wood selling Christmas cards.
Bob Hope shills for Stereo Realist.
Pretty wild stuff, huh? First off, the fact that this anecdote is taking place in December brings to mind that dreadful December in 1978 when Ed and his wife Kathy were evicted from their Yucca Flats apartment. That was often a rough month for him, which may be why there are so few Christmas references in Ed's work.
I've always assumed that the cards Eddie was selling were the same ones he'd made with Dolores Fuller, so maybe he made them for commercial rather than strictly personal reasons. Also, if John Andrews can be believed, this is how Ed Wood supposedly met actor Tom Tyler, who appeared in Eddie's Crossroad Avenger (1953) near the very end of his life.
In her 2009 autobiography A Fuller Life: Hollywood, Ed Wood and Me, Dolores Fuller gives us some more details about the history of those cards:
There are those who scoff at the idea that Eddie was in any sense a creative artist, but during my years with him, I was surprised almost daily by his creativity. One example that comes to mind is the series of five 1954 Christmas cards he created. I had been a 3-D enthusiast for many years and had my own "Stereo Realist" camera, made by Kodak, but discontinued in the early 1960's. It was a time when 3-D was enjoying one of its periodic fads, so we decided to go all out and make a series of tableau-like 3-D cards.
The shoot was done at my two-bedroom Burbank home where Eddie and I lived with my father. The series of 3-D shots for the cards utilized our entire "family" and ranged thematically from a naughty shot of me in an abbreviated Santa costume for a card inscribed "... the night before Christmas," through a card with my father as "Santa Claus" toting a big toy-stuffed sack and son Darrell reaching excitedly for one of them, to a nativity scene in the stable with friends as the three wise men, Eddie as Joseph and myself as the Holy Mother, to a stunning shot of Eddie as a mature, bearded Jesus, arms outstretched in supplication and the inscription "...lo, I am with you always..."
That passage gives us a lot of details about when, where, and how those cards were made. The Stereo Realist was the most popular stereo camera of its era, but it was actually made by the David White Company and lasted until 1971. If Dolores is correct that these cards were made in 1954, that shoots my theory to hell because Tom Tyler died of a heart attack in May of that year. Could it be that this story actually happened in 1953?
And what about the other cards that Dolores mentioned, like the one with her as Mary or the one with her as a sexy Santa? Blessedly, some of these did survive into the 21st century. Circa 2002, an Ebay user named Toddhackett sold a set of the cards for an undisclosed price. Thanks to that auction, we have some some images of what the cards looked like.
Ed and Dolores pose for Christmas cards circa 1954.
Back in 2015, Ed Wood scholar Philip R. Fry, the man behind this very useful website, posted to Facebook a list of the cards in this series and what each one contained.
3D Card Co., No. 501: "...lo, I am with you always..." This is the one with Ed Wood as Jesus with his arms outstretched.
3D Card Co., No. 502: "...come to the stable..." This one is the nativity scene with the three wise men in the upper left corner.
3D Card Co., No. 503: "...blessed is she..." This is the one with Dolores as Mary and Ed Wood as Joseph.
3D Card Co., No. 504: This still-missing card is presumably the one with Dolores' father as Santa Claus. No images of it have surfaced yet.
3D Card Co., No. 505: "...the night before Christmas..." This is the one with Dolores in her "abbreviated" Santa costume.
Perhaps the 3D Card Co. was the company that manufactured these five cards. Or it was some short-lived venture that Ed Wood launched specifically for this project. Either way, I can find no other reference to such a firm existing in the 1950s. What we've been looking at so far, by the way, have been the interiors of the cards. The exteriors are pretty generic: the words "Season's Greetings" printed in green on a plain white background. I'm guessing that the printer would allow you to customize the insides of the cards, but the outsides were standard. I'm just glad that Ed Wood got to work his beloved ellipses into these cards at the beginning and end of every caption.
One last question: do any of the 3D effects actually work? Well, yes. Sort of. I have some red-blue glasses lying around, so I decided to give it a whirl. Card 501, the one of Ed as Jesus, works best. Those hands genuinely look like they're reaching out. I suppose Card 503, with Ed as Joseph and Dolores as Mary, works okay, too, since Joseph does look like he's closer to us than his wife. There's not much to say about Cards 502 and 505. Perhaps there's a bit of depth to these images... if you squint.
And that's the story of Ed Wood's legendary 3D Christmas cards featuring himself as Jesus Christ. Before we leave this topic, I'd like to remind you that Ed's idol, friend, and star Bela Lugosi was himself cast as Christ in a 1909 passion play. Thanks to that production, we have numerous incredible images of Count Dracula as the Lamb of God, some of them quite similar to Eddie's Christmas card.
Yes, that's Bela Lugosi as Jesus Christ.
Isn't the internet wonderful sometimes? Merry Christmas to one and all.
Don't say we never got you anything. We got you this.
As the holidays approachand we gather with loved ones to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday, let's whet our appetites with some vintage newspaper clippings related to Edward D. Wood, Jr. and his incredible cast of repertory players. These are just some interesting tidbits I've uncovered while doing research for upcoming articles.
Let's dig in, shall we?
I. Valda Hansen and her pollen pills
Valda's ad from 1984.
Although she appeared in only one of Ed Wood's films, playing the fraudulent White Ghost in 1959's Night of the Ghouls, flaxen-haired starlet Valda Hansen is still remembered fondly as one of Eddie's inner circle of performers. She's a memorable interview subject in Rudolph Gray's Nightmare of Ecstasy (1992) as well as the documentary Flying Saucers Over Hollywood: The Plan 9 Companion (1992). Valda's disctinctive but sporadic appearances in exploitation films like Wam Bam Thank You Spaceman (1975) sputtered out by the mid-'70s, so I was suitably surprised when I stumbled upon her in a 1984 print ad for Pollitabs. This mysterious product, still available today, was a pollen-based (get it?) nutritional supplement endorsed by none other than Valda herself and superstar gymnast Mary Lou Retton, then America's sweetheart after her gold medal performance at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. Julianne McNamara, another gold medal gymnast from the '84 games, is also cited in the ad copy.
The supplement ad is a fascinating little artifact of its era. Note, for instance, the North Hollywood address for ordering Pollitabs. This appears to be the same environs in which Valda resided throughout her adult life to the end, as well as the very same geography in which Ed Wood lived and an epicenter of the porn industry as it came into existence and flourished there in the 1970s.
Valda began modelling professionally right out of high school, perhaps even sooner, and appears to have continued doing so, at least locally, for decades. In the Pollitabs ad, which ran in the December 5, 1984 edition of the Indianapolis Jewish Post, she certainly appears to possess the "energy" and "vitality" that the copy promises. Less than a decade later, however, still in her early 50s, Valda succumbed to cancer all too soon.
II. Tor Johnson's tour of London
Tor Johnson in London, 1947.
Featured in three of Ed Wood's best-known films, including the aforementioned Night of the Ghouls, the bald, hulking professional-wrestler-cum-actor Tor Johnson remains one of the most beloved members of Ed's eccentric stock troupe. A Swedish immigrant, Tor began his wrestling career as a heavy, ironically dubbed "The Swedish Angel." In those early days, the wrestler did indeed possess hair, but it was long gone by the late 1940s.
An odd little item from the June 28, 1947 edition of the Perth Mirror in Western Australia, depicts Tor wearing a comical beanie cap, plus a baggy suit, knee-length overcoat, and ludicrously undersized necktie. He towers over the gentleman standing next to him.
Headlined "Giant Goes To London," the clipping in question is a wire-service photo of the wrestler's visit to the British capital. The caption explains what he's doing there:
TOR JOHNSON, 30-stone [420-pound] "Man Mountain," who played the part of the great ape in the film "King Kong" 15 years ago, in playful mood on his arrival in London to take part in an International "catch-as-catch-can" wrestling contest at Harringay [sporting arena] next month. Johnson claims to be the strongest man in the world.
The caption writer has taken some liberty with the facts. According to the IMDb, Tor's known acting appearances date back only to 1934, the year after Kong Kong was released. Alas, though he may well have been "the strongest man in the world," Tor Johnson did not play the doomed ape in the RKO classic. The creature was instead bought to life through stop-motion animation.
Happily, Tor's 1947 appearance at Harringay was captured for posterity by newsreel cameras. The plummy Pathe narrator again refers to Tor as "King Kong" and repeats the wrestler's weight as 30-stone. The newsreel's claim that Tor was seven feet tall was an exaggeration of about nine inches. "The promoters [of the wrestling contest] evidently wanted to put over this farce as a serious sport," the narrator quips. "So far as we're concerned, it was one long series of laughs."
Tor did make an early, uncredited appearance in a 1936 Ronald Colman film called Under Two Flags, set amidst the French Foreign Legion. Glen or Glenda actor Captain DeZita, who was mostly going by the name Baron De Orgler at the time, would claim involvement in this same film as a consultant. DeZita frequently alleged—likely bullshit—to have been in the French Foreign Legion himself.
Tor Johnson died at the age 67 in 1971 and is buried in the San Fernando Valley, hub of the 1980s porn industry.
III. Dolores Fuller plays it safe
Ed Wood's live-in girlfriend as well as the co-star of his 1953 masterpiece Glen or Glenda, Dolores Fuller would break up with the idiosyncratic writer-director by the middle of the decade. Dolores' acting career, including occasional appearances in episodic television and films, had seemingly dried up by 1959. But she kept finding work as a print model, as in this ad sponsored by the National Safety Council. This picture ran in the Valentine's Day 1959 edition of the Boston Daily Record.
Dolores Fuller: "A cute Valentine herself."
"Valentine, I love you true—sure hope no one runs over you." True poetry. Appropriately, then, Dolores shifted careers shortly after this ad and became a professional songwriter herself. Within a few years, she was busy writing lyrics for hit songs by Elvis Presley. A frequent interviewee in documentaries and articles about Ed Wood, Dolores lived to be 88. She was buriedin Las Vegas.
Happy Holidays, and don't choke on that Golden Turkey!
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 claimthat 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, Jorgensenappeared 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).
Bela Lugosi, Dolores Fuller, and Ed Wood on New Year's Eve, 1953.
The famous photo from 1953.
A few days ago, artist and fellow Ed Wood fan Milton Knight posted a historic photograph to a private Facebook forum devoted to Ed. I had doubtless seen this image before, but I'd never thought twice about it. (I now realize I've seriously neglected to study these old photographs.)
This particular black-and-white snapshot depicts Bela Lugosi, Dolores Fuller, and Ed Wood, all dressed to the proverbial nines. Ed looks sharp in a light-colored tie against a light-colored shirt. Dolores has something wonderfully fuzzy draped over her arm. And Bela seems to be dressed as Dracula. I initially replied that it could be from 1953 or '54, maybe from Bela's Silver Slipper Revuein Las Vegas. I was close.
Soon after this image was posted, another version of the photo was posted by a Wood fan who had purchased his copy from Dolores herself at a fan convention. This version included a caption: "Bela Lugosi, Dolores Fuller and Ed Wood, San Bernardino, California, New Year's Eve, 1953." While most of the caption is printed, the year is handwritten. (A correction, perhaps?)
While this image had been posted many times online, both with and without the caption, its source had never been properly identified. The fan who had purchased a copy subsequently told me that Dolores "sold many copies" of it. Dolores' penchant for marketing herself and her work in later years is a subject for another time. Suffice it to say that she excelled at it, and it's likely thanks to her that this image survived at all.
What is the backstory of this photo, you are likely wondering? I had somehow forgotten that this incident was recorded in previous Lugosi biographies that I'd already read, as well as Ed Wood's own posthumously published Hollywood Rat Race.
In Arthur Lennig's The Immortal Count: The Films of Bela Lugosi(1974), we suffer the painful details of this fallow period of Bela's life. Lillian Arch, his wife of 20 years and mother of his only child, left him in the spring of 1953. Ed was acting as Bela's agent at this time. The Hungarian actor made a guest appearance on the July 27, 1953 edition of You Wanted To See It, a live TV series in which host Art Baker fulfilled various mailed-in requests from viewers. After appearing in a six-minute sketch as—what else?—a vampire, Lugosi told Baker that he was working on "a few things," including a film called The Phantom Ghoul and a TV series called Dr. Acula. As most Wood fans know, these were both projects that Eddie initiated but sadly never completed. By October, unfortunately, Bela struggled to find work, selling possessions at public auction and moving to a more modest apartment in Los Angeles.
After Lillian's departure, Bela became depressed, drank, ate poorly, and lost weight. These changes are evident in his gaunt features and skeletal hands in the New Year's Eve photo. It was then, as Lennig tells it, that Bela "was roused from his misery by the indefatigable Ed Wood, who booked Lugosi into a New Year's show in San Bernardino, California, to usher in 1954." The tone of this statement confirms Tim Burton's Ed Wood biopic, reinforcing the theme that Ed rose above his challenging reality.
Robert Cremer's Bela bioLugosi: The Man Behind the Cape (1976) likewise notes that, at the New Year's Eve show, "sandwiched between films, Lugosi gave a well-received speech, after which he remained to shake hands and sign autographs."
Article about the West Coast Theatre.
By far, the most thorough account of the night was included in Ed Wood's Hollywood Rat Race. Wood used the New Year's Eve show as a parable about redemption and determination. It is up to the reader to decide how much of Wood's story is true and how much is wishful thinking.
In any event, as part of a chapter called "Hate," Wood describes a 71-year-old Bela Lugosi as being "despondent" and "outwardly ready to quit" due to his dire financial circumstances in late 1953. His older films had started playing on television by then, but young viewers watching these classics didn't know whether Lugosi was alive or dead. Wood specifically mentions Maila "Vampira" Nurmi hosting a broadcast of White Zombie (1932) on Los Angeles' KHJ-TV. This incident seems to have been the basis for a memorable scene in Burton's film, with Bela (Martin Landau) and Ed (Johnny Depp) watching Vampira's show from a lumpy couch in Bela's cluttered home.
Desperate to find work for Lugosi, who by then was too frail to appear in stage plays, Wood hit upon the idea of having the legendary actor make a personal appearance where he would interact with his fans directly. The elderly actor, Wood reports, was enthusiastic about this plan. But Lugosi had no real act, in the traditional vaudeville sense, so it was difficult at first to find a proper venue for him. Luckily, Wood had previously done business with a gentlemanly exhibitor named Albert Stetson, who owned several movie theaters in or near Los Angeles at the time. It was Stetson, Wood says, who devised the New Year's Eve program at his San Bernardino location, about 61 miles outside of L.A.
Wood goes on to describe the hoopla preceding the big night, with Lugosi giving numerous interviews, attending various club functions, and even meeting George Blair, the mayor of San Bernardino. The day of the show, Ed and Bela drove out to the theater, braving cold, misty weather along the way. They were accompanied by Dolores Fuller, described by Wood as Lugosi's "lovely assistant." Once he arrived in San Bernardino, Lugosi was immediately corralled into doing yet another radio interview instead of being allowed to relax.
After that ordeal, Bela, Dolores, and Ed all attended a "final cocktail party for the press" held at a nearby hotel. Wood makes a point of saying that Lugosi diligently refrained from drinking that day, even though the actor "had always enjoyed his scotch and room temperature beer." But the party dragged on and on, Wood says, and Lugosi was getting tired. Finally, the actor was allowed to go to his hotel room to put on his "full dress suit" and prepare for the evening. Wood tells us that Bela "demanded solitude even from his friends" before a show.
An ad for Bela Lugosi's New Years show.
According to Hollywood Rat Race, the bill of fare that memorable evening consisted of "five features, several cartoons, and a hundred-dollar bank night drawing." The program, Wood alleges, began at 9:00 that night with a screening of Arabian Nights (1942) with Jon Hall. Bela had not yet arrived. Dolores had been dispatched to retrieve him from the hotel. Attendance was initially sparse to nil but picked up substantially within the first hour until the box office had to display a "Standing Room Only" sign. Wood says that the local police and fire departments were brought in to handle the crowds and traffic generated by the show.
After Arabian Nights and an obscure Terrytoons short called Runaway Mouse (1953) had ended, Lugosi finally pulled up in a limousine, only to be mobbed by autograph seekers. There was no longer any doubt, Wood says, that the audience was there specifically to see the aged actor. "A rerun movie and a gross of cartoons hadn't attracted people from parties on New Year's Eve," Wood writes. "It was the great Lugosi who had come out of hiding after all those years." Finally, at 10:58, Lugosi took the stage and tearfully delivered the following short speech:
My dear friends: I greet you here tonight on a new, great, New Year. May the coming year bring the joy and success deserved. I wish, with all my heart, that I might meet each of you on the mezzanine in a few minutes where I might personally shake your hand and say ... God bless you.
Lugosi's "performance" that night lasted less than a minute by Wood's reckoning. Bela had disregarded the three-minute speech Eddie had written and instead "designed his own speech." The Dracula star then ascended to the mezzanine, where he and Dolores distributed autographed photographs to waiting fans.
This show business fairy tale ends with Albert Stetson sending Ed Wood a letter thanking him for breaking box office records at the venue. The letter, as quoted in Hollywood Rat Race, is effusive in its praise: "Mr. Bela Lugosi's personal appearance at the West Coast Theater [sic] has truly given our theater a wonderful evening."
The now-demolishedWest Coast Theatre (later the Crest) was an ornate house hailing from the height of the silent era. Despite its auspicious beginnings in 1925, the place was no longer showing first-run features by 1954. The ad for the New Year's show in The San Bernardino Sun (December 30, 1953) lists only two of the five promised features. It was one of the smaller ads on the page, dwarfed by promotions for New Year's floor shows elsewhere as well as for John Wayne's Hondo, admittance to which would cost you $1.25. The West Coast, meanwhile, advertised 50 cents for an entire show. And the ad tells us that the show—with Bela present and presenting "speeches" that could very well have been penned by Ed, alongside an assortment of B and second-run features—ran for an incredible four days.
Acknowledgements
Special thanks this week to artist and illustrator Milton Knight for instigating, unwittingly or not, both a whole new Wood Odyssey and a brand new space in my head. Make sure to check out his incredible blog, The World of Knight.
