Ed Wood Wednesdays: The Wood Paperback Odyssey, Part Five by Greg Dziawer

The elusive T.K. Peters, sometimes misidentified as Ed Wood.

Encyclopedia of Sex ad

As I prepared to write this week's Ed Wood Wednesdays article, I decided to do a quick search of eBay, to see if the old myth of Dr. T.K. Peters being a pseudonym of Ed Wood still persists. You guessed it (merely one example, sadly). Apart from inflating prices, it continues to muddy the waters of Woodology, this muddying now its own niche within the larger spectrum. Dr. T.K. Peters was real, and we'll refute some counter-claims that his esteemed name was "borrowed" from the real "Kim" in future Ed Wood Wednesdays.

In the past, Pendulum Publishers, Inc. and its myriad offshoot imprints (covered ad nauseam in previous posts) published two series of photo-illustrated sexual paperbacks in the early 1970s, sourced from the comprehensive sexual study by Dr. T.K. Peters that he sold to Pendulum boss Bernie Bloom (itself rooted in his work as a marriage counselor in Atlanta from 1950 through 1965, following his retirement from Oglethorpe University...but that's another story that WILL be told). 

Fully three-fourths of the Peters' titles constituted SECS Press' (an unincorporated Pendulum imprint) Encyclopedia of Sex, the rest being the Sexual Enlightenment Series published under the Calga imprint, unleashed just on the cusp of legal, accessible and affordable hardcore sexual imagery via multi-media. For some alchemical reason, the censorship damn bursting encouraged a propensity toward the weird, the extreme and the just plain fucking nuts. In all, between Ed's own resume and an additional few titles in his collection with title-page inscriptions by him, Ed wrote or co-wrote roughly 25% of the Peters paperbacks. That index, too, is another story. Suffice to say that Ed's cohort on West Pico in the Pendulum mag office played a large role in the Pendulum Peters canon. Ed collaborated with fellow staffers Charles D. Anderson and Leo Eaton. William D. "Bill" Jones produced Peters, and so did Robin "Redbreast" Eagle. They did this under a slew of pseudonyms, one of them, Norman Bates, still falsely claimed a pseudonym of Ed. It's impossible to talk about T.K. Peters without running into these clumsy mis-Ed-tributions. That's a charitable statement and I'll leave it at that.

Ed Wood Wednesdays: The Ed-Tribution Odyssey, Part Six by Greg Dziawer

T.K. Peters got groovy in his later years.

A few months back, on a slow Saturday afternoon, I sat down and scanned the covers of many of the paperbacks credited to American educator, author, and renaissance man, Dr. Thomas Kimmwood "T.K." Peters (1879-1973). While Peters wrote about many topics, ranging from botany to psychology, it was his vast research on sex that provided the basis for numerous books in the early 1970s. Edward D. Wood, Jr. in particular drew on Peters' source material numerous times while writing sex manuals during those years. In fact, while Peters is often mistakenly cited as a pseudonym for Ed, he was undoubtedly a real person with a distinct and fascinating life of his own.

T.K. Peters' material was turned into two primary series of books, totaling approximately 50 tiles -- SECS Press' Sexual Educational Clinical Series and Calga's Sexual Enlightenment Series. SECS and Calga were both imprints of Pendulum, a West Coast publisher for whom Ed Wood worked in the '60s and '70s. In this article, I'll include some sample covers from both SECS and Calga. For good measure, I'll toss in a cover from Pendulum's Psychomed series, too. While never credited to Peters, the Psychomed books are clearly cut from the same cloth.

NOTE: Ed Wood did not necessarily work on all these books. He definitely worked on some of them, though.

Ed Wood Wednesdays: The Ed Wood Summit Podcast #5 by Greg Dziawer

Dr. T.K. Peters was a seemingly endless source of books.

Sketchy as they might seem, Ed Wood's textbooks on human sexuality from the 1960s and '70s do have some vague basis in actual scientific research. And that is due to the groundbreaking work of one Dr. T.K. Peters (1879-1973), a highly accomplished man I find immensely fascinating. In fact, I talked all about him in last week's edition of The Ed Wood Summit Podcast. Among other things, I wanted to clear up the misconception that Wood and Peters were one and the same person.

After that deep dive into Peters' life, I thought I would continue the story in this week's video. Earlier today, the mailman delivered to my home a vintage Peters book that was entirely new to me called A Study of Intimate Sexual Problems. This particular volume was written in 1970 and published in 1971 by SECS Press, an arm of Pendulum Publishing. It's credited to Frank Leonard and Dr. T.K. Peters. But who really wrote it? Could Ed Wood have been involved? Take a guess before pressing play on the video. Here are your choices:

a. Dr T.K. Peters 

b. Leo Eaton 

c. Hal Kantor 

d. Frank Leonard and Ed Wood 

e. Leo Eaton, from a source by Dr T.K. Peters

Before you go, let me add one last anecdote about Dr, Peters. In 1908, he constructed a studio set for Biograph, an early film company, at Pico Blvd. and Georgia St. It was quite a historic site. The legendary D.W. Griffith even shot there. When Peters visited the Pendulum magazine office on W. Pico Blvd sixty full years later, one can only imagine his sense of deja vu.

P.S. For the first time in the history of The Ed Wood Summit Podcast, I'm pleased to present a very special and unexpected guest, my cat Ivy.

Ivy and Greg are vlog buddies.

Previous episodes of The Ed Wood Summit Podcast can be found here.

Ed Wood Wednesdays: The Ed Wood Summit Podcast #4 by Greg Dziawer

This week, Greg examines the mysterious yet prolific Dr. T.K. Peters.

My mind never strays far from Dr. T.K. Peters (1879-1973). A true pop-culture enigma, this man's prodigious life of adventure continues to inspire me, nearly half a century after his passing. Thomas Kimmwood Peters was many things -- scholar, historian, inventor, author, etc. What makes him relevant to us is that, through his writings on sex, he played a small but significant role in the Ed Wood saga.

Shed no tears for Dr. Peters, however. He accomplished a century of living while maintaining an unquenchable thirst. Peters is not, despite some fan theories, a pseudonym for Ed Wood. He was very much his own man, and this week, I aim to tell you all about him. Join me for the fourth episode of The Ed Wood Summit Podcast in which I give you an overview of his life and set the stage for an eventual full reckoning of his incredible legacy.

If that video piqued your interest, check out these previous articles, which provide a little related color around the esteemed Dr. Peters.

• The Wood Paperback Odyssey, Part Four

• The Wood Paperback Odyssey, Part Five

• The Wood Paperback Odyssey, Part Six

Ed Wood Wednesdays: The Woodologist Odyssey, Part Three by Greg Dziawer

This week, Greg takes us on a trivial pursuit.

It's time once again to turn our attention to Woodologists, i.e. those super-devoted Ed Wood experts who transcend mere fandom. In the past, I've quizzed author James Pontolillo and filmmaker Keith Crocker. This week, though, the person I want to quiz is you! 

That's right. I want to see how much you know about Edward D. Wood, Jr. and his various personal and professional associates. See if you can answer the following ten questions. If you can, you're seriously obsessed!

So how'd you do? Was this a breeze or were you utterly baffled? 

BONUS QUESTION: For which group did Eddie briefly serve as a chaplain after the war? 

I'll answer these questions and many more you never thought to ask in future installments of this series.

Ed Wood Wednesdays: The Wood Paperback Odyssey, Part Six by Greg Dziawer

Written by Ed Wood? Greg says no.

Practicing Peters

Some relevant copyright listings.

We've previously shared a chunk of poetically weird photo-captions from the series of adult paperbacks released by the Pendulum-family of publishers circa 1970-1972, from a deeply personal Holy Grail of mine, the fabled source by Dr. T.K. Peters. A comprehensive sex study rooted in his work as a marriage counselor in Atlanta after his "retirement" from Oglethorpe University—enjoying his sunset years with his wife Grace—at the Dunwoody Preserve, an effortlessly ahead-its-time endeavor per the usual for "Kim."

I must confess that I can't resist paging Dr. Peters yet again. In this week's Ed Wood Wednesdays, we're diving into one title from the T.K. Peters source, one of the most-legendary of them all. Did Ed even write it? (If you've been here before, that's a rhetorical question.)

Sexual Practices in Witchcraft and Black Magic Book 1 (SP 111, 1971, volume XVII of SECS Press' Sexual Encyclopedia for Adults), credited to Frank Lennon with Dr. T.K. Peters, is listed on Ed's resume, generally a reliable source. Leo Eaton was the sole author, and it reads nothing like Ed, densely laden with truly factual research and unusually serious for this milieu. Though not penned by Ed, it is, nonetheless, deservedly one of the most beloved of the series. If Ed had any involvement, perhaps it was in the photo-captions, the mind-altering sexual haiku that defined the distinctive Pendulum tone across hundreds of paperbacks and upwards of a thousand mags in less than a half dozen years. 

Ed Wood Wednesdays: The Ed-Tribution Odyssey, Part Three by Greg Dziawer

Greg said it was okay to reuse this header image from last week. In fact, he requested it.

 

Anyone who has read more than a handful of my Ed Wood Wednesdays posts certainly knows that false claims of Ed's authorship (or mis-Ed-tributions, as I like to call them) really get my goat. First off, when claimed deliberately, it's lying. And lying, as we all well know, is wrong. An infantile ethical hangup. Secondly, it's lying for the sake of material gain, and as we also know, two wrongs don't make a right. Now, of course, there are those who claim that one who does wrong is right, and one who does right is wrong.

This week we're pulling the string and unraveling three current Ebay auctions, all of them mis-Ed-tributing titles credited to Dr. T.K. Peters. All three issue from the same seller, and in the interest of fairness, I will assume he/she makes the claim in ignorant good faith. In other words, I've yet to email the seller. His/her username at Ebay (redboldface) curiously suggests the word baldface, a word I've only ever heard used in conjunction with one other word (begins with L). Make of that what you will.

To cut to the chase, for once - and not repeat the stories of Wood at Pendulum/Calga, and Bernie Bloom, and the T.K. Peters source - here are the auction postings (until the links finally disappear) and who actually wrote them:

Ed Wood Wednesdays: Advertising T.K. Peters by Greg Dziawer

Well, maybe not everything, but Greg's working on it.

NOTE: Greg Dziawer has been doing extensive research into the career of Dr. T.K. Peters, whose name is often touted as a literary alias for Edward D. Wood, Jr. Much more Peters-related material will appear in this space in the weeks to come. For now, here is a preview of what Greg's been working on. Enjoy. J.B.

A T.K. Peters book from SECS.

There was a time when many considered the name T.K. Peters, which appeared on close to 50 photo illustrated sociological sex paperbacks, to be a pseudonym of Ed Wood. Or even a shared pseudonym of multiple authors at Pendulum Publishers. Leo Eaton, fellow staffer of Ed's at the Pendulum magazine offices in Los Angeles, laid these notions to rest when he revealed that Peters was a real person and that the paperbacks were sourced from a comprehensive sex study he had sold to Pendulum.

The sociological angle was a legal gambit, justifying the hardcore sex of the photographs (the raison d'etre of the books, with a pic on each right-hand facing page), common practice of many adult publishers during the transition to the legalization of pornography. These kinds of books exploded across the adult paperback world in the late '60s and early '70s, albeit briefly, when the educational pretenses quickly became unnecessary.

The following scans are of two advertisements, both of which appeared in many Pendulum/Calga/SECS Press magazines, regardless of theme, circa 1971. The first ad consists solely of titles from the Peters source, whose name is not even mentioned in the copy, as part of the SECS Press Encyclopedia of Sex series. The second ad throws in a few titles from Calga's Sexual Enlightenment Series and even a couple from the non-Peters PsychoMed series (published by Pendulum's Atlanta office). 

As you check them out, how many of the Peters titles in these ads do you recognize as being by Ed? He wrote or collaborated on approximately a dozen books from the Peters source. The answer is below, after the second scan.

"Every aspect of sex... from foreplay to orgasm..."

"Photos are censored. Books are not!"

So how many did you spot? If you said zero, then congratulate yourself. You really know your T.K. Peters!