Ed Wood Wednesdays: The Wood Collaborator Odyssey, Part 12 by Greg Dziawer

These two explorers are looking for their mummy.

Before Glen or Glenda, there was Tomb Itmay Concern.

A certain degree of resourcefulness is a necessity for any exploitation filmmaker, especially one operating with the lowest of low budgets. As Edward D. Wood, Jr. embarked upon his directing career in the early 1950s, it was the cheapskate exploitation world that afforded him his first big opportunity to write, direct, and star in a feature film: Glen or Glenda (1953). Its producer, George Weiss, is legendary as a prolific filmmaker in this milieu. Exactly when he met Ed is unclear, although Dolores Fuller notes on page 66 in her autobiography A Fuller Life (2009, BearManor Media) that George was "an independent producer Eddie knew" prior to them collaborating on Glen or Glenda. 

Many of the interiors in Glen or Glenda were shot at Quality Studios, a tiny facility on Santa Monica Blvd. run by W. Merle Connell, who often acted as director and/or cinematographer on the hundreds of shorts and the passel of features shot there. Like Weiss, Connell was adept at shooting on a shoestring and began filming strippers in LA burlesque houses in the early '40s. He adopted the name Quality Pictures for what became a mail-order business in the latter half of that decade. Eventually opening his own studio, he would frequently partner with Weiss, a producer whose office was in the immediate vicinity at 5634 Santa Monica. Many of Weiss' Screen Classics Inc, films, beyond Glen or Glenda, were shot at Quality. Ed Wood shot Plan 9 from Outer Space at Quality a few years later, for instance. And Glen or Glenda's supposed insert scenes of burlesque strippers have since been attributed to Connell. 

The IMDb entries for both Weiss and Connell represent only a small percentage of their total output, with most of their films remaining unlisted. This week, we're documenting one such film, a charming 1950 burlesque short with the improbable title Tomb Itmay Concern. (And, yes, that's "itmay" with no space. It's intentional, as we'll soon see.) 

The film's setup could not be simpler. Two male archaeologists enter a sparse tomb—the sole set—where they use water to revive two sexy female mummies, neither of whom display any wrapping or signs of decay. The water, it seems, has been placed in the tomb specifically to tempt any visitors to bring these women back to life.

Waterboys: Don Mathers (left) and Little Jack Little explore a tomb.

Bela Lugosi and George Weiss on the Glenda set

For audiences in 1950, the plot of Tomb Itmay Concern must have been a reminder of the superstitions that had swirled ever since Lord Carnarvon, the first to enter King Tut's tomb in 1922, passed away due to a supposed "curse" placed upon him for having desecrated the crypt. In fact, in late 1949, the superstition was again at the fore, as another archaeologist had perished not long after entering an Egyptian tomb. Early the following year, the story of Carnarvon's death itself was resurrected, and it was determined that the man had died of normal, non-supernatural causes.

Just as with Glen or Glenda and its ties to the sensational Christine Jorgensen sex change saga, Tomb Itmay Concern had a story ripped from the headlines of the day. Viewers back then would doubtless have these "curse of the tomb" stories flitting around at least at the edges of their consciousness. 

The film's straight man, played by Don Mathers, explains that this is the tomb of Princess Itmay, revealing the title card to have been the film's first joke and not a gaffe. Tomb Itmay Concern, then, is a pun within a pun. "Tomb" being a play on "to whom." The same gag turns up in a 2006 episode of Tom and Jerry Tales and a 2017 short by Adam Taylor.

After quelling his partner's fears, Mathers exits the crypt to explore elsewhere. His sidekick, the "comic" relief, naturally can't resist reviving the girls. Once he does this, the diminutive explorer is no longer frightened, not even for a split second. This sidekick role is essayed by burlesque comedian Little Jack Little, who also appeared in Connell's final feature: a nudie cutie from 1960 called Not Tonight Henry. Mathers, too, appeared in this production.

Pinup queen Inez Claire

Having endured Little's lame jokes, audience members might have expected the proceedings in Tomb Itmay Concern to turn tragic, as in so many of Universal's Mummy movies. The Mummy's Hand (1940) even features a comedic duo (Dick Foran and Wallace Ford) not unlike Mathers and Little. Instead, viewers were surely pleasantly surprised to experience a sexy dance number by the mummified princess.

Itmay is played by Inez Claire, who had been stripping since at least 1944 and who maintained a lengthy and active career in burlesque. According to the credits, her servant is played by one Sally Starr, not to be confused with the 1930s film actress and cheesecake pinup or the 1950s cowgirl. This Sally Starr was a dark-haired stunner. Sadly, she doesn't dance in Tomb Itmay Concern, but she does use a banana as a prop in a joke that goes nowhere. Starr's skin color is also the subject of two of Jack Little's jokes, including the one that ends the movie!

The film, with Connell credited as both producer and director, is filed for copyright under Quality Pictures Co., not Screen Classics. The credits contain no mention of Weiss. But, also mentioned in her autobiography (page 67), Dolores Fuller notes that Weiss ran Quality Pictures. Incidentally, Tomb Itmay Concern runs exactly 10 minutes.

In future articles, I'll untangle the exact working relationship of Wood collaborators Weiss and Connell. I'll also delve into far more of their work that remains little-known to this day. Although we can't say whether Ed Wood was involved in any way in Tomb Itmay Concern—and I doubt he was and am not suggesting it—he was definitely approaching the orbit of Weiss and Connell at the time this short film was made. He may have been there already. Dolores Fuller mentions (page 66) that Eddie "kept abreast of developments" (no pun intended) in the world of low-budget Hollywood filmmakers at the time.

A final thought: The core idea of this short is the same in a nutshell as that for Orgy of the Dead (1965). That film even contains a mummy, albeit a more traditional one with wrappings. Could Tomb Itmay Concern have been a possible source of inspiration for Ed Wood? 

Tomb Itmay Concern is the final short on the jam-packed fifth volume of Something Weird Video's incredible Roadshow Shorts series. The volume contains more than its fair share of other material from Weiss and Connell, for those interested in exploring more of their work.

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.