Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 208: A look back at the year in Ed Wood

There was a lot of Ed Wood in 2024. Too much, perhaps?

In the career-spanning book Frank Zappa: The Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play (1995), author Ben Watson astutely observes that "1984 was a bamboozling year for Zappa consumers: The Perfect Stranger, Francesco, the triple-box Thing-Fish and then, as if that was not enough, a full-scale double rock album of new tunes, Them Or Us." 

Ed Wood consumers could relate, as 2024 was a bamboozling year for them too. This was the 100th anniversary of Eddie's birth in Poughkeepsie, NY, and it seemed to inspire a torrent of releases and rereleases. Fans could barely keep up. And by "fans," I mean me.

Ed Wood's Saving Grace

Let's first talk about the books. God, there were so many! For quite a while, Rudolph Grey's Nightmare of Ecstasy (1992) stood alone as the only full-length book about Edward D. Wood, Jr. Now, Woodology is practically a literary subgenre unto itself. This year gave us a few more entries.

• Bob Blackburn released Kathy Wood and I: How I Fell Down the Ed Wood, Jr. Rabbit Hole (BearManor Media), an affectionate, meandering memoir in which he describes his unlikely friendship with Eddie's loyal widow during the final years of her life. My review is here.

• Meanwhile, Angel Scott released the highly unusual Drown the Devil: A Spiritual Biography of Ed Wood (BearManor Media), a religious-minded volume that I will review in the near future on this blog. 

• Kurt McCoy edited a colorful anthology of Wood-inspired short stories entitled Warm Angora Wishes and Rubber Octopus Dreams (Arcane Shadows Press). I reviewed all the pieces in this collection individually, one story at a time over the course of two months. This was probably my biggest Wood-related project of 2024.

• Dennis Smithers, Jr. oversaw a new edition of Ed's long-lost 1975 novel Saving Grace. The late Greg Javer and I discussed this incredibly intriguing book on a podcast in 2021.

• Will Sloan announced his upcoming book Ed Wood: Made in Hollywood USA (OR Books), due in June 2025. It promises to be a wide-ranging critical study that includes Ed's movies as well as his novels and other written works.

• I should also mention Fred Olen Ray's wonderfully goofy horror novel Deep Red (Retromedia Press), based on an unproduced screenplay Fred cowrote with a drunken, dying Eddie in the late 1970s. Fred's book came out in 2023, but I didn't find out about it until 2024. 

Ed Wood fans, you have your reading list for the next six months. Or more. You'd think that would have been enough for me, but this was also the year that I purchased a stack of vintage Ed Wood paperbacks from a seller on Facebook.

Has Flame of Islam been found?

And that's not even half the story! There were some significant home video releases in 2024 as well, all of them on Blu-ray. I guess the era of affordable, accessible DVDs has ended. Oh well. It was nice while it lasted. Here are the titles I added to my collection within the last 12 months.

• In May 2024, a specialty label called Gold Ninja Video, which bills itself as the "Criterion of Public Domain Bargain Bins," released a two-disc limited edition of Ed Wood's Revenge of the Dead (1959). This is a movie we already know well under the rerelease title Night of the Ghouls but this edition includes the original credits, plus a slew of supplements and commentary tracks. Also included in this set are transfers of Jail Bait (1954), Final Curtain (1957), and (if you go snooping) The Sinister Urge (1960). There are also numerous extras related to actor Paul Marco, who portrays Kelton in the film, as the folks at Gold Ninja are big fans of his. Unfortunately, this seems to have vanished from the market shortly after its release. If you don't already own it, good luck finding it on auction sites.

• Arguably the biggest Ed Wood home release of the year was Severin's Hard Wood: The Adult Features of Ed Wood. This is a three-disc set containing new—and, in some cases, drastically improved—scans of Necromania (1971), The Only House in Town (1970), The Young Marrieds (1972), and Shotgun Wedding (1963), plus some of Ed's adult loops from the 1970s. Again, there are numerous commentary tracks, some featuring the late, great Greg Javer, plus various featurettes. This is arguably the most ambitious Ed Wood home video release since Big Box of Wood (2011). I only regret that Greg passed away so shortly after its release and that we couldn't go through the contents of this set together. Unlike Revenge of the Dead, this collection is still available.

• Just this week, I received a disc from BayView Entertainment and The 3D Film Archive containing a new transfer of Arch Oboler's forgotten feature Domo Arigato (1973), which I'd describe as a cross between a romantic drama and a travelogue of Japan. The dramatic parts are middling at best, while the travelogue parts are often spectacular, making excellent use of the 3D "Space Vision" gimmick. My interest in this particular disc is that it also contains a short film alleged to be Ed Wood's long-lost Flame of Islam under the title Cleopatra Follies (1953). It's extremely tame burlesque footage, including rather listless performances by Paula French and Shirley "The Pussycat Girl" Hayes, but the 3D effects are again quite impressive. Eddie's involvement was supposedly limited to writing the (sparse) voiceover narration.

As a result of all these releases, I definitely exceeded my "Ed Wood budget" for 2024. Bob sent me a complimentary copy of Kathy Wood and I, but the other books and discs I got were ones I'd paid for out of my extremely meager salary. Oh well. Who needs such trivialities as food and rent when you can have Necromania on Blu-ray? 

Before 2024 comes to a close, we must remark on the times Eddie made the news this year. As I mentioned earlier, October 10, 2024 would have been Eddie's 100th birthday. This year is also the 30th anniversary of Tim Burton's Ed Wood (1994). So, as you might guess, there were screenings of that film as well as Ed's most famous 1950s films in theaters across the country in October, especially in his home state of New York and his adopted home of California. It's wonderful that Ed's birthday happens to fall during "spooky season," as does the birthday of his most famous star, Bela Lugosi.

While I was not able to attend these screenings in person, I did attend one virtually via Zoom and even got to host a Q&A after a screening of Ed Wood in the Poughkeepsie, NY area. Not long afterward, this same town saw fit to designate Ed Wood's childhood home as an official historical site, complete with its own marker. This recognition came about because of the efforts of some high schoolers in the area who cited this very blog as one of their sources! It does my heart good to know that Greg was aware of all this before his passing.

Look, I'd love to say that 2024 was a banner year in Woodology. In a lot of ways, it was—the 100th birthday, the books, the Blu-rays, the historical marker. That was all great, and it's nice that Ed Wood and his career are still generating such interest well into the 21st century. But the death of my friend and colleague Greg Javer, one of the greatest Woodologists I've ever known, casts a pall over the entire year. A lot of the books, articles, and films I reviewed for this series were only available to me because Greg had sent them. Where we go from here, I don't know. I'm still regrouping. We'll figure this out, week by week. In the meantime, I hope you and yours are enjoying the holiday season.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 202: Kathy Wood gives her side of the story

Kathy Wood, seen here with her dog McGinty in 1988, was married to Ed for over twenty years. 

Bob Blackburn's recently-published book, Kathy Wood & I: How I Fell Down the Ed Wood Jr. Rabbit Hole (Bear Manor Media, 2024), documents the author's decade-plus friendship with Ed Wood's widow, Kathleen O'Hara Everett Wood (1922-2006). Bob approached the publicity-shy Kathy shortly after attending a marathon of Wood's movies in 1992 and, after a few false starts, slowly but surely gained her trust. Bob remained her pal and confidant until Kathy's death in 2006.

Kathy's late husband started becoming more well-known during these years, largely because of Rudolph Grey's oral history, Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood Jr. (1992). That book was adapted into a lavish, star-studded biopic called Ed Wood (1994) by director Tim Burton, with Johnny Depp in the title role and Patricia Arquette playing Kathy. The publicity generated by Burton's movie led to some home video rereleases of Ed's vintage films and a smattering of documentaries, TV specials, and articles about the infamous director and his career. A radio industry professional himself and the son of a popular sportscaster, Bob Blackburn was there to serve as Kathy's guide through these unlikely events.

As a bonus, Kathy Wood & I includes a letter that Kathy drafted in 1998 and submitted to a Los Angeles probate court as part of a dispute over Ed Wood's estate. Her purpose in writing it was to demonstrate that she was Ed's partner, not just his wife. I didn't mention any of this in my review of the book last week, but I thought Kathy's letter deserved some extra attention, as it's really the closest thing to an autobiography she ever wrote. It also offers a fascinating glimpse into Ed Wood's private life that we won't get anywhere else.

A Canadian who relocated to Los Angeles in 1954 for professional reasons, Kathy O'Hara Everett first spotted Edward Davis Wood, Jr. in 1955 when they both started attending meetings of the Church of Religious Science at the Wiltern Theatre. Kathy considered Ed quite handsome but noticed he was always alone at these lectures. They finally met a few months later when a down-on-his luck Eddie approached Kathy at a Hollywood night spot called The Cameo Room. They remained a couple for the rest of Ed's life, eloping to Las Vegas in 1956 and staying married for 22 years.

"Life with Eddie wasn't a bed of roses," Kathy writes, "and I paid dearly for loving and standing by him." This sentence serves as a thesis statement for the entire letter.

Kathy Wood helped write this scene.

By the time he met Kathy, Ed was 31 and had already made Glen or Glenda (1953), Jail Bait (1954), and Bride of the Monster (1955), but his most famous film, Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957), was still on the horizon. The creation of that now-classic sci-fi film is a big part of Kathy's letter. She served as Ed's typist and creative consultant on the script, as she details:

It was during this time that Eddie started writing Plan Nine from Outer Space (Grave Robbers From Outer Space). We spent many hours discussing the story and dialogue and the plot. I helped him with my ideas and typed a large part of the script as usual. It was a happy time and a crazy time. [...] Ed and I kept working on the Grave Robbers script, both of us throwing lines back and forth to each other. I remember one Sunday afternoon we were both stumped for some kind of horrific bomb. I grabbed our Bible and was reading it when some certain passage came to mind. Something about the powers of the sun (or the "Solarnite" bomb in the script). We had a lot of fun talking ideas back and forth on the script.

I've heard Kathy tell similar stories in documentaries about her husband, and I feel that the Bible passage she is referencing must be Revelation 16:8-9, which states: "The fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, and the sun was allowed to scorch people with fire. They were seared by the intense heat and they cursed the name of God, who had control over these plagues, but they refused to repent and glorify him." Let's face it, if there's a book of the Bible that would have appealed to Eddie, it's Revelation, with its often surreal, grotesque, apocalyptic imagery.

For the most part, Kathy's letter describes her often chaotic domestic life with Ed Wood. Surprisingly, there were many good times along the way—pool parties, vacations, nights on the town. The Woods were social animals, and their circle of friends included many of the kooky characters we know from Ed's movies: Duke Moore, David De Mering, Bunny Breckinridge, Tor and Karl Johnson, Kenne Duncan, Dudley Manlove, and Paul Marco. These folks often did what they could to save Ed from impending doom, but occasionally, they couldn't even save themselves. That's life in Hollywood for you. It seems Ed and Kathy could never hold onto a residence or a vehicle for long, and Kathy's letter is full of  stories of disputes with various landlords, including Plan 9 investor Ed Reynolds.

Money, or the lack of it, became the dominant issue in the Woods' lives. (Isn't that true for most of us?) While Kathy worked as a secretary and stenographer at various companies, including Muzak, Eddie's career as a writer-director was unreliable at best. He'd sell a screenplay or a novel, but the money would soon be gone. She also claims that some of Steve Apostolof's checks to Eddie bounced, which may explain her longstanding resentment toward the director-producer and his "cheap girly movies." Kathy does not dwell on Eddie's raging alcoholism, even though it was the chief cause of his professional decline and early death. As Kathy sees it, the drinking was just part of the problem, along with Eddie's "cranky" moods and his consumption of salty foods.

Every Ed Wood fan knows how this sordid story ends. In December 1978, the Woods were evicted from their Yucca St. apartment by the local sheriff and had to move in with actor Peter Coe. They'd undergone similar trials in the past, even rooming with Duke Moore in his one-bedroom unit for a while, but this final disgrace proved too much for Eddie. He died heartbroken—literally and figuratively—on December 10, 1978, at the age of 54. Kathy's letter comes to an abrupt conclusion here: "Our world had ended." There's no redemption arc, no deus ex machina, just loss and despair. She does not mention Ed's posthumous, ironic fame.

And yet, Kathy's letter is not merely an exercise in misery. She clearly had a lot of fond memories of her late husband, and that comes through in her writing about their marriage. She relates a bittersweet anecdote about the time Eddie tried (unsuccessfully) to nurse an injured bird back to health, for instance. She also remembers the way he kept her and a neighborhood child enraptured for hours with his action-packed and largely fabricated World War II stories. That child, Tim Brockman, grew up to be a helicopter pilot in the Vietnam War.

Above all, through this letter, we get little glimpses of Ed Wood in his prime, back when he was still the life of the party. You can almost see why Kathy stuck by him for so many years, possibly hoping the old spark would somehow return. As it says on Kathy's grave: "She hitched her wagon to a star."

Kathy Wood and I: How I Fell Down the Angora Rabbit Hole is available in hardcover, paperback, and Kindle editions right here. Or you can purchase it directly from the publisher.