Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 201: 'Kathy Wood & I: How I Fell Down the Ed Wood, Jr. Angora Rabbit Hole' (2024)

Bob Blackburn (left) befriended Ed Wood's widow, Kathy, in her later years.

Picture this. 

You're about to go on a long bus trip—Tulsa to Milwaukee, let's say. Right before the bus leaves the station, a gentleman takes the seat next to you. With his graying beard, ponytail, casual wardrobe, and overall laid-back demeanor, he seems like he could be a classic rock DJ or possibly an ex-roadie. Maybe he's a distant relative of Jeff Bridges' The Dude from The Big Lebowski (1998). The gentleman notices you're wearing a Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957) T-shirt and asks, in an unmistakable California accent, if you're an Ed Wood fan. You say sure. And then, with no more prompting than that, he launches into the story of how he met Ed's somewhat reclusive widow, Kathy, in the early '90s and remained her friend until her death in 2006. 

This was a fairly busy and interesting time in Kathy's life, since it saw the release of two major Wood-related films, Tim Burton's Ed Wood (1994) and Aris Ilipoulos' I Woke Up Early the Day I Died (1997), plus the publication of Ed's long-lost manuscript, Hollywood Rat Race (1998). If that weren't enough, a couple of Ed's vintage novels came back into print during these years, and there were various stage shows and documentaries inspired by Ed's life and work. The gentleman sitting next to you on the bus tells you he was there to guide Kathy through all of this. He even put her in touch with legal counsel, specifically an entertainment lawyer named Robert Weinberg.

Bob's new book.

Imagine further that this conversation were transcribed word-for-word and then published as a book. You now have a good idea of what it's like to read Bob Blackburn's Kathy Wood and I: How I Fell Down the Ed Wood Jr. Angora Rabbit Hole (Bear Manor, 2024). If you can't take Bob himself with you on your next bus trip, taking a copy of this book is the next best thing. Truth is, Bob makes for a very entertaining traveling companion. This book is every bit as informal and unpretentious as its author. Kathy Wood and I is not really a biography of Kathy or Ed; it's more of a collection of affectionate memories being recorded for posterity. Bob jumps around in the timeline quite a bit; you get the sense that he's writing these things down in the order they occur to him.

Years ago, when this series of mine was still in its infancy, I learned you don't get far in Woodology before crossing paths with Bob Blackburn. Forget finding him; he'll find you. The man is relentless. I've called him "the keeper of the flame," and that's really what he is in the world of Wood fandom. Not only did he start an extremely active Facebook group devoted to Ed Wood, he's also the man responsible for the three (count 'em) anthologies of Eddie's magazine work from the 1960s and '70s. Bob tracked down those stories and articles one by one, purchased the (often pricey) publications in which they first appeared, and then arranged for them to be republished so that we could enjoy them today.

And now, with this book, Bob has given us the most intimate portrayal of Kathy Wood that we're likely to get. Ed and Kathy met in late 1955 and were married in Las Vegas in 1956. Kathy remained with Ed until the truly bitter end in December 1978. She was his other half for the last two decades of his life, and yet, how much do we really know about her? As portrayed in Ed Wood by actress Patricia Arquette, she's a demure, soft-spoken lady who warms to the quirky yet lovable Eddie (Johnny Depp) quite quickly and isn't scared off by his cross-dressing or his dicey-at-best showbiz career. 

Rudolph Grey's oral history Nightmare of Ecstasy (1992) gives us a few more glimpses of Kathy's tumultuous, sometimes violent life with Eddie in the 1960s and '70s. These are some of the most depressing passages in Grey's book, as Ed's alcoholism worsened and his career and lifestyle deteriorated dramatically during these years. No matter how bad things got, however, his wife remained by his side. Kathy Wood essentially grabbed Ed's hand as he dove headfirst into hell. And, for better or worse, she never let go. How many of us can say we'd have done the same?

Kathy Wood's favorite soup.

By the time she met Bob Blackburn in 1992, Kathy Wood was 70 years old, retired, and living on a fixed income in a modest Hollywood apartment not far from the one she and her husband had shared during their tragic final years together. In the 1980s, she'd had to undergo open heart surgery due to years of smoking, and this had slowed her down somewhat. Like many older people, she was quite set in her ways and not especially keen to make new friends or even talk to strangers. She was especially wary of Ed Wood fans who only approached her because of her famous dead husband, a man she both loved and hated.

But Bob was not discouraged. He was living in the same building as Kathy and gradually gained her trust, one interaction at a time. Eventually, their friendship progressed to the point that Bob would hang out at her apartment regularly and hear stories of the old days or just shoot the breeze. He even took Kathy to movies from time to time. (An appendix in the book dutifully lists all the films Bob and Kathy saw together.) As Kathy's health declined and her social circle shrank, Bob truly became one of her closest companions. In the abstract, Bob and Kathy's relationship bears a passing resemblance to the unlikely friendship that Ed Wood forged with Bela Lugosi toward the end of Bela's life in the 1950s.

The best thing about Kathy Wood and I is that it lets us spend some quality time, so to speak, with its title subject. We readers may never have gotten a chance to meet Kathy or speak with her, but Bob Blackburn certainly did, and now he's telling us what that experience was like—right down to fairly minute details, like Kathy's love of Andersen's split pea soup and her devotion to then-acclaimed actor Kevin Spacey. This book reminds us that Kathy Everett O'Hara's life did not end when Ed died in 1978. She survived for two and a half more decades and experienced such major events as the L.A. riots of 1992 and the Northridge earthquake of 1994. Above all, she was a human being, with all the foibles and complexities you'd expect anyone to have. Bob's book may be our last, best chance to get to know this woman.

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

The 2022 Ed-Vent Calendar, Day 7: Let's recreate Ed and Kathy Wood's first meeting!

Perhaps the ghost of Ernest Holmes still haunts the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles.

If  you've seen Tim Burton's Ed Wood (1994), you might think that Eddie met his wife Kathy in the waiting room of the same hospital where Bela Lugosi was undergoing rehab. In the film, Kathy (as played by Patricia Arquette) is knitting a pair of booties for her ailing father when Ed (Johnny Depp) sidles up to her and starts talking about angora. (Against all odds, this actually works!) Later, Kathy makes a pair of black booties for Bela (Martin Landau). But this story, sweet though it may be, is purely an invention of screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski. As Bob Blackburn, Kathy Wood's co-heir, told me via Facebook:

[When] Kathy read the script and saw that they meet in the waiting area of the asylum, and she was knitting booties, she let out a cackle and said, "I've never knitted booties in my life!" Later, during a get-together, Kathy mentioned that to Scott Alexander, who said he'd written it as an homage to his own grandmother, so Kathy was okay with that. She still laughed about it every time it was mentioned.

According to Kathy herself, she and Ed actually met in church. Well, sort of. You may remember that, as part of yesterday's article, I included an anecdote from Nightmare of Ecstasy (1992) in which Kathy describes seeing Ed for the first time. She said:

I met him once at the Wiltern theater, the Church of Religious Science. They had the Sunday holdings there, and up in the balcony, of course it was dark, and about three seats away from me was this handsome profile. And he passed the collection plate, and the next Sunday, he was there, too. And I never saw him again, just sitting there, three rows away from him. And I kept thinking about him.

Had Kathy not reunited with Ed Wood at the Cameo Room on Sunset Blvd., he might have been to her what the girl in the white dress was to Mr. Bernstein in Citizen Kane (1940). But they did meet up again and went on a decades-long adventure together.

Some of Kathy Wood's story was still puzzling to me. For one thing, the Wiltern Theatre, attached to the Pellissier Building in Los Angeles, is not a church. Named because of its location at the corner of Wilshire and Western in the Koreatown neighborhood, it's been host to all kinds of performances since opening in 1931, including concerts by Tom Petty and Madonna. Like Ed Wood himself, the Wiltern fell into disrepair in the 1970s. Unlike Ed, however, the Wiltern was spared from oblivion and has since been restored to its former glory.

So the Wiltern has been many things to many people over the years. But a church, it ain't. And what the heck is Religious Science anyhow? At first, I thought it might have something to do with Christian Science or maybe even (perish the thought) Scientology, but Religious Science is actually a spiritual movement created by Ernest Holmes (1887-1960), an author and lecturer from Maine who preached that man has the ability to guide his own destiny and that God wants us to be happy and successful. You can understand how a message like this would find a receptive audience in 20th century America.

After migrating West, Holmes started lecturing in Los Angeles in 1916 and kept at it for the rest of his life, moving into bigger venues along the way to accommodate his ever-growing audience. And, yes, the 1,850-seat Wiltern Theatre was one of the places where Ernest Holmes lectured for a time. The culmination of Holmes' career was the construction of the magnificent (and still-standing) Founder's Church of Religious Science at 3281 W. 6th St. in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, he died just a few months after the dedication.

Over the last couple of days, I've been listening to recordings of Ernest Holmes' lectures. They're incredibly soothing and inspiring, and I can easily understand how our Eddie would have been entranced by them. Ernest liked to talk about the power of the imagination and turning our dreams into reality, ideas that Ed would have wholeheartedly agreed with. I even found what is believed to be the only existing footage of an Ernest Holmes lecture. As you watch this, try to imagine you are in the Wiltern balcony with Ed Wood. Can't you just picture Eddie hanging on every word?

I know the picture quality of that last video is a little rough, so I thought I'd include an audio-only Ernest Holmes lecture. Again, I'd like you to sit back, close your eyes, and try to imagine that you are Ed Wood hearing these words in the 1950s. Holmes' lectures all sound pretty much the same, so this is very close to what Ed and Kathy would have heard at the Wiltern all those years ago.

Ed Wood extra: On his 94th birthday, the state of the Ed Wood union is strong

Ed Wood as Alecia in Take It Out in Trade (1970).

Not many of us live to be 94, and Ed Wood didn't even come close. His heart conked out after decades of alcohol abuse when he was 54. So, yes, in a couple of months, we'll be observing the 40th anniversary of his untimely though hardly unexpected passing. He died in poverty and obscurity, mourned by his long-suffering wife Kathy and a handful of longtime friends and professional associates.

Eddie's posthumous career famously took off only two years after he died and has ebbed and flowed in terms of popularity ever since, arguably peaking in the 1990s with the publication of Rudolph Grey's Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1992) and the release of Tim Burton's star-studded biopic Ed Wood (1994). Those events sparked a series of new VHS and DVD editions of Ed's most famous movies. Even a handful of his books came back into print. But Nightmare and Ed Wood came out over two decades ago. How is the Ed Wood cult holding up in 2018?

Ladies and gentlemen, I can safely report that the state of the Ed Wood union is strong. While the last couple of years have witnessed the deaths of such Wood associates as Conrad Brooks, Jacques Descent, and David Ward, they have also witnessed lavish Blu-ray reissues of Wood-scripted films like Orgy of the Dead (1965), The Violent Years (1956), and Fugitive Girls (1974). Ed's own Take It Out in Trade (1970) is finally due to be issued on DVD and Blu-ray this November, nearly half a century after its original release.

Ed Wood-related books continue to pour in as well. Four years ago, Wood superfan Bob Blackburn oversaw the publication of Blood Splatters Quickly: The Collected Stories of Edward D. Wood, Jr. And now, he is completing work on two further anthologies of Eddie's many, many short stories from the 1960s and '70s. Other quintessential Wood volumes from recent years include two books by Gary D. Rhodes and Tom Weaver: Ed Wood's Bride of the Monster (2015) and Ed Wood and the Lost Lugosi Screenplays (2016). The definitive critical tome on Ed's movies remains Rob Craig's Ed Wood, Mad Genius (2009), but more are being written, such as The Cinematic Misadventures of Ed Wood (2015) by Andrew J. Rausch and Charles E. Pratt, Jr.  And then there is James Pontolillo's The Unknown War of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (2017), which sets the record straight on Eddie's war record once and for all.

But what has really changed since the 1990s is the rise of the internet, which has made researching Ed's life and work so much easier. Thanks to Google, Amazon, YouTube, Ebay, etc., Eddie's fans have more access to films, stories, and articles related to the notorious writer-director than ever before. And the advent of social media has allowed his fans, including me, to exchange information and insights about Ed Wood in a way that would have been impossible a few decades ago.

When I first became interested in the Wood cult in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was difficult to find even Eddie's most famous films, like Glen or Glenda (1953) or Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959). No more. Now I have copies of those films and dozens more at my disposal. What has changed? Technology.

Nearly every week, Greg Dziawer knocks me out with some fantastic new discovery he has made in his truly painstaking research into Ed Wood's life and career. While Nightmare of Ecstasy remains a valuable source of information, one in which I am still making new discoveries, Grey's patchwork biography is now profoundly out of date and becomes more so with each passing year, as new information continues to trickle in.

When Ed and Kathy Wood were evicted, penniless, from their Yucca St. apartment in Los Angeles a few weeks before Christmas in 1978, it would seem like Eddie's legacy was in danger of being erased entirely. Four decades later, that legacy has never been more thoroughly documented.