Ed Wood Wednesdays: The Wood/Dziawer Odyssey, Part 15 by Greg Dziawer and W. Paul Apel

Frank Leahy (lower right) arrives at Notre Dame University.

If you've been paying any attention to this series lately, you've surely noted my recent obsession with former Notre Dame head football coach Frank Leahy, the hero of Ed Wood's unproduced biographical screenplay The Frank Leahy Legend (1975). Once a mere footnote in my research on Ed—a strange topic for a script I wrongly assumed to be missing— Frank has become a persistent subject that I can't shake.

Faithful reader W. Paul Apel, who joined me on a recent Ed Wood Summit Podcast to dissect the screenplay, mentioned that he was planning to visit Leahy's grave. "Send me pics," I excitedly said. And so he did. He also penned an anecdote about his visit that I'm happy to share with you. Perhaps this will provide some ritualistic finality, and I'll be able to let go of Frank Leahy. We'll see.

Special thanks to W. Paul Apel for sharing the story of his visit and his pictures of Frank's grave and surrounding environs. I wonder if all of that peace and quiet makes Frank yearn for the sound of rolling thunder across the bleachers at the stadium at South Bend.

Ed Wood Wednesdays: The Ed Wood Summit Podcast #7 by Greg Dziawer and W. Paul Apel

Knute Rockne (left) hands the sacred Notre Dame football program over to Frank Leahy.

The cover to Ed's script.

This week on The Ed Wood Summit Podcast, it was my privilege to speak to Wood superfan W. Paul Apel, whom I met through a private Facebook group. Our topic of conversation was the newly-unearthed screenplay The Frank Leahy Legend, a sports biopic originally written by Ed in the mid-1970s but never actually produced. As you'll soon see from the video, this unusual document provided a lot of fodder for speculation and discussion. Even in a career as varied as Ed Wood's, this script stands out.

As a prelude to the two-hour-plus podcast, however, Paul himself shares his thoughts:

Perhaps one of the most confounding entries on Ed Wood’s resumé is the mysterious unproduced screenplay The Frank Leahy Legend, written for the equally mysterious Scotty Williams Entertainment, and based on a book by the same name by Bernard J. Williams.

Up until now, no Ed Wood experts have read the screenplay or reviewed it, let alone published their findings, but that’s not where the mystery ends. How did Wood, an underdog who wore his quirks on his (angora) sleeve, end up writing about macho, win-at-all-costs Notre Dame coach and Knute Rockne protégé Frank Leahy?

We may never know. However, Greg Diawer and I finally secured a copy of the lost Wood screenplay and thoroughly dissected, reviewed and discussed it here. Now, Woodologists everywhere will finally get a glimpse into this once obscure line on Wood’s resumé and find out if Wood’s irrepressible personality and unique style make it into Leahy’s life story – or if this is ultimately a work for hire, devoid of Woodian weirdness.

Thanks, Paul. And now, on with the show.

Ed Wood Wednesdays: The Wood/Dziawer Odyssey, Part 14 by Greg Dziawer

Notre Dame coach Frank Leahy caught the attention of Ed Wood in the 1970s.

"Show me a gracious loser, and I'll show you a failure."

-Knute Rockne

In post-revolutionary 1837 France, Blessed Father Basil Moreau founded the Congregation of Holy Cross. Within a few years, he sent six Brothers—four of them of Irish descent—to the United States to extend the mission. In 1842, they established the University of Notre Dame du Lac, the first permanent foundation of the Congregation in the United States. Today, you'll recognize this cultural institution simply as Notre Dame.

A little over a hundred years later, in 1946, the Holy Cross Fathers extended their mission to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, They created King's College, a small liberal arts school I attended from 1986 through 1990. Many of my professors were priests, and they were a funny, smart, and encouraging bunch. I received a wonderful education there, and the curiosity they inspired in me then remains with me to this day. The school's connection to Notre Dame was never brought up, nor was football, as the school did not have a team. (It does now, as King's College has grown over time.)

I recognized just how important the legacy of Notre Dame football was to many people, long before I attended King's. When there were only four channels on the television dial, it was hard to avoid college football games on a Saturday. Everyone drank the same Kool Aid. Notre Dame football was a sacred tradition; the program seemed to possess a magical gravitas.

Notre Dame coach Frank Leahy

Ara Parseghian was coaching the Irish in the early '70s when I was a wee lad. Little did I know back then about the storied lineage of Notre Dame football coaches—especially Knute Rockne (1888-1931), the coach to whom all others would be compared. Rockne's life was tragically cut short by a plane crash in March 1931, supposedly while on his way to participate in a film called The Spirit of Notre Dame. At the time of his death, the coach was at the zenith of his powers, having won back to back national championships in 1929 and 1930. 

One of Rockne's tackles during his final three years as coach was a tenacious Nebraskan named Frank Leahy (1908-1973). After his playing days were over, Leahy served as a line coach at Georgetown, Michigan State, and Fordham before becoming head coach at Boston College. Finally, in 1941, he assumed the role of head coach at his beloved alma mater, later ludicrously claiming that "noder dame" were among the first words he ever spoke as a child. At Notre Dame, Leahy shepherded the team to four additional national championships while toiling in Knute Rockne's long shadow. Interestingly, the story of Frank Leahy intersects with that of Edward D. Wood, Jr., the man whose life and work I began strenuously researching about six years ago.

I'd never even heard the name Frank Leahy prior to seeing an undated screenplay called The Frank Leahy Legend listed in a resume that Ed Wood supplied to budding filmmaker Fred Olen Ray in 1978. While the coach's name was unfamiliar to me, Joe Blevins noted at this very blog that Leahy was a Notre Dame football coach and that a book with that title had been released in 1974, the year after Leahy's passing. For years, I accepted this as just about all we would likely ever know. The project was not even mentioned in Rudolph Grey's Nightmare of Ecstasy (1992). The only additional information came from the resume itself. Ed parenthetically noted "Scotty Williams Ent." alongside the listing, suggesting that the film got far enough along to atttract a producer. Unfortunately, that name and production company drew blanks in my searching.