Ed Wood Wednesdays: Ed Wood and the Hollywood Business of "Fake News(papers)" (Guest Author: James Pontolillo)

Did you ever wonder about those fake newspapers in Ed Wood's movies? James did!

Ed Wood's films are celebrated by fans and lambasted by critics alike for their makeshift props and low budget set dressing. But when it came to the use of reproduction newspapers for film inserts, Ed relied on the same industry-standard production house as the big Hollywood studios. Prop newspapers have been used in place of real ones from the earliest days of commercial film since they avoid copyright or legal restrictions while providing a budget-conscious resource for productions that cannot afford to license real products. And the supplier in Hollywood that most everyone has turned to for over a hundred years is the Earl Hays Press, the oldest prop house in existence.

Earl Spindler Hays was born (1892) in Pennsylvania [1]. In 1910 he made the great trek westward and immediately went to work as an apprentice printer in Los Angeles. The accepted history is that in 1915 Earl established a Hollywood print shop specializing in reproductions for the film industry. However, this is not supported by evidence to be gleaned from contemporaneous Los Angeles City Directories.

Instead, from 1910-1921, Earl worked for at least two different companies including J.F. Rowins in 1913 (430 South Broadway, building still exists) and the Western Printing Company in 1917 (631 South Spring Street, redeveloped). The First World War interrupted his career as Earl went off to serve in the U.S. Army Air Service (1917-18). He returned to Los Angeles after the war and resumed employment with the Hugo C. Jacobsmeyer Company (renamed Western Printing), which explicitly produced motion picture supplies. Earl worked as a printer and later as a salesman.

By 1922 Earl had struck out on his own with a small print shop at 5515 Santa Monica Blvd (redeveloped). He specialized in making props for the film industry and, as his business grew in leaps and bounds, repeatedly relocated his shop to larger quarters. In 1926, he moved down the block to 5533 Santa Monica Blvd (still exists). In 1932 he moved the company to 6510 Santa Monica Blvd, a one-story brick building in the heart of Hollywood that would be its home for the next decade [2]. (Current-day location of Dragonfly Hollywood – a hip-hop club which preserved the building's original brickwork and features bottle service reasonably priced at $500 - $1,400 before fees, tips and taxes [3]). 

In 1942 the Earl Hays Press relocated again – this time a few blocks down Santa Monica Blvd and around the corner to 1121 North Las Palmas (redeveloped). By 1944 Earl was employing a press writer and four printers solely dedicated to manufacturing newspapers, magazines and other printed materials for movie studios.

A few kind words about Doctor Dinamite, the mad YouTuber

The funny, interesting, and awesome logo for Doctor Dinamite.

The Doctor's online avatar.

There are many, many, many countdown-style videos on YouTube, but there is only one Doctor Dinamite. As you probably already know, the popular site is positively strewn with documentary-style "infotainment" videos that bombard viewers with obscure (sometimes bogus) trivia, crazy (occasionally dubious-looking) clips, and bizarre (often Photoshopped) images, all of it linked together with quippy commentary and eye-assaulting graphics. If grotesque, unsavory trivia is your thing, especially when combined with snarky narration, YouTube has you covered. Thoroughly. Sometimes, it feels like half of YouTube is devoted to one, big, never-ending episode of Ripley's Believe It Or Not.

So how do you stand out from the crowd? In Doctor Dinamite's case, the answer is: be even crazier than the stuff you're counting down. I don't quite know how to explain the Doctor to you, mainly because I know next to nothing about him. He has a sketchy, near-useless blog and a sketchy, near-useless Twitter account, both of which seemingly exist only to publicize his YouTube videos. When it comes to Doctor Dinamite, the videos are all that really matter. I know nothing of the man behind them or why he does what he does. His official YouTube description only says: "Let's bring a bit of originality in the world of countdowns, where information is copied all over and over again."

So what will you find on the Doctor's channel? Just as his own description implies, it's the same stuff you'll find on most of the other countdown videos and at content-aggregating sites across the web: Photoshop fails, tacky tattoos, dubious parenting choices, photos taken at just the right moment, etc., etc. Typical Internet clickbait. It's the Doctor's personality that makes these videos stand out. I'm not sure what nationality this YouTuber is, perhaps Russian, but his accent is fairly heavy and his approach to the English language is, to put it mildly, idiosyncratic.

His caffeine intake must be substantial, too, because he's an incurable motormouth who seems to have rage issues. His videos often seem like a cross between a used car dealer's desperate sales pitch and a psychotic rant by a street corner weirdo. Watching a Doctor Dinamite video -- or, better yet, watching five or six of them in a row -- is like tuning into a weird Twilight Zone version of the Home Shopping Network at three o'clock in the morning.

I don't have any particular recommendations as to where one should "start" with Doctor Dinamite's videos. They're all pretty much the same. I'll semi-arbitrarily pick "20 photos that will make you mad" as it contains the classic Doctor Dinamite quote: "I hate Harry Potter! But now I hate him even more!" His anger at this moment seems genuine.

Was The Twilight Zone's 'Eye of the Beholder' episode just about lousy doctors?

"I'm sorry, Miss Tyler, but we did all we could... which was absolutely nothing."

It's an episode with which all fans of classic television should be familiar. Written by Rod Serling, "The Eye of the Beholder" first aired as part of CBS' sci-fi anthology series The Twilight Zone on November 11, 1960. It's a classic morality tale with an intriguing switcheroo at the center of its story. In some unnamed and unspecified future society, men and women considered attractive by our modern day standards are extremely rare and deemed hideous outcasts, while people with pig-like snouts, drooping upper lips, and jutting foreheads are held up as the norm.

To make things even worse, all of these people live in a totalitarian society where conformity is the law and deviation is a crime. Using a shadowy, film-noir-esque hospital as its unsettling backdrop, the plot of "Eye of the Beholder" focuses on one unfortunate woman, Janet Tyler (portrayed at various stages in the program by both Maxine Stuart and The Beverly Hillbillies' Donna Douglas), who has undergone countless unsuccessful surgeries to look more like the twisted, monstrous people around her. If her latest procedure does not prove successful, she will have to live in an isolated community with others of her kind, making her essentially a social leper.

The mood of "Eye of the Beholder" is extremely tense, as Janet impatiently waits for doctors to remove the bandages from her face. The lighting, set design, cinematography, music (by Bernard Herrmann), and makeup all combine to give this episode the feel of a nightmare, which helps to explain why it made such a strong impression on viewers.

Decades after its initial airing, the episode was given an elaborate parody on Saturday Night Live, with Pamela Anderson in the Janet Tyler role. Along with being remade for an early 2000s Twilight Zone revival, "Eye of the Beholder" has been referenced on such TV series as The Simpsons, Family Guy, and Futurama. There are even "Eye of the Beholder" action figures from Sideshow Collectibles.

But is it possible that "The Eye of the Beholder" is not about hypocritical beauty standards or the dangers of conformity but rather about doctors who just don't know what the hell they're doing? This is a tricky issue, because one of the most sympathetic characters in the episode is Dr. Bernardi, portrayed by William D. Gordon. Though he tries to be impersonal, the kindly doctor cannot help but sympathize with Miss Tyler and even casts doubt upon the wisdom of an all-powerful ruler known simply as "the Leader," even though he knows it is treasonous to do so. 

All things considered, Dr. Bernardi seems like a nice guy. But I put it to you, dear readers, that he might not be much of a doctor... at least as far as the whole "medicine and surgery" thing is concerned. In one scene, he tries to explain to Janet about the medical community's past failures in her case:

"Up to now, you haven't responded to the shots, the medications, any of the proven techniques. Frankly, you've stumped us, Miss Tyler. Nothing we've done so far has made any difference at all. However, we're very hopeful for what this last treatment may have accomplished. There's no telling, of course, until we get the bandages off."

Actor William D. Gordon recites this speech like an elementary school principal patiently explaining to his students why the field trip to the amusement park has been cancelled in favor of an all-day algebra marathon. So what is the latest "treatment" upon which the good doctor has pinned his -- and Janet's -- hopes? Some vaguely-described "injections," presumably different from the previous "shots" that also failed to work. 

The Twilight Zone tends to be a bummer, so I don't think many viewers were really holding out hope for Janet to turn into a nice, well-adjusted pig lady at the end of the episode. Besides, the prejudiced society she inhabits seems pretty lousy, so we wouldn't want her to conform to it anyway. But, still, Dr. Bernardi's a medical professional, and it's his job to make Elly May Clampett look as much like Arnold Ziffel as possible. So how did he do? Well, let's take a look at the results.

Quite a discrepancy, wouldn't you say?

That, sir, is some lousy doctoring. Did Dr. Bernardi even do anything? Was he the least bit concerned when Janet's eyebags and forehead folds failed to develop? Didn't he notice, even through the bandages, that his patient's nostrils hadn't grown to the size of golf balls? Or that her upper lip hadn't melted down to her chin? Before Janet Tyler packs her bags and takes the short bus to Camp Loserville with fellow freak Walter Smith (Edson Stroll), she might want to make a call to her lawyer. I think she has an open and shut case of medical malpractice here.