Let's revisit Ed Wood's final feature, The Young Marrieds.
The XX Series.
I was scanning through screen captures of 1970s adult loops over the weekend when the thumbnails from one particular movie caught my eye. Although they were in black & white—8mm shorts were commonly sold in either color or black & white—I immediately recognized them as being from Ed Wood's final known feature as a director, The Young Marrieds (1972). Specifically, these images came from a sex scene early in the film in which protagonist Ben, an unsatisfied husband, picks up a strange woman outside of a strip club.
There was a time when The Young Marrieds was essentially unknown. In Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1992), author Rudolph Grey briefly mentions the title but seems unsure if it's a distinct film. On page 192, he writes:
The Only House appears to be the plot of Wood's 1971 film Necromania. At the same time, Wood also made the film The Young Marrieds, which may also be known as The Only House.
Today, we know that The Only House in Town (1971), Necromania (1971), and The Young Marrieds are three separate films.
Decades after Grey's book, two different versionsof The Young Marrieds would turn up on disc. And then came the realization that it had been released in the UK on tape way back in 1981 and that an 8mm short of this very scene was sold in the UK via mail order around the same time. What other iterations derived from The Young Marrieds may still be out there, waiting to be discovered?
For the record, the loop I mentioned at the beginning of the article turned up with the title Nymphomaniac on The XX Series label, a lengthy series of shorts connected to producer Noel Bloom and carrying a 1972 copyright. We discussed one loop in the series previously here, and you can learn more at the indispensable Adult Loop Databasehereand here.
In many of these articles, I merely speculate that Ed Wood may have the directed the loop discussed. In this case, however, it's s a sure thing!
(left) A shot from The Young Marrieds; (right) a print by Rico Tomaso.
I've spent an inordinate amount of time in recent years delving into the set decorations at talent agent Hal Guthu's (now-demolished) little studioon Santa Monica Blvd. in Los Angeles. Interiors for both Necromania (1971) and The Young Marrieds (1972)—generally believed to be the final two features directed by Ed Wood—were shot there, as were many other adult features and loops.
Hal had a variety of props and backdrops that directors could use when they shot at his studio. We've discussed, for instance, the wonderful pather panting, the imperious gold skull, a pair of ubiquitous Chinese Guardian Lions, and more. Items from Guthu's studio show up not only in Ed's two features, but in dozensand dozensof silent 8mm loops.
Two items from The Young Marrieds have long intrigued me: a pair of large paintings that hang above the striped couch in Ben and Ginny's living room. They're a matched set, featuring the same man and woman embracing, and look to be done in charcoal. While I always assumed they were commercially-available prints, I was never able to identify the artist responsible for the originals.
Two groovy prints seen in Ed Wood's The Young Marrieds.
Until now! That artist turns out to be Chicago-born illustrator and painter Rico Tomaso (1898-1985). In the 1920s, Tomaso studied with Robert Henri, a leader of the artistic movement known as the Ashcan School. He served in the Navy during WWII, after which he studied the work of the French Impressionists. He initially rose to prominence in the 1950s, first illustrating ads and soon after drawing covers for popular magazines ranging from men's adventure titles to The Saturday Evening Post. By the '60s, then nearing retirement age, Tomaso turned his attention to commissions and fine art. Unfortunately, he is largely forgotten today.
The pair of paintings in The Young Marrieds hail from the '60s. One of them, at least in an incarnation I have seen, carries this very apt quote at bottom edge: "....and they lived happily ever after?" It's questionable, indeed, if Ben and Ginny's marriage will survive, despite the attempt to revitalize it via swinging.
Before the film's final swinging orgy, we see a set of framed bullfighting images in Jim and Donna's bedroom. While scanning through some work by Tomaso, I stumbled upon some very similar paintings of a matador. The paintings in The Young Marrieds are not by Tomaso but seem to be inspired by his work.
(left) Jim and Donna's bedroom; (right) One of Tomaso's bullfighting prints.
As fun as it is to imagine a group of swingers who also collect Rico Tomaso prints, the truth is no doubt less interesting. Hal Guthu could very well have had a predilection for Tomaso, but it is just as likely that he just happened across these at swap meets and flea markets—which he frequented to find set decorations—and they caught his eye.
One final note: either Ben and Ginny left the paintings behind when they moved or they were already left there by the previous tenant. In any event, you can see one of them hanging above a familiar kitchen sink in the loop The Plummer [sic]. That, like other silent 8mm loops released as part of the M Series, is credited on the clapperboards to a certain Herb Redd and Marv Ellis, who beyond a handful of loops seem to have no other credits.
As we ID more paintings and perhaps find more work by Rico Tomaso hanging on the walls at Guthu's place, we'll report it in future editions of this series.
Special thanks to Shawn Langrick for supplying invaluable details for this article. Be sure to check out his incredible vintage adult media site here. A mini-gallery of Rico Tomaso's artwork can be found here.
This week, Greg takes a look at a rare Rene Bond loop from 1971.
Never a dull moment in 1971?
On October 12,1892, American schoolchildren began reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in classrooms for the first time. Seventy-nine years later to the day, Rod Stewart's "Maggie May" topped singles charts around the world, its lyrics ironically referring to a young man missing school to be with an older lover. Funny how values change over time.
But October 12, 1971 was a day like any other at a building that stood at 7428 Santa Monica Blvd. in Hollywood. At the time, a small studio was situated there, run by talent agent and cinematographer Hal Guthu. For Ed Wood obsessives, Hal's name doubtless rings a bell. He served as the cinematographer on two pornographic features directed by Ed, Take It Out In Trade (1970) and Necromania (1971). Interiors for both of those films were shot at Guthu's studio, as well as hundreds of silent 8mm loops destined to be exhibited in peepshow arcades or in the privacy of customers' homes.
I've spent a lot of time identifying the set decorations that were common to those features. These same decorations also turn up in another of Wood's late-career porno flicks, The Young Marrieds (1972), and they're ubiquitous in numerous other West Coast loops of the era, many of which likely featured some involvement by Ed Wood.
That day in October 1971, prolific adult film actress Rene Bond, the female protagonist in Necromania, arrived at Hal's studio to shoot a loop punningly titled "Lady 'Dike'tor." Guthu was Rene's agent and friend, so the actress worked at Hal's studio often. He rented out his sets to a variety of film companies. It was a smart setup by Hal, with multiple revenue streams. He provided both the girls and the sets, and he could even get behind the camera if needed. His clients shooting there that day were a pair of unknown and forgotten filmmakers, director Herb Redd and cameraman Marv Ellis.
In fact, Redd and Ellis' names might have been lost to time entirely if two of the loops they shot at Hal's studio that day hadn't survived, containing the original clapperboards at the head of the reels. I recently spotted "Lady 'Dike'tor," featuring a pre-breast-enhancement Rene Bond (another clue this is 1971), as the first loop on the Blue Vanities compilation All Lesbian Peepshows #562, released in 1994. A vast trove of vintage loops from the era, the Blue Vanities compilation series started in the '80s and ran to well over 600 volumes, eventually totaling upwards of ten thousand loops. It's a lot to sift through, admittedly, but over and over I always find some little gem connected to Ed Wood.
I was happy to note, for instance, that "Lady 'Dike'tor" was shot on the very same set as the climax of The Young Marrieds. The same blue wall is adorned by recognizable set decs like the lion's head door knocker that greets visitors to Madame Heles' abode in Necromania. And perhaps most awesome of all, as I have rarely seen it elsewhere, the white brick fireplace prop is visible at the right edge of frame.
This week, Greg found a literal pattern in Ed Wood's movies.
I was watching some 1970s adult loops the other night, including a few titles from the early Swedish Erotica series now believed to have been directed by Edward D. Wood, Jr. I've seen these films before, numerous times over, but while viewing loop #16, "Behind the Ate Ball Part II," I noticed something that looked familiar. The sheet on the bed—featuring a floral pattern in pastel colors with a polka-dotted background—matched the pillow cases used by the main characters in Ed Wood's 1972 pornographic feature The Young Marrieds. The garish, distinctive design in pink, green, and orange was unmistakable.
(top) "Behind the Ate Ball"; (bottom) The Young Marrieds.
Naturally, I pulled up The Young Marrieds for comparison and verified that it was indeed the same pattern. Could it even be the same set, split up in two different places? Finding this connection reminded me of the existence of the pair of Guardian Lion statues that popped up repeatedly in Ed Wood's films. Not only do they appear in The Young Marrieds and 1971's Necromania, but in dozens of related loops from that era.
In writing about these props in an earlier article, I had briefly mentioned that the familiar lions even turn up in Ed Wood's 1955 film Bride of the Monster. Upon closer inspection, they look eerily like the exact same pair, over 15 years earlier! If you watch the colorized version of Bride from Legend Films, these props are easier to spot. In fact, they turn up in three different places sporadically throughout the film. You can find the lions in Harvey B. Dunn's office:
Can you spot the lions on the shelf?
On a filing cabinet next to Paul Marco's desk:
Can you spot the lions on the filing cabinet.
And on the mantle at the old Willows place.
Can you spot the lions on the mantle?
What does it all mean? The puzzle will one day reveal itself.
Ed Wood dedicated his final film to documenting the sex lives of the younger generation.
Ed Wood's last stand as a feature film director.
This week, I am again turning my attention to Ed Wood's last-known feature, a hardcore pornographic film from 1972 called The Young Marrieds. There's a lot to talk about here. For instance, I've already discussed the movie's various releases on home video as well as some of its Los Angeles filming locations. This time, however, it's the movie's very title that concerns me.
Every now and then, that rather odd turn of phrase—"young marrieds"—piques my curiosity and sends me on a search. This particular pairing of words remains sparsely used in the English lexicon, with most appearances clustered from the mid-1960s through the early '70s. It is quite uncommon today even to see "marrieds" used as a plural noun. But, half a century or so ago, the term "young marrieds" popped up in a fair number of newspaper articles and ads and was even used as the title ofa 1961 novelby Judith Heiman.
Back then, the press identified young marrieds as a large and promising consumer base, marked by their increased likelihood of possessing college educations and their subsequently enhanced earning power. Having come of age during the postwar Populuxe era of the 1950s, these youngsters seemed poised to buy even more than their parents' generation had. The natural flip side to this acquisitiveness—and a theme commonly addressed in the popular literature of the time—is that young marrieds would accrue debt beyond their means. And so they did, but not before Ed Wood named a movie in their honor.
Never a man with great financial acumen, Ed typically throws socioeconomics to the wayside in The Young Marrieds, instead exploring the sexual hang-ups of the new generation, whose members were far better situated in those permissive times to explore their sexuality than their more conservative forebears.
Judging by these 1960s clippings, "young marrieds" were the millennials of their day.
Title card from the ABC soap opera.
All of this is mere preamble to a surprising discovery I made only recently: from 1964 to 1966, ABC ran a black-and-white soap opera called (you guessed it!) The Young Marrieds. Depending on which source you believe, the series lasted either 380 or 382 half-hour episodes. I suspect this connection had already been made by other Woodologists but had somehow slipped past me, unnoticed or unreckoned, until just now.
Be that as it may, the now-forgotten show ran mostly in late morning time slots (plus a few afternoons) on ABC affiliates across the country. It was a spin-off, in fact, of the massively popular General Hospital, which still airs today as one of the last surviving soaps on network television. The Young Marrieds took place in the fictional town of Queen's Point, a suburb of GH's mythical Port Charles. Still to this day on General Hospital, the occasional character hailing from Queen's Point will pass through Port Charles. Otherwise, once it was cancelled, The Young Marrieds seems to have entirely disappeared in the ether of the pop culture, never to be re-aired. The UCLA Film and Television Archives holds a mere seven episodes, likely all that remains of the series. When Ed Wood made a movie called The Young Marrieds in 1972, the ABC series of the same name would have been just barely visible in the nation's rear view mirror.
By 1973, however, this new generation of young marrieds was already beginning to decline as a sociological and economic force, their higher divorce rates and lower birth rates foiling the hopes of the corporations. The term would all but disappear from use by the mid-'70s, and those same corporations would adapt by learning to profit from debt, a proven business model as it remains sustainable to this day.
It seems of little sociological significance, in retrospect, that an aging pornographer appropriated the term "young marrieds" for his final, ignoble feature. More telling, perhaps, the title could explain the crazy scene in Ed's movie in which frustrated housewife Ginny (Alice Friedland) masturbates while watching a soap opera in her living room. The fact that there really was a soap opera called The Young Marrieds makes this scene an irreverent inside joke. And, given this Wikipedia summary of the series, there seems to be yet another direct link between the TV show and the movie, since both feature characters with the surname Garrett. To wit:
The Young Marrieds focused on the conflicts between three married couples in the suburban community of Queen's Point. Dr. Dan Garrett and his wife Susan Garrett, commercial artist Walter Reynolds and his wife Ann Reynolds, and Matt Stevens and Liz Stevens, a young couple who were engaged and ready to begin their married life together.
Featuring just a handful of actors whose names are still recognizable today—including Charles Grodin, Ted Knight and Lee Meriwether—The Young Marrieds ended its abbreviated run on ABC with an unresolved cliffhanger. This is appropriate, since Ed's film, too, ends on a note of uncertainty. Namely, would-be suburban swinger Ben Garrett (Dick Burns, aka Louis Wolf) has to decide whether to engage in homosexual activity at an orgy or just walk away.
We'll never know Ben's ultimate decision. What's your guess?
P.S. This 1964 ABC promo reel includes some footage from The Young Marrieds. And keep an eye out for Ed Wood regular Timothy Farrell (Glen or Glenda, The Violent Years, Jail Bait), appearing on the likewise forgotten Day in Court.
When we examine the films Ed Wood worked on in some capacity during his final decade—plus the ones we think he might have worked on—we see how often they intersect through their set decorations. There are distinctive props, furnishings, and wall hangings that turn up again and again in these 1970s adult movies.
I've already covered several of these decorations previously. For instance, there are the Chinese guardian lions and the lion's head door knocker that show up in Necromania and The Young Marrieds, two feature films directed by Ed, as well as in numerous silent 8mm loops. Then there's the black velvet painting of a panther descending a stone staircase. And let's not forget the infamous gold and white skull.
Some of these set decorations serve as signposts to the alert viewer that a particular movie was made at Hal Guthu's studio set on Santa Monica Blvd. That's not always a guarantee, though, that Ed Wood was involved. I've seen some films and loops that feature items from those sets but likely have nothing to do with Ed. However, the lion's share (no pun intended) of these set decorations strongly suggest that Ed Wood was involved in a production.
This week, I'm going to follow an item I first noticed in Necromania. I traced this item first to another one of Ed Wood's features and finally to a mysterious but intriguing loop.
Ed's feature film Necromania is rife with items that turn up in other movies. It was only recently, while watching the outtakes of Take It Out In Trade, that an item from Necromania I had not spotted previously caught my eye. In Necromania, when Danny (Ric Lutze) and Shirley (Rene Bond) enter Madame Heles' place at the outset of the story, there stands a small piece of bronze decorative statuary just inside the door, sitting on the floor in the lower right corner of the screen. It's a squat, bulbous thing maybe about a foot and a half high. In the Trade outtakes, during a shot of a travel poster, two such bronze statues appear in the bottom left and right corners of the screen, indicating they were a pair.
Bronze statues in (from left): Cafe Lust, Necromania, and Take It Out In Trade.
The real question, as always, is: Was Ed Wood involved in this loop? The circumstantial evidence suggests that he was, but that's still just an inference. We're close, without a doubt, but there remains more work to do.
Plenty of time to get some popcorn at the refreshment stand.
Things are happening, folks. Exciting things that I can't wait to share with you.
I have a lot of upcoming articles in the works for Ed Wood Wednesdays. In fact, I have too many balls thrown in the air! As we wait for one to come down, I'd like to preview just some of the topics I'll be covering in the coming weeks and months.
Ed Wood's career in sponsored and industrial films has gone largely undocumented until now. In addition to discussing Eddie's work with Story-Ad Films in the late 1940s, I'll detail the nature of the closed circuit live television broadcasts that Ed listed on his resume, while working at Autonetics at the dawn of the '60s.
An article from the Poughkeepsie Journal, September 18, 1949.
I'll also be covering the distribution history of the final four films that Ed is known to have directed in the 1970s: Take It Out In Trade, The Only House in Town, Necromania, and The Young Marrieds. All four of these adult movies made the rounds before disappearing into decades-long obscurity. We'll find out where and when they played, and ID the films they were paired with. It's quite a wild story. The Young Marrieds, for instance, was astonishingly still playing in theaters into the early 1980s! But more on that to come.
An ad for Take It Out in Trade.
In addition, I'll take a closer look at a couple of vital figures from Ed Wood's past: Eddie's young brother Howard William Wood (who typically went by William) and his close friend from high school and beyond, George Keseg.
The unseen garage-cinema of Ed and Bela(1986) will finally get its due. Ahead of its time in more than ways than one, this biographical short film's interpretation of Bela Lugosi eerily anticipates Martin Landau's award-winning performance in Tim Burton's Hollywood biopic Ed Wood (1994).
If that isn't enough to get your attention, I'll also be attempting the most comprehensive index yet of Tor Johnson's wrestling matches.
Tor with hair, 1936.
All this and much more awaits you, true believer, right here at Ed Wood Wednesdays. Whatever you do, keep watching this space for updates!
Greg Dziawer's personal copy of The Young Marrieds.
Where's Ed Wood in this thing?
Time flies. Not the most original sentiment, perhaps, but undoubtedly a truism if one lives long enough. I'll be turning 50 in less than three weeks. If I survive just half a decade more, I'll have outlived Edward D. Wood, Jr., the subject of this series. My AARP card even came in the mail last week. I've arrived!
Truthfully, the realization that I'm now over the hump, moving down the other side of the proverbial hill, has increasingly occupied my thoughts in recent years. For a long time, I've found Maslow's hierarchy of needs a viable framework. And although I've long understood—or at least had my own interpretation of—self-actualization, it's only recently that I've come to feel legacy needs. For me, that has taken the shape of writing these articles about Ed Wood over the past two and a half years. Through them, I've endeavored to amplify and extend Ed's legacy. I even crafted my own three-tiered mission statement a few years back.
Recognize Ed as an outsider artist.
Index Ed fully. And, no, that's not impossible.
Access Ed's work. Clamor for it. It won't rediscover itself.
Last May, thanks to the immense generosity of Vinegar Syndromeco-founder Joe Rubin, I was lucky enough to get my hands on an actual 16mm print of Ed's last-known feature, The Young Marrieds. (The details of obtaining this rare print are another story.) A copy of this 1972 porno film had been discovered more than a decade earlier and identified, perhaps for the first time, as Ed Wood's work by my good friend, self-styled porn archaeologist Dimitrios Otis. Since that watershed moment in Woodology, more prints have emerged—I know of at least six in existence—and The Young Marrieds has been released multiple times on DVD. It can even be streamed over the internet.
Keith Crocker at home.
Soon after getting my print of The Young Marrieds, I e-mailed another good friend, Long Island cult film schlock-teur Keith Crocker, the demented genius behind The Bloody Ape and Blitzkrieg: Escape from Stalag 69, to tell him of my good fortune. Keith graciously offered to host a private screening of the print and invite a small audience. He also proposed that we introduce the film and follow it with a Q&A. I was, naturally, tickled pink.
We both had a busy summer, but finally the day came. On the last Saturday in August, I hopped in my car and put the big plastic canister containing The Young Marrieds on the back seat and hit the road for Long Island. The guests would be arriving around 7pm, Keith told me, and we planned to eat first and have a few drinks before retiring to the screening room. I live in Northeast Pennsylvania, and the drive took considerably longer than I expected, especially once I crossed the George Washington Bridge. There was a lot more traffic than one would expect for a Saturday afternoon. To make matters worse, the GPS kept recalculating my route owing to accidents.
But I finally arrived at Keith's place, where my wonderful host and his wife Christina cooked a too-late lunch on the grill. Keith and I then went to work cleaning the print. In one of those "duh!" moments that seem to become more frequent as I get older, I had previously neglected to mention that my copy of film was on a core, not on reels that could be threaded into a projector.
Time now started proving tight as Keith cleaned the film, spliced it, and wound it onto two reels. The hand-lettered leader was curiously dated 1981, the same year The Young Marrieds was first released on videotape in the UK, sans any attribution to Ed Wood. Amid a bit of confusion and some related profanity, we ended up winding the film back and forth a few times, the clock ticking, until we got it right. With no time to spare, we finished just as the first guest arrived at Keith's place.
A copy of The Young Marrieds.
In all, we had a crowd of eight people, including a few students from Keith's film class, a fun and smart bunch who knew their exploitation films well. None, though, had ever seen The Young Marrieds. We ate, talked, and drank before we finally retired to the screening room, where Keith had placed several exhibits, including some 8mm Swedish Erotica films now attributed to Ed Wood and some books and magazines related to Ed.
Among the paperbacks was the 1971 sex education manual The Young Marrieds by Benjamin Blatkin. Billed as "a photographic study of the marital habits of the younger generation," this book was published by Pendulum and carried the company's Atlanta address inside. Although this volume was not actually written by Ed Wood, its orbital proximity to Ed's career and the fact that it shares a title with one of his movies make it an interesting related artifact nevertheless. I'd brought along one of my two copies to give Keith as a gift. But since he already owned it, Keith suggested we give the extra copy away as a prize. Together, he and I agreed on a suitable trivia question to determine who would win the book: What does the sign outside the strip club say?
As Keith began his introduction to the screening, I was feeling very relaxed and comfortable. I was a few drinks in by that point, and there was a congenial atmosphere with good company as we all prepared to watch an early '70s pornographic film. This wasn't my first rodeo, so to speak. In my high school days, my friends and I would occasionally cut class to visit a small local porno theater. We got a kick out of watching the old guys jerking off in there.
That said, it had been 30 years since I'd watched a porn film with a group this large. More importantly, I was about to screen The Young Marrieds theatrically with an audience, an extremely rare occurrence these days. Keith and I introduced the film, then fielded questions. The audience proved to be a highly engaged bunch with plenty of insights, opinions, and inquiries. As the movie began and I settled down in the back of the screening room, I was a bit surprised to realize that our intro had taken a full half hour.
See no evil? A small crowd, including Greg Dziawer (center), in the screening room of Keith Crocker.
The audience laughed raucously and commented out loud throughout The Young Marrieds. Afterward, Keith led a follow-up discussion lasting well over an hour, far longer than the film itself. We laughed again, noting that the movie's protagonist Ben always gets the primo parking spot right outside the strip club he frequents. It was observed—and not for the first time—that Ben's climactic moment of decision in the film evokes a Twilight Zone-like turnabout.
We also talked about the numerous set decorations shared by The Young Marrieds with 8mm porn loopsfrom the same era. While discussing the loops, I made a straight-faced reference to their dreamlike quality, again comparing these short pornographic films to the works of experimental directors like Stan Brakhage and Maya Deren.
And, yes, one lucky winner went home with a paperback copy of The Young Marrieds. The closest answer was: "Something about a computer." Fairly astute, considering how quickly that sign flashes by.
Looking back on this wonderful evening, it was one of the most memorable experiences I've had in the last year. Or any year. Enjoying Ed's work with a like-minded crowd will validate your obsession, believe me. And if you know a like-minded crowd who would like an Ed-perience of this sort, let me know. This host comes free and works best with complimentary drinks.
BONUS:Some images from this event have been posted to the Ed Wood Wednesdays Tumblr. Enjoy.
At the penultimate moment of Edward D. Wood Jr.'s 1971 pornographic feature The Young Marrieds, Ben (the film's neurotic, homophobic protagonist) is asked point-blank by his friend and coworker: "Whatsamatter, Ben? Haven't you ever sucked cock before?" The heterosexual swinger orgy now ended, Ben must make a decision.
A rapid montage of images of nude men entangled flits across his mind. In the first image, something seemed familiar to me. The model on the right. Even with his face turned away from the camera, and only his side exposed, I recognized him.
It was a little over a year ago when I first encountered Eduardo. At first, I knew him as a model in the gay-themed Pendulum magazines, showing up in photo features. Earlier this year, I watched Sex and Astrology, a transition-era soft-to-hard sex film from 1970. Purportedly exploring the sexual aspects of the Signs of the Zodiac. The Aquarian, the 11th sign (the next to last scene in the film), performs with a python, in the nude, a sexually suggestive dance. I recognized the performer right away as Eduardo.
Picking around independently of Eduardo or Ed and related matters, I recently came across a string of (mostly) full-page advertisements for Eduardo's services as Master Barber. Apart from apparently working nude, his name in the ads is in an identically elaborate font ubiquitous in the Pendulum mags of the time.
We'll continue to work our tails off here At Ed Wood Wednesdays in the future, striving to identify other models in the images that taunt Ben.
This distinctive door knocker plays a key role in Ed Wood history.
The Kitchen Sink
A kitchen sink from Two's Better Than One.
I confess. I'm obsessed with porn loops. Specifically 8mm porn loops from the early '70s that share commonalities with the last two known features directed by Edward D. Wood, Jr. Necromania and The Young Marriedswere both produced by Cinema Classics, headed by a young man named Noel Bloom. Noel's dad, publisher Bernie Bloom, was Ed Wood's boss at a variety of magazine imprints for the better part of the last decade of Ed's life. The set decorations in those two films overlapfrequently with each other. They also overlap with dozens if not hundreds of porn loops from the early '70s.
While Swedish Erotica remains the best known of myriad series of Bloom-related loops, a sister series called Danish International Films not only shares set decorations with the early Swedish Erotica loops and those two features, but also a common language of cinematic tropes. The dissolve edits and, especially, seemingly endless shots of characters walking into and away from the camera—or even sometimes thrusting objects into the camera, handed to a receiver in the reverse shot.
We cut to her entering her apartment with a grocery bag. She enters the kitchen and sets the bag down on the sink. There's a cylindrical red lamp on the sink. Odd place for a lamp. But wait! That lamp looks familiar. And there's a wall hanging above the sink, a large number 5 in a white circle, a la a billiard ball, against a red background. That wall hanging looks familiar, too, from other loops. Hmm. The left-hand wall of the set is brown paneling and also appears familiar.
The kitchen sink from The Young Marrieds.
Then it finally dawned on me: The kitchen sink itself is the very same dark brown sink, shot from a near-identical angle, as the sink in Ben and Ginny's kitchen in The Young Marrieds. It's the very same set, as a matter of fact, just dressed differently.
Of course, this is merely the lead-in to any porn loop's raison d'etre: sex. In this case, as the title implies, it's a threesome. The two gentlemen show up, they move to her bedroom, and the action ensues. There in the bedroom, we spot more familiar set decorations: a painting on the wall, a pillow, a blanket. We even get two money shots.
A metal grate from Necromania.
But let's go back a second to that kitchen. There's something missing. In The Young Marrieds, there's a decoration on the left-hand wall, a lion's head. Where did it disappear to? I know! It's also hanging on the door of Madame Heles' place in Necromania, there serving its actual purpose as a door-knocker.
And that number 5 wall hanging above the sink, repurposed elsewhere, is also missing. In The Young Marrieds, there's a metal grate above the "window" with beautiful pink curtains matching Ginny's lingerie. Where did it go? I know! My friend Dimitrios Otis, self-styled porn archaeologist who put two and two together and Ed-tribute The Young Marrieds to Ed Wood, reminded me that it's there in the hallway at the beginning of Necromania. It shows up elsewhere, too, in the Bloom-related loops.
We've asked a lot of questions this week, most of them rhetorical. And we'll continue asking questions. Where were these loops shot? And who made them? Who printed them and who distributed them? And, most importantly, just how does Ed Wood fit into the picture? We'll answer these questions and more, as we continue falling headlong into the loops, right here at Ed Wood Wednesdays.
Alice Friedland was available in Betmamax and VHS in 1981.
Video Killed the Loop Star
Young Marrieds on VHS
Previously at Ed Wood Wednesdays,we shared a page scan from a 1981 UK adult mag titled Tip Top. That scan was an ad for mail-order loops—quite late in the game, as tape was rapidly taking over—that included a loop derived from Ed Wood's last-known film as a director, 1972's The Young Marrieds.
In this week's Young Marrieds Odyssey, we're travelling to the UK once again, bearing witness to the box cover from a nearly-forgotten tape release of The Young Marrieds and speculating on its ties to that magazine loop ad.
Videotape quickly became the norm in the 1980s. Cheap exploitation films flourished on the medium. In the UK, a company called Dapon released a clutch of low-budget sex films on both VHS and Betamax in 1981. Among them: The Young Marrieds, presumably like the rest shorn of any hardcore content, although the majority of titles were transition-era softcore circa 1970-1971. Three films released on tape by Dapon in this cluster were produced by Jack Descent (Agent 69, The Family, and Love from Paris) although Jack recently told me that he had no recollection of this release. It was Joe Rubin of Vinegar Syndromewho pointed me at the site listing for the Dapon video releases. Identifying a crossover point, Joe noted that the tapes released by Dapon were, concurrently, excerpted for the loop home market. We may never know how, but Golbek Sales, the company selling the loops, must have had some affiliation with the tape distributor Dapon.
Ben exits the Nude A Go Go in Ed Wood's The Young Marrieds.
Loser of the Week
Sportscaster Stu Nahan
I remember Stu Nahan (1926-2007) as one of the color commentators in the Rocky films. Not yet in my teens, I don't think it occurred to me that Stu Nahan was essentially playing himself. For the better part of 30 years, from the 1970s through the '90s, Stu was a sports anchor in the Los Angeles television market. Early on, he appears to have had a bad week in the local press, the very same week that Ed Wood and crew were shooting the exterior location of the strip club in The Young Marrieds.
In this week's Ed Wood Wednesdays, we're taking a trip down La Cienega Blvd in West Hollywood, circa spring 1971.
I'm sure many of you noticed the two moments in The Young Marrieds when Ben exits the strip club, and quickly rushing by behind him as the camera follows him, we see a sign on the building. The club, as identified by Joe Blevins previously hereat Ed Wood Wednesdays, is the Nude A Go Go. We can make out part of the sign to the right of the entrance in the first shot of Ben exiting, and the sign to the left of the door reads:
LOSER OF THE WEEK
STU NAHAN
AND HIS COMPUTER
Not sure what this meant exactly, I inferred it might have something to do with Stu having made a sports prediction (or predictions) with a computer, obviously novel at the time. The prediction(s) must have been wrong, and were likely regarding an LA team, as the proprietors of the Nude A Go Go saw fit to dub Stu their Loser of the Week. Incidentally, the sign also listed Fidel Castro and Richard Nixon among its losers of the week. But what was this all about?
Dig those dandy lions: Some interesting set decorations from Ed Wood's Necromania.
A pair of "Foo Dogs."
A new year seems a good time to start a new Odyssey. And truth be told, the set decorations in Ed Wood's films had preoccupied me—obsessed me, in fact—or the better part of the last half of 2016.
In this week's Ed Wood Wednesdays, we're beginning a journey into the next level of Ed-phemera. Beyond creditsand collaborators, beyond paperbacksand Poughkeepsie, beyond all sanity, there lies the inanimate objects decorating sets in films involving Ed.
Set decorations, in common usage, are there to assist in creating verisimilitude, a semblance of reality. When a headstone in a cemetery falls over and calls attention to itself, the illusion of reality is utterly shattered. When those objects become most invisible is often when they are most successful. I don't know how many times I had watched The Young Marrieds before I finally grasped it, consciously aware of it and not just experiencing it as a functionally invisible set decoration. In retrospect, maybe it wasn't even me who noticed it—and certainly not in the bigger picture—as porn archaeologist Dimitrios Otis had brought up the subject of set decoration in Ed's work to me numerous times. And right here at Ed Wood Wednesdays, Joe Blevins previously noted set decoration in his brilliantly exhaustive article about The Young Marrieds. However the idea got into my head, there came an eventual moment when, watching the film, I truly saw the objects for the first time.
The statue upon the dresser along the right-hand wall in Ben and Ginny's bedroom in The Young Marrieds finally clawed its way into my consciousness. For a bit, not really thinking it through, I mistakenly thought it had a resemblance to a tiki idol. Just as I quickly came to my senses, a gracious poster in a private Ed Wood forum politely set me straight, informing me that it is a Chinese Imperial Guardian Lion.
From Wikipedia:
Since the introduction of the lion symbolism from Indian culture especially through Buddhist symbolism, statues of guardian lions have traditionally stood in front of Chinese Imperial palaces, Imperial tombs, government offices, temples, and the homes of government officials and the wealthy, from the Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220), and were believed to have powerful mythic protective benefits. They are also used in other artistic contexts, for example on door-knockers, and in pottery. Pairs of guardian lion statues are still common decorative and symbolic elements at the entrances to restaurants, hotels, supermarkets and other structures, with one sitting on each side of the entrance, in China and in other places around the world where the Chinese people have immigrated and settled, especially in local Chinatowns.
These lions, sometimes referred to by Westerners as "Foo Dogs," are usually depicted in pairs. When used as statuary, the pair would consist of a male leaning his paw upon an embroidered ball (in imperial contexts, representing supremacy over the world ) and a female restraining a playful cub that is on its back (representing nurture).
Is there meant to be symbolism, the lions guarding the marital bed? If so, they are doing a poor job, sitting idly by as Ben and Ginny's marriage is sorely tested.
A lion (far right) shows up in The Young Marrieds, guarding the marital bed.
A fascination with these lions now set ablaze, I then saw them again for the first time, upon an umpteenth viewing of Necromania. Perhaps I am the last to the party and this was obvious to all, but for me, it was a revelation. Once again, they guard a bed occupied by the married protagonists. Their marriage also crumbling, the Guardians bear mute witness.
While that reading might sound plausible, and a readerly text produces a unique, shared meaning while being experienced, in all likelihood it's just another set decoration from storage, on hand at the studio. Why do I think this?
As I've poured through 8mm SoCal porn loops, looking for clues of Ed's involvement, the Foo Dog(s) turn up again and again. The usage is often the same as in The Young Marrieds and Necromania, another piece of bric-Ã -brac as aesthetic enhancement. Yet there are times that I often feel that one of the lions is placed this way or that for a reason, seeming to judge these debauched and morally vacant couples, a new breed capable of exchanging mere words at the car wash before quickly arranging a hook-up via black rotary phones, ending in a male-fantasy facial. When I spot one of the statues now, I refer to it—in a "Bela-Lugosi-as-God" whisper—as The Guardian.
Ah, yesss...The Guardian....
The lions have supporting roles in Necromania.
In future episodes of the Wood Set Decoration Odyssey, we'll revisit this curious pair of lions, and shine a light on numerous pairs of table lamps. We'll stare at furniture, ashtrays, wall hangings, blankets and pillows, all the while looking at everything except the sex. Nothing else is safe from our scrutiny.
And in case you're wondering what all of this has to do with Ed Wood and why any of it even matters, just be patient. All shall be revealed to those pure of heart.
P.S. Incredibly, I found Chinese Imperial Guardian Lions in Bride of the Monster (1955). Officer Kelton (Paul Marco) has them in on the shelf behind his desk. You can see them behind drunk Ben Frommer.
Guardian Lions in Bride of the Monster (1955)
Bonus: A gallery of Chinese Imperial Guardian Lions has been added to the Ed Wood Wednesdays Tumblr.
