Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 283: 'Edward D. Wood, Jr.: A Man and His Films' (1981) [PART 2]

Ed Wood (center, cowering) in the nightmare sequence from Glen or Glenda.

This time last week, we were talking about Edward D. Wood, Jr.: A Man and His Films, a surprisingly thorough 1981 chapbook about Eddie's strange life and career created by two very dedicated California fans, Randy Simon and Harold Benjamin. These young men conducted their research at a time when there were no books about Ed Wood on the market and Eddie's movies weren't even readily available on home video. The acknowledgements page suggests that Randy and Harold may have contacted some of Eddie's family, friends, and professional associates in assembling their booklet.

We'd only gotten as far as the book's capsule biography of Ed Wood, namely because I'd gotten bogged down in discussing how much of it was true and how much of it wasn't. But now, we get into the heart of A Man and His Films: a discussion of Eddie's filmography. The authors have divided this material into several sections: The Major Films (four movies), The Lesser Known Films (five movies), and The Lost Films (two movies, one unreleased and one unproduced). This gives you an idea of how well-documented Eddie's career was in 1981 and how much was still unknown to the public.

So what are Eddie's "major films"? The authors list just four: Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957), Bride of the Monster (1955), Glen or Glenda (1953), and Jail Bait (1954). (And, yeah, they're in that order for some reason.) Remember, at this time, Night of the Ghouls (1959) aka Revenge of the Dead had not been rediscovered and released on home video. So if you wanted some classic 1950s Ed, you really only had those first four features to go by.

Ed Wood Wednesdays: The Wood Paperback Odyssey, Part Five by Greg Dziawer

The elusive T.K. Peters, sometimes misidentified as Ed Wood.

Encyclopedia of Sex ad

As I prepared to write this week's Ed Wood Wednesdays article, I decided to do a quick search of eBay, to see if the old myth of Dr. T.K. Peters being a pseudonym of Ed Wood still persists. You guessed it (merely one example, sadly). Apart from inflating prices, it continues to muddy the waters of Woodology, this muddying now its own niche within the larger spectrum. Dr. T.K. Peters was real, and we'll refute some counter-claims that his esteemed name was "borrowed" from the real "Kim" in future Ed Wood Wednesdays.

In the past, Pendulum Publishers, Inc. and its myriad offshoot imprints (covered ad nauseam in previous posts) published two series of photo-illustrated sexual paperbacks in the early 1970s, sourced from the comprehensive sexual study by Dr. T.K. Peters that he sold to Pendulum boss Bernie Bloom (itself rooted in his work as a marriage counselor in Atlanta from 1950 through 1965, following his retirement from Oglethorpe University...but that's another story that WILL be told). 

Fully three-fourths of the Peters' titles constituted SECS Press' (an unincorporated Pendulum imprint) Encyclopedia of Sex, the rest being the Sexual Enlightenment Series published under the Calga imprint, unleashed just on the cusp of legal, accessible and affordable hardcore sexual imagery via multi-media. For some alchemical reason, the censorship damn bursting encouraged a propensity toward the weird, the extreme and the just plain fucking nuts. In all, between Ed's own resume and an additional few titles in his collection with title-page inscriptions by him, Ed wrote or co-wrote roughly 25% of the Peters paperbacks. That index, too, is another story. Suffice to say that Ed's cohort on West Pico in the Pendulum mag office played a large role in the Pendulum Peters canon. Ed collaborated with fellow staffers Charles D. Anderson and Leo Eaton. William D. "Bill" Jones produced Peters, and so did Robin "Redbreast" Eagle. They did this under a slew of pseudonyms, one of them, Norman Bates, still falsely claimed a pseudonym of Ed. It's impossible to talk about T.K. Peters without running into these clumsy mis-Ed-tributions. That's a charitable statement and I'll leave it at that.

Ed Wood Wednesdays: The Lost Greg Javer/Keith Crocker Commentaries [PART ONE]

Keith and Greg talk Ed. (Header image by Brendon Sibley.)

Not long before he died, Greg Javer (aka Greg Dziawer) contributed some commentary tracks to the deluxe three-disc collection Hard Wood: The Adult Features of Ed Wood (2024) from Severin Films. Looking back, this was one of the last major Wood-related projects of Greg's too-brief life. If you purchase that set, you can hear him give his thoughts on Necromania (1971), The Only House in Town (1971), and The Young Marrieds (1972). If you're missing Greg, and I know many of you are, these tracks allow you to spend some time with him.

But these were not the only recordings Greg made for Hard Wood. He and I, for example, recorded a jovial and hopefully informative commentary for the rowdy, rural comedy Shotgun Wedding (1963), which Eddie scripted for director Boris Petroff. Unfortunately, that track got lost in the shuffle and never made it into the finished set. If you're interested in hearing it, I have made it available in a previous blog entry.

Meanwhile, teaming up with film historian Keith Crocker, Greg recorded commentary tracks for six (!) of the adult loops that Ed Wood made as part of the Swedish Erotica series in the early 1970s. These, too, were unfortunately lost in the shuffle and did not make it into Hard Wood. But fear not! Recently, reader Brendon Sibley forwarded these tracks to me and asked for me to present them on my blog. How could I resist an offer like that? 

In fact, I will devote this week and next to the lost Javer/Crocker commentaries. Three this week, three next week. Does that sound like a plan? For obvious reasons, I cannot present the loops without some visual distortion. YouTube has very little sense of humor about these things.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 230: The Mortician's Tale (1966-1968)

Something about this particular story must have really captured Ed Wood's imagination.

Early in Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), a psychotic hitchhiker (Ed Neal) explains to a vanload of horrified hippies how the delicacy known as "head cheese" is made:

They take the head [of the cow] and they boil it, except for the tongue, and they scrape all the flesh away from the bone. They use everything. They don't throw nothing away. They use the jowls and the muscles and the eyes and the ligaments and everything! From the nose and the gums and all the flesh, and they boil it down into a big jelly of fats!

Ed Neal as the hitchhiker.

Ed Wood could definitely relate to this. Both his films and his writings have that distinct "head cheese" quality to them. If Eddie could help it, he didn't throw anything away either. He'd shamelessly recycle dialogue, plots, character names, and whatever he had on hand. He was so frugal that he edited footage from three separate, failed projects into his film Night of the Ghouls (1959) even though most of it clearly didn't belong there. And he'd occasionally publish short stories that were thin rewrites of stories he'd published only months before! In summary, he just took all the material he had available to him, the jowls and ligaments, and boiled it down into a big jelly of fats. Waste not, want not.

There is one particular plot that turns up at least three times in Ed Wood's literary canon, and it's a perfect metaphor for how Eddie worked. It tells of a disreputable mortician who bilks grieving families out of their money and blatantly abuses the helpless corpses placed in his care, sometimes for profit, sometimes just for fun. To put it mildly, this guy is a real scumbag: a liar, a thief, a necrophile, and a desecrator of graves. Even though he is eventually found out and must face the consequences of his actions, his story still leaves us with a feeling of disgust. And Ed Wood kept returning to that story! I wouldn't be surprised if it turns up in more places that I just haven't found yet! But why? What, exactly, was the appeal of this story?

Well, let's examine it. As far as I know, we first meet this dastardly scoundrel in Chapter Twelve of Orgy of the Dead (Greenleaf, 1966), Ed Wood's patchwork novelization of his film script from the previous year. As I explained in my review of that book, the mortician is just one of the deceased individuals being judged by the Emperor, a mysterious cloaked figure who rules over the underworld and who holds court in a spooky cemetery on a moonlit night. Most of the other "defendants" in the novel are imported from Wood's short stories, but our mortician friend is a new creation.

The Orgy novel.

In Orgy, the mortician is identified as Lyle Carriage, a "cocky," well-dressed man of 45. He's so arrogant, in fact, that the Emperor has to scold him for being too familiar. Lyle says that he was considered "worse than a killer" and that his story received (in a rare Woodian acknowledgement of Vietnam) "more newspaper space than the war." He started out as a physician but was unable to make much money in that profession. Then, fatefully, he inherited a funeral parlor from his uncle. The only other employee besides himself was an elderly embalmer. Fortunately, Lyle's medical training made the job a natural fit for him.

On his first day at the funeral parlor, Lyle was overwhelmed by the sight of a deceased young woman in her late teens. This may have been the first indication of the mortician's latent perversities. Typical of an Ed Wood character, he obsessed over the woman's appearance and outfit. He became especially fixated on a handkerchief he used to wipe some makeup off the woman's face.

After a few months, Lyle began to hatch a scheme. He bought a nearby cemetery, forced the embalmer into retirement, and hired a couple of local drunks (similar to the characters from "To Kill a Saturday Night") to be his gravediggers. He also started convincing families to hold closed-casket funerals for their loved ones. That way, he was free to exploit the corpses. He sold their hair, their blood, and even their internal organs. Eventually, he started removing the flesh from the bones. That way he had two more saleable commodities: skeletons and meat. He especially enjoyed mutilating the bodies of "young girls" and then wearing their clothes. All the while, coffins full of rocks were being buried five or six deep in his cemetery.

It was quite a profitable operation, but it couldn't last. One day, while Lyle was chopping up another young woman and wearing her clothes, one of the drunken gravediggers staggered into his office. The other gravedigger had just recently died, and his sentimental coworker wanted "one last look at his buddy." Upon making the horrible discovery, the surviving drunk notified the police. After posting bail, Lyle decided to abscond with some money he had hidden away in one of the coffins he had buried. That's when a bony hand reached up from beyond the grave and dragged Lyle down to hell. The Emperor sentences the mortician to a most cruel fate: he shall forevermore be forced to wear a "frilly pink dress" that is "tattered, decaying, [and] crawling with grave mold and worms." The phony funeral director runs screaming into the woods. Interestingly, Lyle has become a "little man" by the end of the chapter. He'd been tall at the beginning of it.

The mortician's gruesome story resembles not only Night of the Ghouls, in which conman Dr. Acula (Kenne Duncan) inadvertently provokes the wrath of the dead, but also the long-unproduced I Woke Up Early the Day I Died (1997), which also revolves around some money hidden in a coffin, plus the short story "In the Stony Lonesome" (1972). Interestingly, when he's digging up the coffin, Lyle uses a lighted match to see what he's doing, just as Officer Kelton (Paul Marco) does while rooting around in Inspector Clay's grave in Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957).

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 206: Greg Javer (1968-2024)

"The bell has rung on his great career."

"Where's Greg?"

That is the question I've gotten most frequently over the last year and a half from readers of this blog. The remarkable Greg Javer, a soft-spoken Pennsylvanian who often wrote under the name Greg Dziawer, contributed a great deal of material to this series from 2015 to 2023. He started out with numerous Ed Wood Wednesdays articles before eventually launching his own series of YouTube videos called The Ed Wood Summit Podcast. His interests were wide-ranging, even within the seemingly limited field of Woodology. He was just as likely to cover Eddie's childhood in Poughkeepsie as he was to discuss Ed's pornographic loops of the 1970s.

He was, in short, a major player in the world of Wood research and a significant presence on this blog for eight years. He was also my friend, someone I just loved talking to and working with on various projects. Then, about midway through last year, he vanished. The articles stopped. The videos stopped. Even the emails (for the most part) stopped. Where had he gone, people wondered? I am not one to pry, so I didn't. I'd occasionally hear rumors that he had other matters—perhaps personal, perhaps professional—to attend to. I trusted that he'd eventually find his way back into this strange, little world and would contact me when he was ready to start anew. It just never happened.

On Sunday, December 1, 2024, we finally received a definitive answer about what had happened to Greg, and the news could not have been worse. Not long after receiving a devastating cancer diagnosis, he died at the far-too-young age of 56, leaving behind a daughter, Elyse Rosario, and his partner of 18 years, Jennifer "Kitten" Rosario. I can't help but think how he only outlived Ed Wood by two years (Eddie died at 54 in 1978) and that both men were claimed in the month of December. I wonder if those same thoughts occurred to Greg in his final days.

I asked Jennifer to say a few words in remembrance of Greg, and here is how she responded:

A passionate admirer of Ed Wood Jr., he combined his love of film with his dedication to research and writing, leaving his mark as a contributing author. He found joy in life’s simple pleasures—reading, spending time with family, and delving into thought-provoking documentaries. One thing I want to note is that he considered all of you real friends. I could log into his Gmail right now and find numerous emails of people checking in on him, along with text messages. I can't make every name, but everyone he has worked with since the start of this Ed Wood Jr. journey would fall under this umbrella, at least 10 years or more.  He would tell me a story or something that was found, and it always started with "my buddy ____" or "my friend ___." And I know he cherished each and every friendship made along the way.

Rob Huffman has started a GoFundMe to cover some of Greg's final expenses. The proceeds will go directly to Jennifer and Elyse. Please consider donating. Every little bit helps, as they say. And, if you can't afford it, please forward the link to others on social media so that they can donate. It's the least we can do, considering all Greg did for us.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 205: 'Ed Wood, Secret Agent' (2013)

You can almost hear the theme song, can't you?

NOTE: We lost someone very special this week. On Sunday, December 1, 2024, Greg Javer, aka Greg Dziawer, died unexpectedly of cancer. I'd known of his illness but not that he was terminal, so this news came as a great and horrible shock. Greg wrote many articles for this blog, and we also recorded numerous episodes of The Ed Wood Summit Podcast together. I considered Greg a good friend, and he was extremely generous with his research. A proper tribute to him will appear on this blog once I have all the facts assembled. 

This week, I'd simply like to share a story by author Colin Schmidt that appeared in, of all places, an Australian Dr. Who newsletter in 2013. It imagines Ed Wood as a Mission: Impossible-type secret agent, with Criswell, Tor Johnson, and Bela Lugosi as his teammates. This story was sent to my email account by someone who was looking for Greg! I dutifully forwarded it on to Greg, but he never rendered an opinion on it. I'm pretty sure he would have enjoyed it, though, and I'm pretty sure you will, too.  J.B.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 204: The unveiling of Ed Wood's historical marker

A glimpse at the unveiling of Ed Wood's historical marker.

Since Thanksgiving is approaching and most Americans are preoccupied with travel, relatives, decorating, shopping, and food—or possibly all of these—I thought I'd keep it especially light and informal this week. So no big Ed Wood revelations or in-depth Ed Wood reviews, okay? Let's just have a little Ed Wood fun.

Pretty in pink?

Last Wednesday, I told you about how a New York State historical marker was being placed in front of Ed Wood's childhood home at 35 Delano Street in Poughkeepsie, thanks to the efforts of some high school students in teacher Robert McHugh's AP history class in Dutchess County. Those enterprising youngsters cited this very blog in their application to a nonprofit organization called the William G. Pomeroy Foundation, which seeks to denote places of historical significance in the state of New York. 

And, after two years, it worked! The Foundation agreed to mark Eddie's former home with a permanent, bright blue-and-yellow sign. Anyone who walks or drives by 35 Delano Street will know that this was once the home of the director of Glen or Glenda (1953). None of this could have happened without the research of such esteemed Woodologists as Greg Dziawer and James Pontolillo, both of whom have made invaluable contributions to this blog.

I couldn't be there for the unveiling of the sign, unfortunately, but I did write a speech for the occasion. That speech was delivered for me by director and film programmer Katie Cokinos. You can view a gallery of photos from the event right here. In some of the pictures, you can see that the marker was hidden under a pink cloth before it was revealed. To my eyes, at least from a distance, the sign appears to be wearing its very own pink angora sweater! What could be more appropriate?

A 16-minute video of the unveiling ceremony has also been posted to Instagram for those who would care to watch it. It includes Katie's speech, if that's a selling point. You'll really get a sense of how charming this building on Delano Street truly is. This is some old-school construction, and it has a lot more personality than the soulless architecture we see today. I'd be proud to live in a place like this. 

Before we leave this topic in the rearview mirror, I'd like to share an email I received from Katie the day after the unveiling:

Hi Joe,

What an amazing event! Ed Wood’s birthplace, 35 Delano (as in Franklin Delano Roosevelt), around the corner from the Bardavon Theater, the house is owned by Roberto Rossi whose family has a deli, Rossi and Sons, a block away. Robert McHugh, history teacher at Arlington High School, organized the memorial and event along with his students. And your wonderful, inspiring, informative tribute got a rousing applause. Love that this happened during his 100th year. I felt Edward Davis Wood Jr. smiling.

Thank you for participating albeit through your writing,

I only wish I could have been there in person!

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 203: The saga of Ed Wood's historical marker

This house on Delano Street in Poughkeepsie was once Ed Wood's home.

And the year of Ed Wood continues! The 100th anniversary of Eddie's birth has brought with it many marvelous surprises, including some recognition from the director's home state of New York. On Wednesday, November 20, 2024, an official historical marker is being placed at 35 Delano Street in Poughkeepsie, New York to denote it as Ed Wood's childhood home. Amazingly, this blog played some small role in that achievement.

In June 2024, I received this intriguing email from a man named Robert McHugh:

I am a teacher near Poughkeepsie and for the past couple of years I have had my students apply for funding for historic markers for sites in Dutchess County. This year, one group of students decided to try for a marker about Ed Wood. They used some of the material from your site—the reference to the wedding announcement of his parents in the Kingston paper was especially helpful—as part of the grant application. 

Good news: they were successful and there is now a historic marker being made that will likely be installed sometime over the next few months. (It takes quite a while to fabricate them; I don't know if we will have it by October 10 for his birthday.) It's going to go in front of one of the homes he lived in, at 35 Delano St. 

I'm not sure if you happen to live anywhere near Poughkeepsie, but we would love to invite you to the unveiling, whenever that would be. 

Thanks for posting all that great information about him online.

I thanked Robert for the email and gave due credit to Greg Dziawer, who has written extensively about Ed Wood's early life in Poughkeepsie for this blog. Greg, in turn, has credited the formidable James Pontolillo for his tireless (and ongoing!) research into Ed's New York years. Unfortunately, since I live in the suburbs of Chicago and work full time, I had to tell Robert that attending the unveiling of the marker was not possible.

In October, Robert gave me an exciting update: "The Ed Wood marker has finally been made. Now we have to figure out how to install it and think about an unveiling ceremony." In assembling the ceremony, Robert reached out to director and film programmer Katie Cokinos, who organized the special screening of Ed Wood (1994) that I attended virtually on Ed's 100th birthday last month. Knowing I would be unable to be there in person, Katie very nicely asked me to write a speech for the occasion. Here is that speech:

Ladies and gentlemen:

We are gathered here on this wonderful occasion to honor the memory of a man who received very little recognition in his own lifetime. Edward Davis Wood, Jr. was born in Poughkeepsie, New York on October 10, 1924 and became enamored of show business and the movies at a young age. He even worked as an usher at the Bardavon Theater on Market Street. I can imagine he spent many hours in that place, staring up at the screen and gazing in amazement at the larger-than-life figures projected there. He especially loved the cowboy stars, like Buck Jones, and of course the great horror icon Bela Lugosi.

For many of us, that's where the journey would end. We're content just to watch the screen and to live vicariously through other people's stories. We still do that today, except the screens have gotten much smaller and we can carry them in our pockets. But that wasn't enough for our Eddie. He didn't just want to watch other people's adventures. He wanted to have adventures of his own. That instinct led him, after a stint in the Marines during World War II, to Hollywood in the late 1940s.

 

Heed the words of Lyle Talbot.

Once on the West Coast, Ed Wood did everything he could to make his mark as a writer, director, and producer of motion pictures. And that's not all! He acted on both stage and screen, made TV commercials and pilots, and penned countless novels, short stories, and magazine articles. There seemed to be no end to his creativity or his ambition. Along the way, he attempted just about every kind of story there is: science-fiction, horror, Westerns, and even crime thrillers. He may never have gotten to work with Buck Jones, but he did work extensively with Bela Lugosi and even befriended the great horror icon. Bela wound up appearing in all three of Ed's most famous films: GLEN OR GLENDA, BRIDE OF THE MONSTER, and the infamous PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE.

During his own, rather short time on this earth, Ed Wood received very little praise or recognition from the entertainment industry. He wasn't getting positive reviews in the press or awards from his colleagues. To the extent that Ed's films were noticed at all, they were mocked and derided for their low budgets, unlikely dialogue, and outrageous storylines. And yet, his quirky, memorable films have struck a nerve with fans for decades, and those fans have kept Eddie's memory alive long after his death in 1978. This year alone , the 100th anniversary of Ed Wood's birth, there have been at least three major new books about him, and his films continue to be shown in theaters across the country and re-released for home viewing as well.

And now, we place this marker at Ed Wood's childhood home. I am certain that Eddie would be flattered and thrilled by this honor. And if there is anything we can learn from his life, it's that we shouldn't be content to sit on the sidelines and watch other people do all the exciting things we wish we could do ourselves. As Lyle Talbot says in GLEN OR GLENDA, "We only have one life to live. We throw that one away, what is there left?"

I don't know if Katie will actually deliver that speech at the ceremony, but it was so nice to be asked. As for the marker, here is what it will look like. Perhaps, if you live near Poughkeepsie, you can stop by 35 Delano Street and see it for yourself someday.

This handsome blue and yellow marker stands as a tribute to Ed Wood.

Ed Wood Wednesdays: Was Ed Wood, Jr. the author Charlene White? (Guest Author: James Pontolillo)

Ed Wood had many pen names. Was this one of him?

A copy of the 1966 Charlene White sleaze novel Not So Funny was recently listed on Ebay with an asking price of $950 and authorship attributed to Ed Wood, Jr. But what evidence is there that Charlene White was one of Eddie’s pseudonyms?

Background

In 1966, Satellite Publications (Stanley Malkin and Eddy Mishkin's New York City-based operation that employed multiple other addresses in an attempt to mislead authorities) issued two books by Charlene White: Mask of Evil (hereafter Mask; [1] ) and Not So Funny (hereafter Funny; [2]). Both were mass market format paperback originals priced at 95 cents ($9.70 in 2024 dollars) and featured cover art by renowned commercial artist Eric Stanton [3]. The books also included black and white Stanton cartoon work as interior advertisements [4,5]. 

The print run sizes for these novels are unknown. Sleaze publishers like Satellite treated their paperback books just like the magazines they distributed – limited shelf life with new replacement titles issued monthly. Leftover stock was usually sold at a significant discount to a secondary market reseller. In some cases, the books were returned to the publisher who would strip off the original covers, glue on new ones, and then send them back out to market. As a result, the unwary customer could inadvertently purchase the same book twice.

Mask and Funny are rare collectible books that, due to the Stanton covers alone, currently command prices in the $200-$600 range depending upon their physical condition. Copies sometimes hit the market with considerably higher asking prices ($700-$1000) buoyed by the claim that Ed Wood is the author. Reputable antiquarian booksellers inform customers that this identification is unproven; individual online sellers rarely do so.

My first encounter with the claim that "Charlene White" was one of Eddie's pseudonyms occurred in an online Ed Wood forum/message board sometime around the year 2000. The idea gained significant traction with the 2012 release of Cornell University Library’s finding guide for its Ed Wood Collection. The core of the collection derives from a posthumous donation of works assembled by book collector and science-fiction editor Robert Legault (1958-2008) [6]. It was subsequently expanded with materials donated by writer/editor/publisher/collector Johan Kugelberg [7]. The Cornell collection is the largest publicly available repository of Ed Wood's published works. While Mask is in the collection, Funny is not represented there.

The Books

Mask of Evil cover.

Mask of Evil – This novel follows the sexual awakening and subsequent promiscuous escapades of Brigitte Lamersay, a 20-year-old, perpetually-innocent French nymph as she wends her way through Long Island (NY) high society in search of her adoptive mother’s long-lost American lover. There is a plot amongst all the sexual debauchery, but just barely. Much of the sex is non-consensual, fairly transgressive for the time, and leans heavily into sadism. 

One highlight of the novel is an unusual costume party (men as trees; women as flowers) that quickly degenerates into an anything-goes orgy. This is followed by masked sexual rituals that blogger Joe Blevins described as "Eyes Wide Shut with a brain injury… an enfeebled, lobotomized Eyes Wide Shut. It’s rich people having kinky mask parties." After many adventures, Brigitte finds her man and then a different kind of fun begins. 

The novel initially appears to end with Chapter 14. But after typesetting, the novel would have been 16 pages short of the publisher’s standard book length. So, we are then treated to a new, more complex ending spun out over Chapters 15-17 (meeting the required number of pages) written as if the events of Chapter 14 had never occurred. To complete the reader’s sense of déjà vu and disorientation, the last three paragraphs of Chapters14 and 17 are virtually identical.

Not So Funny cover.

Not So Funny – This novel follows Olga, a well-endowed 18-year-old girl who grows up in a small coal town. She runs away to the big city to escape the clutches of a filthy, physically abusive, and sexually predatory stepfather. While working as a waitress, Olga meets and quickly falls in love with a ruggedly handsome circus animal trainer named Craig. They marry and Olga goes on the road with her new husband. She immediately gains three sworn enemies in the closed community of the circus: her new father-in-law Andrew (who had pledged his son to marry a circus girl), Hilda (the circus girl in question), and Tina (jealous that her brother Karl – for whom she has an incestuous love – is attracted to Olga). 

Much of the novel is devoted to the ins and outs of this swirling melodrama and repeated attempts to undermine Olga in her husband's eyes. The most memorable part of the book revolves around Olga’s friendship with Elmer, a perpetually sad and reclusive clown. One night Elmer takes her in his small clown car to a rundown house in "the village." What transpires there is a phantasmagoric mix of a gay bathhouse encounter and the mirror maze scene from the movie Something Wicked This Way Comes leading to Olga’s sexual humiliation. Ultimately, all of the plots against Olga collapse as death and serious injury are visited upon her rivals by a seemingly just universe. Olga performs an illegal sex act on her husband Craig in the last few sentences of the book, making it clear that they will have a beautiful life together.

Having read both books several times, I have yet to decide whether they were written by the same author. The writing styles are dramatically different with the author of Mask appearing well-educated while the author of Funny seemingly barely escaped grade school. Mask is full of graphic, transgressive sexual acts. Funny is much tamer and, with few exceptions, stays on a "straight and narrow" path, sexually speaking. 

Moreover, Mask is overrun with characters, including many with no role whatsoever in advancing the plot, while Funny has a much tighter focus on eight individuals. The events of Mask take place in real-world locations (Long Island; Pelham, NY; Midtown Manhattan), with the Pelham, NY sequence accurately describing the town's geography. Funny, on the other hand, exists in a featureless void whose locations (the big city, the circus lot, the village) are simplistic generalities that are never described in any substantive way. 

Despite this, the books do share a number of elements: the sexual awakening of a young woman; the grateful sexual abuse victim trope; a similar approach toward introducing nudity and the initiation of sexual acts; orgasms described as planets crashing together (and on one occasion each as a kaleidoscope); repeated instances of sexual sadism; and masked, ceremonial sexual rituals. On this last point, both books feature women dressed as flowers erotically dancing to Tchaikovsky's "Waltz of the Flowers" (from the 1892 ballet The Nutcracker).

Is This You, Ed?

There certainly is a smattering of elements in Mask and Funny that might lead one to think that they were written by Eddie. One of Mask’s main characters has the alliterative name of Randy Ransome/Randon Ransome. Both books contain a sex scene where an orgasm is described as a kaleidoscope of colors, a practice that Eddie used in 17 of his 27 known novels (a rate of 63%; see Sources for the list of known novels). Funny includes a snake element that plays a pivotal role in one of the failed attempts to drive Olga away from the circus. Snakes, in some form, appear in 23 of 27 of Ed’s known novels (85%). 

Finally, there is this inspirational section of text from Mask:

Suddenly, she knew she had to scream. Her lips parted without volition and a harsh, rough sound poured from her. At the same time the young man's breathing became jagged, cutting litany. Infinity became finite and stood still.

Eddie had a penchant for invoking the concept of infinity in his writings.

On the other hand, Eddie never explicitly claimed that "Charlene White" was one of his pseudonyms. Neither Mask nor Funny was included in a list of published works that Eddie generated in the mid-1970s. Nor do they appear similar to the titles of any of his still-missing novels. As the participants on The Ed Wood Summit Podcast #22 concluded, the Wood-like elements in Mask are part of a larger text that was clearly not written by Eddie. His typical obsession with angora, excessive drinking, and a close attention to female clothing are nowhere to be found in either of these novels.

In an attempt to identify diagnostic features in Eddie’s writings, since 2016 I have applied grammar and language analysis tools, as well as statistical measures of word usage and textual complexity, to a group of 27 known Wood novels (see the list in Sources). After several iterations, a group of 45 keywords emerged that are common in Eddie’s novels. His use of this group averages 75% (Side-Show Siren is low at 53%; The Gay Underworld is high at 91%). By comparison, Mask and Funny infrequently use only a handful of the keywords, scoring a paltry 28% and 11% respectively. A twelve-word subset of the 45 keywords is particularly diagnostic because of their very high prevalence in Eddie’s novels.

• angora, fluff, lovely, pink, sheer, simply, sweater – 100%

• delight, nylon, panties – 96%

• furry, negligee – 92%

Mask uses only two keywords of this subset (negligee, pink); Funny does not use any of them.

One final metric that I’ve developed I like to call (tongue-in-cheek) Woodiness. It’s a numerical measure of keyword usage that is prorated to the average use of each individual keyword. Thus, an instance of a more commonly used keyword "scores" more points than a less commonly used keyword. The following plot shows this data [8]. Eddie's known novels have an average Woodiness value of 2754 (Side-Show Siren is low at 1224; TV Lust is high at 5493). In comparison, Mask and Funny score only 176 and 23 respectively. By all measures, these two books in no way resemble Eddie’s known novels.

Mask of Evil and Not So Funny are certainly worth collecting for their iconic Eric Stanton cover art, quirky story lines, and as relics of the battle waged by American publishers to expand the boundaries of our First Amendment protections. But don't collect them thinking they were authored by Ed Wood, Jr. Because all of the evidence is that they were written by someone else.

Sources

• Ed Wood, Jr. Collection, #7779, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library (https://rmc.library.cornell.edu/EAD/htmldocs/RMM07779.html).

• The Ed Wood Jr. Sleaze Paperbacks Collection (https://www.boo-hooray.com/pages/archives/67/the-ed-wood-jr-sleaze-paperbacks-collection)

• The Hunt for Edward D. Wood, Jr. website (http://www.edwoodonline.com/thehunt/MAIN.html).

• The Ed Wood Summit Podcast, 2022, Episode #22, “Tearing off the Mask of Evil,” Greg Dziawer with James Pontolillo and Joe Blevins. (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eV1nxszQDh0&t=3s&pp=2AEDkAIB).

• Brittany A. Daley, et al. (Eds.), 2005, Sin-A-Rama: Sleaze Sex Paperbacks of the Sixties, Los Angeles, CA: Feral House, 287 pp.

• Charlene White, 1966, Mask of Evil, FN 226, Buffalo, NY: First Niter Books Inc., 157 pp.

• Charlene White, 1966, Not So Funny, AH 145, Buffalo, NY: After Hours Books Inc., 157 pp.

• List of 27 known Ed Wood, Jr. novels: Black Lace Drag (1963), Parisian Passions (1966), Side Show Siren (1966), Drag Trade (1967), Security Risk (1967), Watts… the Difference (1967) Watts… After (1967), Devil Girls (1967), Death of a Transvestite (1967), It Takes One to Know One (1967), Suburbia Confidential (1967), The Gay Underworld (1968), Night Time Lez (1968) Sex, Shrouds and Caskets (1968), Young, Gay and Black (1968), Purple Thighs (1968), Hell Chicks (1968), Carnival Piece (1968), The Sexecutives (1968), Toni: Black Tigress (1969), To Make A Homo (1971), The Only House (1972), Mary-Go-Round (1972), Diary of a Transvestite Hooker (1973), Forced Entry (1974), Sex Salvation [Saving Grace] (1975), and TV Lust (1977).

• A number of Eddie’s well-known works were not included in this list because they were either not novels (e.g., socio-medical studies [The Oralists] and SECS Press collaborations) or they were written under goal-based restrictions that limited the content (e.g., movie tie-ins [Orgy of the Dead], photo novels [Raped in the Grass], and stage adaptations [Casual Company]).

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 197: Comparing multiple prints of 'Glen or Glenda' (1953)

Here we see a side-by-side comparison of two prints of Glen or Glenda.

If movies are made in the editing room, then Ed Wood's debut feature, Glen or Glenda (1953), was made, unmade, and remade several times over. I can't keep track of how many different versions of this film there are, and each one is as unique as a fingerprint. (Notice how fingerprints look pretty much the same from a distance but reveal their differences under scrutiny.) Over the decades, this movie has been released under innumerable titles, including I Led 2 Lives, Transvestite, and He or She. In the Ed Wood canon, perhaps only Orgy of the Dead (1965) has more aliases.  The content of the film has also changed noticeably from one edition to another, with certain lines or even whole scenes being added or omitted. 

Still my favorite edition of Glenda.

This phenomenon is as old as the film itself. Producer George Weiss infamously added saucy burlesque footage to an extended dream sequence late in the film, apparently without consulting Ed Wood. He did this for a number of reasons: to pad the run time, to add some sex appeal, and to reuse footage that he already owned. As a result, I don't think that there is any such thing as a "definitive" or "complete" cut of Glen or Glenda. As much as I'd like to see Criterion release a director's cut of this significant (and still shockingly relevant) motion picture, I don't think such a thing is possible.

The first version of the film that I ever saw was the one released by Rhino Video in 1996 as part of its Ed Wood Collection series of VHS tapes. This was the edition that I meticulously transcribed decades ago, and as far as I know, it's the lengthiest cut of Glen or Glenda that you can buy. Even here, though, are what some may consider impurities. Rhino's edition contains the Weiss-added burlesque footage, for instance, which irks certain Ed Wood fans. And the title card was obviously doctored—and crudely at that—by distributor Wade Williams. (My guess is that Williams' print carried one of the film's lesser-known alternate titles.) Nevertheless, Rhino's Glen or Glenda remains my preferred edition of the film. 

I was rather dismayed that, starting in the 2000s, the most commonly-available Glen or Glenda DVD on the market (included in popular sets like The Worst of Ed Wood and The Ed Wood Box) was from Image Entertainment and mastered from a censored, shortened print of the movie that lacked several key moments! When Legend Entertainment released its colorized version of Glen or Glenda in 2012, they used this censored cut of the movie. Even Rob Craig's exhaustive book Ed Wood, Mad Genius (2009) used the bowdlerized Image Entertainment version of Glen or Glenda for reference.

How do you know if the version of Glenda you're watching is the censored version? There's an easy test. Fast forward to the first conversation between Inspector Warren (Lyle Talbot) and Dr. Alton (Timothy Farrell) until you get to this bit of dialogue:

DR. ALTON: Most of us have our idiosyncrasies.

INSPECTOR: This fellow's was quite pronounced.

DR. ALTON: Yes, but I wonder if it rated the death warrant it received. I don't think so.

INSPECTOR: Well, that's why I'm here today, Doctor. What do we do about it?

If Dr. Alton's "I don't think so" is missing, you have the censored Glen or Glenda. Again, I humbly refer you to my transcript of the entire movie. I've highlighted all the missing and excised material in red.

You may also remember that, back in 2020, there was some hubbub about a restored 35mm print of Glen or Glenda that received some theatrical showings and was briefly available as a digital download from the American Genre Film Archive (AGFA). Any fans hoping for a "definitive" or "complete" edition of Glenda quickly had their hopes dashed when they saw the results. As Greg Dziawer pointed out in his article, this was the shortest edition yet of the film, even shorter than the Image DVD! 

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 192: I bought a stack of Ed Wood books. So how did I do?

Yes, I bought this stack of books. Did I overpay? Underpay? Let's find out together.

Way back in the spring of 2015, there was a massive auction of Ed Wood memorabilia in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I knew I couldn't afford anything pricy, like Eddie's actual suitcase, but I felt like I wanted to get something. I settled for a poster advertising Glen or Glenda (1953) under one of its many alternate titles, I Led 2 Lives, and a collection of Mexican lobby cards for Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957) aka Espectros del espacio. The poster I had framed; it now hangs in my kitchen and greets me every morning. The lobby cards I keep in a binder and rarely look at. 

All in all, this set me back about $400—then and now a huge sum of money for me. When things got particularly lean a few years ago, I even considered selling these items at a loss before deciding that it was more trouble than it was worth. Not to mention depressing. So I kept them as stern reminders of what not to do with my money.

Because of that experience, I vowed I would never make another major and totally unnecessary Ed Wood-related purchase again.  I also knew that, someday, I would more than likely do it again. I bravely (?) held out for nearly a decade. Then, in the spring of 2024, I saw on Facebook that a fan was selling off some of his collection, including a stack of Wood (and Wood-adjacent) books. Since I rely mostly on e-books and PDF files in my research for this series, I own very few paperback and hardcover editions of Ed's work. So I was tempted.

After a couple of weeks of hemming and hawing and exchanging a few direct messages with the seller, we eventually settled on a deal: nine books for $350, including shipping. For you non-mathematicians out there, that's about $38 or $39 a book. Was I cheated? Did I do pretty okay for myself? Let's break it down, book by book, and find out.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 178: The Perverts (1968) [PART 1 OF 2]

The Perverts is sort of the Swiss army knife of Ed Wood books.

Artificial intelligence has been on my mind a lot recently. I think that's true of many of us, since we're bombarded with AI-generated songs, images, videos, and articles on a daily basis. It's getting difficult to know what's real and what isn't. And then comes the flood of ethical questions. Is AI an incredible boon to humanity or the beginning of the end of civilization as we know it? We don't know yet. I guess we'll have to see how this plays out. If, in 20 years, Earth is a smoldering husk ruled by artificially intelligent automatons, I owe you a Coke.

Eros warned us; we didn't listen.

Science-fiction writers have been warning us for decades about the perils of teaching computers to think, but we didn't listen. We did it anyway. That's human nature for you. We never consider the ramifications of our actions. Remember Ed Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957)? The alien Eros (Dudley Manlove) tells pilot Jeff Trent (Gregory Walcott) that we humans have been building newer and more powerful weapons before we even fully considered the consequences of doing so. We're jeopardizing the entire universe through our stupidity and violence. Jeff responds by punching Eros in the face. Oh well. It was a nice universe while it lasted.

So far, I've found that artificial intelligence is quite good at mimicking and rearranging what already exists, even if the results are still slightly stilted and predictable. If you want a particular pop song, for instance, sung in the voice of a cartoon character, AI has you covered. Where it falls down is in true innovation and spontaneity. Ask AI to make a profound insight into the human condition or make us laugh in a way we hadn't even considered before, and it won't be able to do it. For now, only people can do those things.

But what if we fed the collected works of Edward D. Wood, Jr. into some chatbot and asked it to churn out a "new" Ed Wood book? It should be eminently possible. Although he switched between styles as an author from one project to the next, Eddie still had a definite cadence to his writing. There were certain beloved words and phrases he used time and again. He also had topics and themes that he returned to repeatedly. And much of his writing is already kind of stilted, as if it were being written by some nonhuman entity who had observed people without truly understanding them. Surely, then, a computer could absorb all of Ed's short stories, novels, articles, and nonfiction books and churn out dozens more for us to read in the 21st century.

The first book to emerge from such an experiment might very well turn out like The Perverts, which Eddie wrote for Viceroy under the name "Jason Nichols" in 1968. (That same year, he wrote Sex Museum and One, Two, Three for Viceroy under the same bland pseudonym, plus Hell Chicks for Private Edition as "N.V. Jason.") Put simply, The Perverts is a distillation of just about every Wood book and article I've read and reviewed so far on this blog. It serves as a Whitman's Sampler of Eddie's obsessions. If you don't have room in your life (or your bookshelf) for Ed Wood's dozens of nonfiction books and articles—most of which are about sex and crime—this one will give you a solid idea of what they're like.

Ed Wood Wednesdays: A roundup of Ed Wood news! (Fall 2023)

A new version of one of Ed's films is coming to BluRay soon!

For a director who's been dead for 45 years this December, Ed Wood has maintained a surprisingly high profile in the 2020s. He never totally goes away, at least not for long. It seems like there's always some Wood-related project in the works, related to his films, his writings, or his life. Ed Wood tribute movies and documentaries are always in production or pre-production somewhere, though many of these may never be finished or released. I know this because the makers of these films (and potential films) contact me occasionally to tell me of their grandiose plans. I wish them all a lot of luck.

Eddie's own movies are occasionally rereleased or repackaged as well. Currently, a company called Gold Ninja Video is taking pre-orders for a new two-disc Blu-ray edition of Eddie's Night of the Ghouls (1959). This remastered version will carry the film's original title, Revenge of the Dead, and comes with a slew of special features. Most impressively, this package includes several of Ed's other movies, including Trick Shooting with Kenne Duncan (1960), Jail Bait (1954), and Final Curtain (1957), plus the Super 8 version of Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957). Ghouls, Plan 9, and Jail Bait will all have optional commentary tracks as well. My esteemed colleague Greg Dziawer has written the liner notes. Can't wait to have this one in hand!

But not all the news I have this week is so positive.

Probably the biggest Ed Wood-related story of the past few months was that the makers of the new, crowdfunded episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 wished to use Plan 9 from Outer Space for the show's proposed 14th season. Unfortunately, their Thanksgiving weekend fundraising drive only managed to raise $2.7 million toward the show's $4 million goal, and this was an "all or nothing" campaign. On November 26, MST3K creator Joel Hodgson sent this melancholy message to all who had donated:

Greetings, backers.

Well, we’ve come to the end of the month, and the end of the Turkey Day Marathon and this campaign. 

While we’re incredibly grateful for all of the support, enthusiasm, and encouragement, it’s clear we’ve fallen short of our goal this time.

First, to be clear, please understand that that means that no one will be charged anything, and we will not be collecting anything that you pledged to this campaign , since the agreement was that we’d only collect funds if we reached our minimum goal. No charges will be put on anyone’s credit cards.

Second, and more important, please know that we’re incredibly grateful for all of your input, feedback, concerns and questions, and are thinking about all the suggestions you have made over the past month.

One silver lining is that the continued support for this campaign, and the show, may have opened up some new conversations about potential partnerships and fundraising that could be key in getting the show another season.

We’ll spend some time now exploring those, and working to integrate all of the feedback and suggestions we’ve heard from you, and will follow up again next year, Lord willing and the creek don’t rise, when we’ve had a chance to regroup and have more to share downstream.

For now, whether you pledged or not, please accept our thanks and gratitude for your ongoing dedication and investment in MST3K.

We’re proud that the show continues to mean so much, to so many, and will keep working to figure out a path forward so that we can hopefully continue to #MakeMoreMST3K.

Until then, have a wonderful holiday season, and thanks again for all of your support.

Cheers and Thanks,

Joel and Team MST3K

For the time being, Ed Wood's most famous film will not be receiving the full MST3K treatment. So Plan 9 from Outer Space will not be joining Bride of the Monster (1955), The Violent Years (1956), and The Sinister Urge (1960) quite yet. But don't despair! There's a RiffTrax version of Plan 9 from 2009 featuring commentary from MST3K veterans Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy. 

And who knows? Maybe the MST3K team will find a way to make Season 14 happen after all. Lord knows, Ed Wood went through his own struggles to raise money for films. Maybe Joel and the gang can take inspiration (or at least consolation) from him.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 170: 'The Art of Tatooage' and What I Look for When I'm Looking for Ed Wood

I don't think Ed Wood wrote this 1962 article and here's why.

Ed Wood wrote a lot, you guys. No, you don't understand. I mean, he wrote a lot. Way more than you'd think a raging alcoholic with only a tenuous grasp on reality would be able to manage. In addition to his scripts, both produced and unproduced, Eddie penned novels and short stories, plus nonfiction books and magazine articles, all in massive quantities. For some projects, he used his real name, while at other times he wrote pseudonymously or even anonymously.  Besides releasing many of Ed's books and articles, adult publisher Bernie Bloom used Ed as a sort of literary "man-of-all-work" at Pendulum in the 1970s. Who knows how many pieces of unsigned filler text, including editorials and photo captions, Ed wrote while in Bernie's employ?

A canonical Wood work.

This hyperabundance of work is both a blessing and a curse to the Woodologist. It's wonderful to have so much writing to study and enjoy. But Ed Wood's bibliography is an absolute mess, often frustrating to navigate. It can be very difficult to tell what he wrote and what he didn't. To help us out, we can divide his literary output into a few extremely broad categories. First, there is what I'll call "canonical Wood." These are the works that bear Ed's own name and are generally not in dispute. (I say "generally" because some Wood scholars are extremely skeptical and question his authorship of anything.)

Beyond these uncontroversial works, we have what I call the "stealth canon." These are works that are widely known to be Ed Wood's but don't bear the man's own name. They're listed on his carefully self-curated resumes, and Eddie even signed some copies of them. Eddie's best known aliases are probably Dick Trent and Ann Gora, and these turn up frequently in the "stealth canon," but he wrote under many pen names. His aliases may number in the dozens.

After that, though, you have a whole universe of speculative Wood works—not in the canon (or even the stealth canon) but bearing enough of Wood's trademarks to arouse curiosity. Maybe it's about one of his "pet" subjects, like angora or cross-dressing. Maybe it uses some of his favorite words or expressions. Maybe it's from Pendulum or one of Eddie's other known publishers and comes from the era when we know Ed was active. Or maybe someone just has a hunch about a particular book or article. Does it past the duck test? That's where the debates begin.

I can't say I've read everything Ed Wood wrote. (I don't know if anyone has, other than Eddie himself.) But I've read many works, both long-form and short-form, that he is known or widely believed to have written. And there are certain things I'm looking for when I'm given a text and asked whether I think Ed Wood penned it. This can be especially tricky, since Ed had a number of different modes or styles as an author. He could be surreal and dreamy when he wanted, especially in his short fiction, or he could be dry and encyclopedic if necessary. You never know which Eddie you're going to get. I'm not joking when I say it may depend on how drunk or sober he was when he wrote it.

Recently, podcaster and pop culture scholar Rob Huffman shared with me and some other Wood fans a few pages from an article called "The Art of Tattooage," credited to an author named J. Lee Anderson. It appeared in a men's magazine called Chére in 1962. This now-forgotten magazine was the product of an adult publisher called France, which released both magazines and paperback novels in the 1960s. Ed Wood is thought—or at least rumored—to have written for France in the early 1960s, possibly using "J. Lee Anderson" as a pen name. Rob has explored these possibilities in depth with my colleague Greg Dziawer in the past.

Naturally, I took a good, long look at "The Art of Tattooage" to see if I could detect any traces of Ed Wood within it. Dating from 1962, this would be one of the earlier examples of Wood's writing, if it were his, but the fully-canon novel Killer in Drag (1963) shows that Eddie's signature style was already formed during this time period. So his authorial voice would be detectable if "Tattooage" were indeed his work.

Alas, this article did not give me any particularly strong Woodian vibes. For one thing, in describing the seedy tattoo parlors of early '60s Los Angeles, J. Lee Anderson uses a lot of words that I just can't imagine Ed Wood using very often: dowdy, truculent, vagaries, bemoan, echelon, conjecture, etc. On the other hand, the author never uses any of the words Eddie loved to employ in his own writing: thrill, soft, lovely, conventional, accept, etc. It would also have been nice to see some of Eddie's telltale ellipses.

In a broader sense, Eddie had a way of taking any topic and steering it toward his lifelong obsessions: death, alcohol, and women's clothing. He'd shoehorn these subjects (and anything else that came into his head) into his writing whether they fit the subject matter or not. "The Art of Tattooage" does none of that. Albeit a bit pretentious in his vocabulary, the author of this article sticks to the topic of tattoos and does not veer off on any quasi-philosophical rants. at least not in the passage I read. Eddie rarely had that kind of discipline.

If there's anything Woodian in "The Art of Tattooage," it's the way J. Lee Anderson uses old-timey slang and eye dialect. The article gives us a colorful quote from a tattoo artist who declines to be photographed: "The boss don't want no pitchers. The heat's on. We don't want publicity around here. And no pitchers." Ed Wood often wrote about the underworld of crime, and his characters in this milieu usually talk like gangsters in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, so that dialogue could have come from one of Eddie's works. Otherwise, this article lacks the tone and cadence I expect from Ed.

But don't take my word for it. Follow that link up there and read it for yourself. See if it passes your version of the duck test.