This week, we reflect on the career of actress Brandy Sanders, aka Brandi Saunders.
A few years ago, while completing the long-delayed post-production of the 1974 softcore sex film Dames & Dreams, I tried to identify as many members of the cast as I possibly could. Though some performers were instantly recognizable, there was one actress who seemed vaguely familiar but whom I couldn't exactly place. With her mane of vibrant red hair, arresting green eyes, freckled pale white skin, and formidable pout, she made quite an impression. She also sported a single tattoo: a plain outline of a small heart above her right pelvic bone. And while her role in Dames & Dreams was unlikely to earn her an Academy Award, she possessed solid comic timing and a wide range of evocative facial expressions.
Brandy in The Swing Thing.
Flash forward a few months. I had identified much of the cast, but the name of this flame-haired actress still eluded me. By then, I was spending more and more of my time scanning through early '70s adult loops. I was (and still am) on a constant lookout for loops with subtitles and loops that were shot at cinematographer and talent agent Hal Guthu's small Hollywood studio, since such films are highly likely to have a connection to Edward D. Wood, Jr.
One day, as I quickly scanned through a very grainy black-and-white 8mm loop, I stopped and realized it was her, the actress from Dames & Dreams I had been trying to ID. That led me to a private forum where an astute expert identified her as one Brandy Sanders (aka Brandi or Brandy Saunders). Her scant IMDb page listed a mere three credits spread across the first half of the 1970s.
The hardcore feature The Swing Thing (1972) pairs her with, among others, the legendary John Holmes. She's credited there as Julia Mure, a possible hint to her real name. A softcore feature called Massage Parlor Wife (1975) pairs her, as does Dames & Dreams, with another adult film legend, Serena. Her final credit is another hardcore feature, Hollywood She-Wolves (1976), in which she essays the role of a mousy, voyeuristic secretary.
The color blue triggers calming hormones in the brain, especially conducive to relaxation and study. But that's not how the Blue Film series of adult 8mm loops released in 1974 got its name. In fact, that title is a nod to the history of adult films. The archaic term "blue movie" isn't used much nowadays to describe pornography, but 1970s consumers would have known exactly what to expect from a series with that name. With each 200-foot reel costing $50 (nearly $300 in today's money), they'd better know what they were getting.
Confusingly to modern day aficionados, this series was known as both Blue Film and Blue Movies. The standard front covers of the boxes use the title Blue Movies as a kind of generic descriptor, while the back covers and index numbers use the Blue Film moniker instead. For instance, the short "Joint Connection" is designated as Blue Film No. 4. In August 2017, I deconstructed a loop from this series called "Tammy and the Doctor" (Blue Film No. 5). Back then, I noted the many correspondences between this film and entries from other West Coast loop series produced by Noel Bloom, son of publisher Bernie Bloom. The Blooms were, as you know by now, Ed Wood's most frequent employers during the 1970s.
One common element uniting these films is that they are silent with subtitles. It's my contention that those subtitles were often -- and perhaps always -- penned by Edward D. Wood, Jr. himself. A host of artistic tropes, ranging from editing to camerawork, also mark these series as being the work of the same creative principles. Eddie is generally accepted to have been one of those principles, directing the first 19 loops in the long-running Swedish Erotica series and even cameoing in the 1971 loop Prisoners Lovemaking (aka The Jailer).
Another hallmark of the earliest subtitled loops, including such series as Pussycat and Danish International Films, is that they feature common sets and set decorations. The interiors for these films were largely shot at talent agent/cinematographer Hal Guthu's studio on Santa Monica Blvd. Many interiors in the earliest Swedish Erotica loops, produced in 1972 and possibly into 1973, were shot here as well. But by the time we arrive at the Blue Film series, which carries a 1974 copyright, interiors were being shot on actual locations rather than sets.
It is unknown if Ed Wood was involved in any way on set for the Blue Film series. But these films are subtitled, so it's safe to say Ed was a key contributor. He may have also written the box cover summaries. His textual signatures are at times noticeable across various loop series. This week, we present for your consideration all eleven Blue Film summaries. Eddie or not? You make the call.
December 10 is a date well known to Ed Wood's fans, since that's the anniversary of Eddie's untimely passing in 1978. Evicted from his grungy apartment at 6383 Yucca St. in Los Angeles, just weeks before Christmas, Ed and Kathy Wood hastily relocated to actor Peter Coe's apartment less than ten miles away at 5635 Laurel Canyon Blvd. in Valley Village, where Eddie expired in a back bedroom on a Sunday afternoon as the others were watching the Rams on TV. As with many celebrities who left this world too soon, Ed Wood's alcohol-fueled death at the age of 54 is a key part of his legend. Fans can't help but romanticize, sentimentalize, or even mythicize his tragic ending. The fact that he died penniless and obscure, only to become famous in death, makes him the Vincent Van Gogh of B-movies.
Eddie would have understood this phenomenon all too well. As I've written many times, death was one of Ed Wood's muses, possibly the main one, topping even sex, booze, and women's clothing. The Grim Reaper looms over Eddie's most famous movies, especially Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959) and Orgy of the Dead (1965), both of which largely take place in cemeteries. Eddie's short stories and books are likewise rife with graveyards, tombstones, coffins, and corpses. Through his writing, Ed Wood frequently pondered how we die, what happens to our bodies after we die, and how we are remembered by those still living. As a quick primer, I refer you to the stories "Into My Grave" and "Epitaph for the Village Drunk."
In the primitive days before the internet, it was not so easy to dig up personal information about other people, even public figures like movie directors. So it was rather eye-opening when author Rudolph Grey included Eddie's full death certificate in the patchwork biography Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1992). With his truly morbid imagination, Eddie would likely approve of his fans studying this grim document in detail.
Robin Williams (left) challenges Henry Winkler as Ron Howard looks on.
It's not often that you get to see a performer's entire career change in a half hour, but that's exactly what happens in the classic Happy Days episode "My Favorite Orkan." First airing on February 28, 1978 as part of the sitcom's fifth season, "Orkan" made a national sensation of guest star Robin Williams (1951-2014). Within the year, Robin would have his own spinoff, Mork & Mindy, which in turn led to decades of phenomenal success as an actor and comedian, including an Oscar win for 1997's Good Will Hunting. This one sitcom appearance changed the course of Robin's entire life.
However, Robin Williams was not exactly a showbiz rookie when he signed on to play a wisecracking alien on Happy Days. Born in Chicago, Robin relocated to California in the 1970s and was already making a name for himself on the West Coast comedy scene before this episode aired. He was a finalist, for instance, in the San Francisco Comedy Competition in 1976 and was a regular at the Comedy Store in Los Angeles during the same era as David Letterman and Jay Leno. He'd even been a regular on two short-lived sketch comedy series: The Richard Pryor Show (1977) and a revival of Laugh-In (1977-78). Nothing really hit, though, until "My Favorite Orkan" came along.
The episode had a famously rocky production history. It's important to point out that "My Favorite Orkan" was not conceived as a vehicle for Robin Williams or as a pilot for a potential spinoff. It was just supposed to be a single, self-contained episode of Happy Days. The story goes that producer Garry Marshall wanted to do an episode about space aliens in order to please his Star Wars-obsessed son, Scotty. Space aliens on Happy Days? This may seem like a wild departure from the show's initial mission statement, but let's remember that America was obsessed with flying saucers and UFOs in the 1950s. The topic was bound to come up eventually.
Unfortunately, the initial script by Happy Days mainstay Joe Glauberg had not gone over well at the initial table read. Cast member Anson Williams in particular had doubts about whether the episode would work. Those doubts were compounded when the actor initially cast as Mork didn't pan out. Some sources say character actor Richard Dimitri was fired after one day; other sources say comedian John Byner quit after one day. Either way, the episode didn't truly click until Robin Williams was cast and made the character his own, even improvising much of Mork's dialogue.
After acting for Ed Wood, Conrad Brooks became a director.
There's no doubt that actor Conrad "Connie" Brooks (1931-2017) was a major player in the Ed Wood saga. Born Conrad Biedrzycki in Baltimore, he was a key member of the Wood repertory company in the 1950s, back when Eddie was making such classics as Glen or Glenda (1953), Bride of the Monster (1955), and Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959). Conrad's bald-pated brother, Henry Bederski (1910-2003), appeared in some of those familiar movies as well. As I wrote back in October, Eddie's very first directorial effort after moving to Hollywood might well have been 1948's Range Revenge, a modest Western vehicle for Conrad and Henry.
For decades, Conrad was skeptical about the value of those movies he made with Ed Wood in the '50s. But after attending some sold-out Plan 9 screenings in the wake of The Golden Turkey Awards (1980), Connie saw the light. He got back into acting in the 1980s and started writing and directing his own films in the 1990s, including titles like Blood Slaves of the Vampire Wolf (1996) and Jan-Gel: The Beast from the East (1999). He kept directing well into the new millennium and was acting right until the end of his life. He was not someone I ever really looked into, however, at least not until recently. I screened some of his '90s opuses a few weeks ago, and they were at times fun and even surreal. That is, if you enjoy that kind of garage cinema.
Some say that Conrad Brooks was shamelessly cashing in on his connection to Ed Wood, but I don't agree. Connie's enthusiasm for his work seemed genuine. He was a staple of the convention circuit in his later years, and the Ed Wood fans who got to know him personally found him to be fun, energetic, and gregarious. (Side note: I wish I'd been more into those conventions back in the '90s. I mean, Russ Meyer and Jesus Franco?!) And if Conrad was trying to "get rich quick" by riding Eddie's coattails, why did he eventually leave Hollywood and return home to live in his ex-wife's trailer?
Henry Winkler (right) threatens Ron Howard on Happy Days.
Admit it. You are not listening to These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast. Almost no one is. I know this because our podcast host, Libsyn, heartlessly forces me to look at our miserable download statistics every time I post a new episode. Considering how much time and effort goes into this podcast, those low numbers can be disheartening. Some weeks, our audience barely breaks double digits. When the podcast was new in 2018, we averaged about 30-40 listeners per episode. I naively thought we would grow from there as the show got better. We didn't. I mean, the show did improve, in my opinion, but our listenership didn't. Instead, the audience for These Days Are Ours has slowly but surely eroded. Eventually, I will be the only listener left.
I suppose I have to decide whether I'm okay with that. I can take some comfort in the fact that I've done everything I can to make These Days Are Oursa well-produced, informative, entertaining show. And I've also done what I can to promote the show across social media and the blogosphere, including writing these weekly articles. The audience just isn't responding. Unfortunately, since we get little to no feedback, I don't know whether it's the topic (the ABC sitcom Happy Days) that people don't like or something about the podcast itself they don't like. As it is, it feels like I'm taking the episodes and dropping them down a deep, dark well where they make a very distant splash and are never heard from again.
That being said, we have a new episode this week, and it's another one I'm very proud of. It's a review of the Season 5 episode "Our Gang" from February 1978. Like so many sitcoms, ranging from The Dick Van Dyke Show to The Simpsons, Happy Days decided to do a prequel episode to show us what its characters were like before we got to know them. This script depicts the fateful first meeting of nerdy Richie Cunningham (Ron Howard) and tough guy Arthur "The Fonz" Fonzarelli (Henry Winkler). It's a very entertaining episode, and we had a good time reviewing it. I hope our enthusiasm translates into an enjoyable podcast.
Here's the episode. Please, for the love of all that is decent and holy, listen to it. Literally all you have to do is press the play button. It's that triangle right there. Go ahead. Click that play button. Please. Please. Thank you.
A few months back, I received an email informing me that my friend, actress Niva Ruschell, had passed away in early May of this year.
The wonderful Niva Ruschell.
My initial and spontaneous reaction to this news was profound sadness. I had by then known Niva for four years. We talked on the phone only infrequently, more often messaging privately on Facebook. For me, she was an endless source of encouragement. She always seemed genuinely tickled by my goofy ideas and damaged sense of humor. In time, we realized a shared love of classic American cartoons, agreeing that Chuck Jones' One Froggy Evening (1955) was the best cartoon ever made. Until I was reminded of it, I had not been on a cartoon kick in about a quarter of a century. I subsequently shared the film with my teenage daughter, and she likewise became a convert. One Froggy Evening binds us in uproarious laughter and philosophical truths.
And it binds me to Niva.
Fortuitously, she told me of her love of Ed Wood, viewing him as a genuine outsider artist and not a figure of derision. In my research, I found out that Niva had unwittingly collaborated with Ed! Back in 1976, she played the role of Candy in the pioneering blaxploitation adult film, Tongue. She was also the film's associate producer and co-writer. An excerpt from Tongue was turned into a silent 8mm loop called "Lube Job" as part of the Foxy series, with subtitles penned by Ed Wood! When I informed Niva of this, she was almost as ecstatic as I was.
Niva wrote about the making of Tongue in the closing chapters of her wonderful 2011 book And Hollywood Be Her Name: Basically a True Story. She also discussed the film with Peter Flash in a 2019 interview for the website Adult DVD Talk. I supplied some background information about Tongue's post-production for that article. But Niva's career was not limited to this one feature. She also appears in one of the foundational classics of blaxploitation cinema. As the prostitute who famously deflowers the title character in Melvin Van Peeble's watershed independent film Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, she uttered a quintessential line that was also employed in the film's radio advertising: "You sure got a sweet sweetback!"
When Vinegar Syndrome released a new scan of Sweet Sweetback on Blu-ray in 2018, I was again looped in. Niva was interviewed as a bonus feature on the disc, and I wrote some of the questions. Although most of my queries fell outside the scope of the interview, I still received a Special Thanks credit. In the liner notes, I am credited right next to Niva. That may seem small to you, but it truly warms my heart.
Niva and Greg are thanked, side by side.
When Niva and I last spoke, I reminded her that the carousel on the Santa Monica pier—Sweetback's opening scene was shot upstairs above it—was also featured in the opening credits to the classic sitcom Three's Company. Niva roared with laughter. I neglected to mention that the pier was also the exterior location of Swedish Erotica loop #20, "Pier Passion," featuring subtitles by Ed Wood.
Tongue was Niva's perfect construct, a first-ever melding of blaxploitation and porn, with more than a hint of Fellini. When I pointed out to Niva that Quasi (Al Poe), the mute protagonist of Tongue, exclusively heard a frog's voice, she laughed. And when, during our last conversation, I said that I imagined Niva being guided by that same frog's voice throughout a "making of Tongue" feature, she burst into laughter again.
During the summer of 2015, my longstanding flirtation with Ed Wood became a full-fledged romance when I started reading the previous articles in this series. After pestering the author with some of my esoteric research, he invited me to write an article of my own. Five years on, the work remains for me a daily and satisfying highlight. From the jump, I suddenly found a new world of relationships opening to me; likeminded, like-directional people. In November 2015, for instance, I was brand new to Facebook, and it was Ed Wood who brought me there. A rather nebulous name, Jacques Descent, was associated with Ed Wood on a few films. I found him on Facebook and messaged him, asking about Ed Wood and the "lost" film Operation: Redlight.
Jacques and I became fast friends, and he soon after told me that he had completed the post-production of Tongue. I then researched the film, and though Jack and Niva had never met, I contacted her. She remained duly proud of Tongue. In late 2019, after seeing the Rudy Ray Moore biopic Dolemite Is My Name —penned by the same men, Scott AlexanderandLarry Karaszewski, who wrote Tim Burton's Ed Wood (1994)—she emailed me and declared that the making of Tongue was not a documentary but a feature.
Niva ended one of her first messages to me with , and that smiling, sunglass-wearing emoji became de rigueur in our conversations. We dubbed it "SuperCool."
I hope I can one day succeed in telling the story behind the making of Tongue. I do feel some residual guilt, however. I went months without reaching out, oblivious through the summer that Niva had passed. In early May, she took ill with flu-like symptoms, dying in a mere two days. Although she was not tested, she was exposed to COVID-19 and it was the presumed cause of her death. Her last two text messages to me, dated April 25, 2020, end:
"I can breathe easier now..."
And:
"We are safe and trust you and your family are as well."
May you rest in peace, Niva. No one else ever made me feel so smart or so funny.
"Be My Valentine" features the entire cast of Happy Days in musical fantasy numbers.
It is now time to talk about musical episodes. You know, those surreal, often dreamlike TV episodes that break from a series' usual pattern and have the characters singing and dancing, Broadway-style, for our ostensible entertainment. As a viewer, you might consider them a delightful change of pace or an unforgivable violation of a show's own internal logic. I tend to enjoy them, but I have a pretty high tolerance for showtunes and production numbers. Your mileage may vary. Maybe you feel like animated shows (The Simpsons, Bob's Burgers, Family Guy) can get away with them, but you won't tolerate them from live-action shows.
Either way, I think musical episodes exist for a number of good reasons. First of all, they give the cast and crew a chance to do something a little different for a week. Sitcoms especially can become very repetitive, utilizing the same characters and the same stock sets over and over. Why not have them do a musical episode now and again, just for the sake of variety? Secondly, the actors on these shows often have backgrounds in theater. They've probably done their share of singing and dancing in the past. Musical episodes give them a chance to show off their terpsichorean skills. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, musical episodes exist for the same reason that any musicals (on stage or screen) exist -- songs are a way of having your characters express their emotions in a very direct way that they might not do though normal dialogue.
"Be My Valentine" from February 1978 was Happy Days' first (but not last) musical episode. It certainly stands out from all the other Season 5 episodes! What did we think of it? Well, you can find out by listening to the latest installment of our podcast, These Days Are Ours.
