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: The Wood Dziawer Odyssey, Part Seven by Greg Dziawer

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 Syndrome co-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 loops from 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.

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: Eddie or Not? by Greg Dziawer

There's more than one Ed Wood in the world, you know.

NOTE: Greg Dziawer has been doing some serious, time-consuming research into the career of Edward D. Wood, Jr. This week, he tackles an issue that plagues every Ed Wood fan eventually. Both "Edward" and "Wood" are very common names, so our Ed Wood is by no means the only Ed Wood. I regularly receive Google alerts about the name "Ed Wood," and most of these items are indeed about the director of Plan 9 from Outer Space, but occasionally one of those other Ed Woods will find his way into my Gmail inbox. It's not always clear which Wood is which. Relax. Greg's on the case, and he's here to impart some knowledge about some of those other Ed Woods. J.B.

I. “Sourdough” Ed Wood

Bread Wood? This Ed Wood has a couple of buns in the oven.

There are plenty of real people named Ed Wood. One, along with wife Jean, devoted his life to "studying the science of real sourdough, baking and batching the perfect loaf, and traveling the world to uncover the hidden history of sourdough for National Geographic Society."

Eddie or Not: Interesting folks. But this Ed Wood isn't our favorite pulp auteur.

 

II. Edward Wood: Sci-Fi Lit-Crit

A better candidate, surely, is one Edward Wood, who authored numerous articles for the newsletter The Science-Fiction Times from 1958 through 1960. For issue #309 from Feb 1959, he penned the cover story 1958 in Science-Fiction. Its opening lines: "It was a bad year. No compromise with the truth can disguise this elementary fact." An article called "1959 in Science Fiction" followed for issue #330 from Jan 1960. The magazine reviews are consistently scathing.

Two Science-Fiction Times cover stories by Edward Wood.

One degree of separation:
"Forry" knew both Ed Woods.

Essentially a fanzine, Science-Fiction Times was a (mostly) monthly, mimeo-printed 8 ½ x 11 newsletter typically running 4-8 pages. It began life in 1941 as Fantasy Times, switching its emphasis and its name in 1957, amidst an explosion of homebrew sci-fi 'zines influenced into being by – among many other things that defined an era – Einstein, the Bomb, and Sputnik.

Science-Fiction Times largely contained news, book, and magazine reviews. Forrest J. "Forry" Ackerman was a regular contributor. It moved to offset printing before its lengthy run finally ended in 1970. The milieu seems right, the same that nurtured Bride of the Monster and Plan 9 from Outer Space. Ed knew Forry, and he did – albeit later in a much different milieu – write magazine articles.

Eddie or Not: Nope. Turns out this is a sci-fi fan who was active in the fanzine press during the 50's and '60s. Issues of Science-Fiction Times can be readily located online. There are currently two issues over at Ebay containing pieces by Edward, and I must commend the seller for divulging in one of these listings that "this is not the movie director but rather in the 1950s and 1960s there was an active SF fan who was also named Edward Wood."

 

III. Spurious Attributions

Not all Ebay sellers have been as forthcoming, and some made lazy pronouncements (whether deliberate or not, an attribution to Ed would almost certainly substantially raise the selling price) that I've delved into before. You can read more about the manner of listing by hitting either of the links in the preceding couple of sentences.

To cut right to the chase, this seller "believed" Ed may have written two more items up for auction. I say that in the past tense because the listing for Office Sex Circus has been fairly and thankfully revised.

Office Sex Circus and Desert Lust, two novels dubiously attributed to Ed Wood.

Desert Lust is an undated Club Novel paperback from the '60s, credited to Bob Roth. A few quick searches don't reveal much about an adult paperback writer of that era with this name, nor have I ever seen any claim tying it to Ed. Given the source of the claim, utterly incorrect twice before, we can fairly shoot this one down.

Office Sex Circus is an April Morgan Bee-Line title from 1968. Though the title is certainly up Ed's alley, he never wrote for Bee-Line, a prolific New York publisher. (Hal Kantor, who wrote for Calga when Ed was at Pendulum, wrote 1967's The Vegas Trap for Bee-Line under their common Pinnacle Books imprint.) April Morgan, likely a pseudonym, wrote other titles for Bee-Line, but a quick scan revealed little else. Bee-Line often copyrighted their titles without listing an author, or listing a pseudonym without listing the actual author's name. That only makes the haze murkier as to the true authorship of Office Sex Circus and the identity of April Morgan.

Two more Bee-Line titles by April Morgan.

Eddie or Not: There's no good reason to think so.

We must be honest also. We must not be so anxious in our attempts to make new converts that we forget to remind them of the cost. Consider The Quandary of Discipleship, a sermon by a retired Southern Baptist minister named (you guessed it) Ed Wood.

The devil, dear readers, is in the details.

Ed Wood Wednesdays: The Wood Promo Odyssey, Part Eight by Greg Dziawer

Wood fans, it's time to put your knowledge to the test!

Ed's type of gal? Candy Samples in fur.

I often opine about this or that chunk of text and wonder aloud if it could have been written by Edward D. Wood, Jr. The endeavor is predicated, of course, upon the notion that there are works by Ed out there yet to be attributed to him. The challenges inherent in this are many, and it is easy to lose my way.

When I make such surmises in articles like this one, I often ask rhetorically, "What do you think?" This week, however, I really do want to know what you think.

A few months back, I was looking through the IMDb page of adult superstar Candy Samples (who had cameos in Drop Out Wife and The Cocktail Hostesses) when I found a couple of intriguing summaries of her early 1970s films. One such summary was credited to the video company VCX, the other simply to "Anonymous." In both cases, the promo copy had just enough panache to make me scratch my head and wonder aloud if Ed could have written it. Apart from more details about the provenance of these summaries, which I'll share next week, I'd like to truly hear your thoughts and share them here.

First up, the summary for 1972's The Candy Store:

Seldom seen Candy Samples plays a bordello madam who loves to show her ladies how to please her customers. Candy's fans will be delighted by this full-length feature film, which showcases both the mature beauty and remarkably erotic personality of the legendary bust queen. Her "house" features a bevy of stunning young girls, trained by Candy Samples herself to perform feats of sexual magic with their hot, luscious bodies and moist, hungry mouths. The non-stop hardcore action encompasses a wide spectrum of adult sexuality, from the traditional to the bizarre. 'Madam' Candy sees it as her duty to personally instruct and even assist her lovely girls in satisfying the many exotic demands of her clientèle. Bust lovers will thrill to the stiff-nippled antics of Candy and her girls. The oral interludes are bountiful and intense, especially when Candy demonstrates her own personal sperm-simmering techniques. The buxom superstar even wields a whip in the interest of maintaining house discipline! Variations to please every sexual taste are contained within this hard-hitting Candy bonanza.—VCX

Next up, we have 1973's Million Dollar Mona:

The reporter Jimmy Ryan is pleasured under his blanket by his lover when his angry editor calls to break his day off. Jimmy is told to report why does famous Mona von Groana hide in a hotel. Going there, her maid Nympho Mania casually jumps to his arms before sending him to Mona's bedroom. Mona herself is even more harassing. Eventually she exposes her buxom figure to make him forget his interview. She then ties him up in bed until he leaves. Mona then goes to her bathtub, where her maid gives her a breast massage which leads to bed. Mona tells her maid she wants to peep on her with Jimmy if he returns. Her wish comes true when Jimmy's editor angrily sends him back. But as Mona hides due to stealing her husband's inheritance, his men break in and kill the maid and her. Jimmy, who hides in Mona's clothing, gets fired but finds the money. He can therefore finally have his lover pleasure him under his blanket without interruptions.—Anonymous

Now that you've read these summaries, do you have a guess? You can message me privately on Facebook (I'm Greg Dziawer there) and let me know what you think and why. You can also tell me if you'd like me to credit your conclusions or share them anonymously.

Join us next week, and I'll share your thoughts as well as mine!

Ed Wood Wednesdays: Greg Dziawer on 'Operation Redlight' (1969)

Real-life American GIs with Vietnamese prostitutes in Saigon, 1967.

Note to readers: Once again, this is the time of the week when I hand the reigns of Dead 2 Rights over to Greg Dziawer, who has graciously consented to continue the Ed Wood Wednesdays series for me. This week, Greg has been delving into one of the "missing-in-action" films on Ed Wood's screen-writing resume. Let me thank Greg again for the time and effort he has put into reviving this series. And now, without further ado, here's Greg. J.B.

A Descent into Operation Redlight

One of the most elusive titles in Ed Wood's filmography remains Operation Redlight, a film that has yet to turn up. Any reviews from its era have not survived into the internet era (or have eluded me). It was briefly mentioned here by Joe in a previous Ed Wood Wednesdays article, as part of a review of the Ed-scripted The Undergraduate, owing to both films being produced by the  same man, Jacques Descent. I recently contacted Mr. Descent and happily received a quick reply with plenty of fresh details:

Jacques "Jack" Descent

"I purchased the rights to Ed Wood's book called Mama's House, which I produced as Operation Redlight. Ed wrote the screenplay, and Donald Doyle directed, and of course it featured also Ed. It was a co-production with Marty, a friend that put up part of the financing. Marty was the owner of American Film Lab on La Brea Ave in Los Angeles and one of the conditions to obtaining part of the financing from Marty was that his film laboratory would process the dailies. 

The film was shot in 11 days with exteriors in Canoga Park and all interiors at the former house of Norma Talmadge in the Los Feliz Hills. This was definitely a low budget venture and the lab ran into a problem from the first day of production so the whole film was shot without ever seeing a daily. Eventually after the wrap party Marty informed me that all the exposed film was processed in one evening and because of problems and break down over 35% of the exposed film was ruined." 

A Bill Ward cartoon

Jack, as he signed this message to me, may be recollecting an original manuscript with that title. The also-elusive paperback was published by Tiger Books/Powell Publications the same year as the film was produced. Release information is yet unknown. In Nightmare of Ecstasy, it's identified as Mama's Diary. In Jack's own filmography and subsequently on the film's IMDb page, the only actor listed is Ed. 1969 was a busy year for the writer/thespian, including two additional adaptions of his screenplays in which he starred: The Photographer (aka Love Feast) and Misty (aka Nympho Cycler), commonly listed as from 1971 but likely shot in '69 and released in '70. The book summary in Nightmare sounds amazing, and at 224 pages this is one of the lengthiest – if not the lengthiest – of Ed's novels:

A popular sex novelist is “drafted” to run a chain of whorehouses in Vietnam. The characters are caricatures evoking the sex cartoons of Bill Ward. According to Kathy Wood, “Eddie treasured that book. It was something he did that he really liked and I liked it too...” Apparently, Wood wrote a screenplay of the book which was made into a movie Operation Redlight by Jacques Descent Productions. Wood was reportedly not entirely pleased with the results.

It's fascinating to imagine Ed playing the “popular sex novelist”, and a tribute to low-budget exploitation film-making that Vietnam was represented by southern California and the environs of a faded Hollywood star's mansion.

A 16 room/6 bath Venetian villa that Norma Talmadge shared with Buster Keaton's producer Joe Schenck, The Cedars, as it became known, makes quite the luxurious Vietnamese brothel! The property – in the hills overlooking Los Angeles – also appears in Billy Wilder's Sunset Blvd. (1950). More recently owned by fashion designer Sue Wong, the estate has housed Errol Flynn, Jimi Hendrix, Dennis Hopper (scenes from Easy Rider were shot there, and the wrap party was held there), Lou Reed, and Arthur Lee of the band Love through the years. Howard Hughes played the piano in the solarium, and Marilyn Monroe partied there. Bela Lugosi and Ralph Bellamy stayed there. And also Johnny Depp, as he was “channeling Ed Wood."

The Cedars today, its angels, saints, and lions restored.

If Ed was indeed "not entirely pleased with the results" he nonetheless curiously saw fit to supply Jack with another screenplay just a year or two later. The paycheck, understandably, was preeminent. In future Ed Wood Wednesdays, we'll hopefully have much more to share about  Operation Redlight and Jack Descent. Needless to say, we heartily thank Jack for sharing!

Ed Wood Wednesdays: Bela's Letter to a Fan by Greg Dziawer

This ad for The Bela Lugosi Revue appeared in The Las Vegas Sun in February 1954.

NOTE: Happy greetings and seasons holidays, dear readers! Before I head out of town to visit relatives for Christmas, I thought I'd post this week's Ed Wood Wednesdays. Again, it comes to us through the courtesy of Mr. Greg Dziawer, who has been delving through the archives to find rarities related to Edward D. Wood, Jr. This week, he has discovered a most interesting document: a 1954 letter supposedly penned by Bela Lugosi with a brief addendum by Ed Wood himself. Please enjoy and have the merriest of Christmases. I'll see you on the other side of the holiday. J.B.

Image courtesy of the Movie Monster Museum.

Ed Wood clearly wrote this entire letter, signed from Bela in response to a fan – not just the added note to encourage others to write Bela, signed by Ed as Bela's "Producer." The letter perfectly summarizes the projects Bela and Ed were then working on. On March 19, 1954, Bela was in the second and last month of a run at the Silver Slipper ("More & More Jackpots") in Las Vegas. The Bela Lugosi Revue was a burlesque show, spoofing among other things Dracula, Bela hosted four shows a night – the first at 9pm, the last at 2:30am - for two straight months. He checked himself into rehab just a few months later. The show featured Tere Sheehan's ("The Girl in the Champagne Glass") burlesque act, "Champagne Fantasy," which she performed at the Slipper through the 1950s as part of Hank Henry's house troupe.

(left) The Silver Slipper advertises The Bela Lugosi Revue.
(right) Pull da string! Tere Sheehan's Champagne Fantasy.

The fan, whose first name is redacted, was easily identified as Henry Mazzeo, Jr. of Yonkers, who also submitted a letter to "Dear Uncle Creepy" in the sixth issue of Warren's Creepy magazine, from 1964, making the controversial claim that vampires can come out in sunlight. Reading between the lines of the letter, the "group" Ed refers to that Henry is urged to encourage to write Bela is a fan club.

Henry Mazzeo wrote more than just fan letters.

Don't just take my word on it that Ed wrote this entire response. On an IMDb board in 2012, a user called billymac107 made this astute observation:

I came across a letter from Bela to a fan which was obviously typed by Ed, I say obviously because as I am sure you are aware Ed was a lighting fast typist and if you examine the letter you can see that most of the capital letters are at a different level than the rest of the text, indicating the shift key did not have time to properly return, if you get my meaning.

Speaking of which, makes me wonder if Bela could even type?

Happy Holidays!

Special thanks to Movie Monster Museum for their help with this article.

Ed Wood Wednesdays: Advertising T.K. Peters by Greg Dziawer

Well, maybe not everything, but Greg's working on it.

NOTE: Greg Dziawer has been doing extensive research into the career of Dr. T.K. Peters, whose name is often touted as a literary alias for Edward D. Wood, Jr. Much more Peters-related material will appear in this space in the weeks to come. For now, here is a preview of what Greg's been working on. Enjoy. J.B.

A T.K. Peters book from SECS.

There was a time when many considered the name T.K. Peters, which appeared on close to 50 photo illustrated sociological sex paperbacks, to be a pseudonym of Ed Wood. Or even a shared pseudonym of multiple authors at Pendulum Publishers. Leo Eaton, fellow staffer of Ed's at the Pendulum magazine offices in Los Angeles, laid these notions to rest when he revealed that Peters was a real person and that the paperbacks were sourced from a comprehensive sex study he had sold to Pendulum.

The sociological angle was a legal gambit, justifying the hardcore sex of the photographs (the raison d'etre of the books, with a pic on each right-hand facing page), common practice of many adult publishers during the transition to the legalization of pornography. These kinds of books exploded across the adult paperback world in the late '60s and early '70s, albeit briefly, when the educational pretenses quickly became unnecessary.

The following scans are of two advertisements, both of which appeared in many Pendulum/Calga/SECS Press magazines, regardless of theme, circa 1971. The first ad consists solely of titles from the Peters source, whose name is not even mentioned in the copy, as part of the SECS Press Encyclopedia of Sex series. The second ad throws in a few titles from Calga's Sexual Enlightenment Series and even a couple from the non-Peters PsychoMed series (published by Pendulum's Atlanta office). 

As you check them out, how many of the Peters titles in these ads do you recognize as being by Ed? He wrote or collaborated on approximately a dozen books from the Peters source. The answer is below, after the second scan.

"Every aspect of sex... from foreplay to orgasm..."

"Photos are censored. Books are not!"

So how many did you spot? If you said zero, then congratulate yourself. You really know your T.K. Peters!

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

Written by Ed Wood? Greg says no.

Practicing Peters

Some relevant copyright listings.

We've previously shared a chunk of poetically weird photo-captions from the series of adult paperbacks released by the Pendulum-family of publishers circa 1970-1972, from a deeply personal Holy Grail of mine, the fabled source by Dr. T.K. Peters. A comprehensive sex study rooted in his work as a marriage counselor in Atlanta after his "retirement" from Oglethorpe University—enjoying his sunset years with his wife Grace—at the Dunwoody Preserve, an effortlessly ahead-its-time endeavor per the usual for "Kim."

I must confess that I can't resist paging Dr. Peters yet again. In this week's Ed Wood Wednesdays, we're diving into one title from the T.K. Peters source, one of the most-legendary of them all. Did Ed even write it? (If you've been here before, that's a rhetorical question.)

Sexual Practices in Witchcraft and Black Magic Book 1 (SP 111, 1971, volume XVII of SECS Press' Sexual Encyclopedia for Adults), credited to Frank Lennon with Dr. T.K. Peters, is listed on Ed's resume, generally a reliable source. Leo Eaton was the sole author, and it reads nothing like Ed, densely laden with truly factual research and unusually serious for this milieu. Though not penned by Ed, it is, nonetheless, deservedly one of the most beloved of the series. If Ed had any involvement, perhaps it was in the photo-captions, the mind-altering sexual haiku that defined the distinctive Pendulum tone across hundreds of paperbacks and upwards of a thousand mags in less than a half dozen years. 

Ed Wood Wednesdays: The Wood Collaborator Odyssey, Part 25 by Greg Dziawer

(from left) Rob Huffman, Greg Dziawer, Jean Marie Stine.

This week on their podcast, Sin & Sci-Fi in the '60s, Rob Huffman and Greg Dziawer talk with Jean Marie Stine, the author of Ed Wood: The Early Years (2001) and a colleague of Ed's when he was writing adult paperbacks in the 1970s. Join them for this interesting and far-ranging discussion!

You can find more Sin & Sci-Fi content right here.

Ed Wood Wednesdays: The Wood Collaborator Odyssey, Part Two by Greg Dziawer

Some of the films of sound mixer Sam Kopetzky.

Sam Kopetzky

"Sam the man. I liked Sam," Jacques Descent recently told me.

Just because Jacques had produced two Ed Wood scripts, 1972's The Undergraduate and 1969's gone-missing Operation Redlight (for which he also served as cinematographer), I had no reason to think he also knew sound mixer Sam Kopetzky (1937-2003) when I emailed him the credits to Sam's only directorial effort listed on the IMDb: 2069 A.D., a sci-fi soft porn feature starring Marsha Jordan (as Marsha Kopete). I wondered if, given the associations and credits, it was something he had somehow worked on. As it turned out, Jacques knew Sam well, and ended his reminiscences by saying, "Speak well of Sam." I will.

Perhaps we need to back up a moment. Who is Sam Kopetzky?

Ed Wood Wednesdays: The Wood Dziawer Odyssey, Part Six by Greg Dziawer

This week, a particular book caught Greg's eye.

The book as it appears in School Girl.

Last night, I was scanning through some 8mm silent loops from the early '70s, loops I had seen before and that had connections to Ed Wood if not his direct involvement. It seems like I've spent the better part of 2017 poring over loops in the target zone, trying to piece together Ed's possible contributions. 

It was while watching School Girl, the third loop in the long-running Swedish Erotica series—the first 19 believed to have been made by Ed, and certainly subtitled by his hand—that I had a flash of recognition as the onscreen couple sat in bed doing homework. Of course, the sitting and the homework didn't last long, a typically flimsy narrative conceit always immediately leading to sex.

What I noticed was the book on the bed. As they paged through it, it dawned on me that I had seen a similar book before in the loop Incest. Like School Girl, it carries a number of signatures shared by the larger family of loops produced by Noel Bloom. 

Though I don't know if there is any documented proof, I agree with the general consensus that Ed Wood made (or at least contributed to) the earliest Swedish Erotica loops. These short films can be identified by a number of stylistic signatures. But I've also seen these same signatures in hundreds of other non-Swedish loops, none of which to my knowledge has ever been definitively ascribed to Ed.

That's the larger, perhaps quixotic and even completely wrongheaded endeavor in this series: interrogating the larger of family of loops to find the telling intersections. And it's in those intersections, too many to suggest mere coincidence, that I've concluded Ed Wood worked on hundreds of loops in a variety of capacities.

I'll refer obsessive Woodologists to the details from my previous Odysseys and Orbits, all of which you can find here. Below are my basic findings in summa, some taken from the public record, some derived solely from my own inferences:

• Edward D. Wood, Jr. worked in some capacity for the notorious Swedish Erotica series for a period in the early 1970s.

• Wood wrote subtitles for numerous loop series that, like Swedish Erotica, were produced and distributed by Noel Bloom.

• He wrote various promotional texts for these loops, too, including box cover and catalog insert summaries.

• He appeared on camera in at least once in a loop that we know of. 

• The set decorations for these loops draw from the same common pool of bric a brac: wall hangings, pillows, blankets, lamps, nightstands, etc. Some of these same items turn up in the final two feature films Ed is known to have directed, Necromania and The Young Marrieds.

• I know more than a few experts who also feel strongly that Wood was involved in decorating the sets of these pornographic loops, and there's even the notion out there that he may have edited them, too.

The book as it appears in Incest.

Back to that book. When I checked the loop Incest, sure enough, the same book appeared immediately. It's obvious from the size of the book and also the view of the spine. In School Girl, you can see the finger-grips on the edge of it, as well as gilt edging, earmarking it as a dictionary or encyclopedia. Well, the actors in the movie must have been studying vocabulary, because in Incest, we see that it is indeed a dictionary. We get a close up of the page on which the word "incest" is defined, just before Rick Cassidy laughs and casually tosses the book to the corner of the couch.

While there are numerous other correspondences between these two loops and the larger family of loops, this was a nice little moment for me. The sort of moment that rewards patience and continues to spur me on. I'm sure I'll see that book again, now that my eyes are open to it, and when I do, you'll hear all about right here at Ed Wood Wednesdays.

Ed Wood Wednesdays: Eddie Or Not? The Ed-Tribution Odyssey, Part Two by Greg Dziawer

Greg continues to navigate the strange and misleading world of Ed Wood attributions.

In previous and numerous installments of Ed Wood Wednesdays, we visited a number of paperbacks attributed falsely to Ed as author. It's a veritable game of research Wack-A-Mole. No sooner do I do a little quick research (or more simply it's a given) to rule out Ed's authorship than two more bullshit Ed-tributions rear their head in my browser. I'll allow for fair maybes with some evidentiary background or informed consensus; I'll even take a sensible inference! Given the ease at which the information is obtained to rule out Ed, I'll conclude charitably that the non-profit claimants are mostly acting in an ignorant good faith. But I'll qualify that statement by saying that the sellers – by far the most perfidious purveyors of mis-Ed-tributions – seem to have a hint of self-interest and a huckster's parsing of language and truth at play.

In other words, just go to Ebay. I've listed links to actual auctions in the past, but really there's no need. Just go search, and in no time flat you'll come across a listing of a non-Ed paperbacks, generally at about five to ten times the price of its market value. A cynic could retort, I know being one, "Ah, market value is whatever someone's willing to pay!" Alas, that's the huckster in me.

So, then, let's play a few rounds of Wood Wack-A-Lie:

Exhibit #1: Take Death For A Lover

Ed Smith's cover for Take Death For A Lover.

Take Death For A Lover (1968) by Alan Marshall; A Pleasure Reader (an imprint of the insanely prolific Greenleaf).

Marshall is a house pseudonym (known and unknown, often including Donald Westlake, as well as Evan Hunter and Lawrence Block) at Greenleaf Classics, with a whopping 150 titles indexed here. There's no concrete connection to Ed that I can discern anywhere. Admittedly, Ed did write for Greenleaf, both under his own name and a house pseudonym.

As the title melds sex and death, give a moment's reflection to it being a reprint of Orgy Of The Dead, previously published by Greenleaf. No one has suggested this, and no one should have. There's a zombie on the cover.

Seen on Ebay. "Ed Wood" ends the title listing, with no further mention or attempt at substantiation elsewhere in the listing. The Buy-It-Now price is only a hundred bucks!

Back cover: Hilda ran from one shame to another, until her life became a monolith of degradation, and the taste of countless sins grew bitter in her mouth...

Eddie or Not? Cool cover and title, but nope.

Exhibit #2: A Family Affair

The cover art for J.X. Williams' A Family Affair, as murkily displayed on Ebay (left).

Speaking of Greenleaf and house pseudonyms, this Ember Library imprint title from 1966 is credited to the impossibly prolific J.X.Williams. Leaving aside the matter of William's identity, which will only complicate matters, what we know is that Ed wrote a title credited on the cover to the mysterious, highly likely purely fictitious and pseudonymous Williams, as revealed by his name appearing on its title page.

The J.X. Williams moniker was widely shared across Greenleaf imprints, by knowns and unknowns again, Victor J. Banis, Earl Kemp, and John Jakes among them. Crossover of actual authorship occurred between the Marshall and Williams house pseudonyms in the vast world of the Greenleaf Classics. But there was that sole Wood title.

Seen on Ebay as The Affair. The seller there added to the murk by cutting off the title on the cover scan and editing it accordingly in the listing. Forty bucks and it's yours!

Eddie or Not? You know the answer.

A trio of genuine Ed Wood novels published by Greenleaf.

For the record, Ed did author three books for Greenleaf:

• The aforementioned Parisian Passions.

• The movie tie-in to Orgy Of The Dead. Earl Kemp memories here.

• Side-Show Siren, from 1966, Ed's name on the cover.

Exhibit #3: A Manual Of Human Sexuality, Volume 3

"She learned everything about sex from a manual. Emmanuel was their gardener."

A Manual Of Human Sexuality, Volume 3 (1973); Edusex (Gallery Press, Inc.) by Norman Bates (Charles D. Anderson).

Just when I was feeling confident that Norman Bates was solely a pseudonym used by Charles D. Anderson and not a shared pseudonym, certainly not Ed's pseudonym, I dug a little into this title. The first copyright record I found did not list a volume number, and the author was credited as Robin Y. Eagle, a fellow staffer of Ed, Leo Eaton, Bill Jones and Anderson circa 1970-71 in the Pendulum magazine office on W. Pico Blvd. But then I found a record for Volume 1, credited to Anderson and listing Bates as pseudonym. Volume 3 was/is up on Ebay now (with Norman Bates listed on the cover) and at a few places, minimally at 125 clams and always claimed to be by Ed. Three volumes (at least), the first and third by Anderson and the second by Eagle, often pseudonymously Robert Elgin, maintaining that name into the mainstream.

Pendulum and Calga dissolved in early 1973, leaving only Gallery Press, across the magazines and paperbacks. These Edusex paperbacks were the last gasp of the halcyon days of the Pendulum family of imprints, dozens upon dozens of titles in the Encyclopedia of Sex (Pendulum) and Sexual Enlightenment series (Calga), both based upon the T.K. Peters source and the frequent haunt of Ed's pen.

Eddie or Not? Really?