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Great Directors vs. Bad Directors
Everyone knows the great directors. Stephen Spielberg for E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, Ron Howard for Apollo 13, George Lucas for Star Wars and Indiana Jones, and of course Orson wells for both Citizen Kane and War Of The Worlds. Have you ever thought who the worst director would be? It may come as quite a surprise to you, but the director, in America that is, was and still is Edward D. Wood Jr.
There are two things that most people know about Ed Wood--first, there is a film about the infamous director starring Johnny Depp and Martin Landau and was directed by the incomparable Tim Burton. Second and probably the most known fact, Ed Wood was a transvestite.
Ed Wood & Angora Sweaters
"An Ed Wood film without at least one angora sweater can only mean that the director himself was wearing it, probably over a pink brassier."
Dress Up, Solider & Side Show Geek
Edward D. Wood Jr. was born on October 10, 1924 in Poughkeepsie, New York to Lillian and Edward D. Wood Sr. The Wood family was your typical basic average normal American family. Edward D. Wood Sr. was a Postal Service worker and Lillian, like all mothers, had big plans for her son. She wanted to either be a doctor, a lawyer, or even a dentist. Unlike other mothers, when Lillian Wood did not get the little girl she had hoped for when she was pregnant, she would dress young Edward up like a girl until he was old enough to rebel.
Motherly Love Prepared Him
" This explains her son's later fascination with feminine wardrobe. In the least, it prepared him for Hollywood."
As Wood grew up; his interests were like any average boy's. Wood was into the performing arts, pulp fiction, comics, pulp magazines and he adored movies; mostly westerns and anything involving the occult. In fact, Ed Wood's first job was as a cinema usher. When Wood turned seventeen his parents gave him a Kodak "City Special" movie camera. " One of the first pieces of footage he shot was the Hindenburg Disaster; a piece he was endlessly proud of."
Ed Wood was a patriotic boy; so he enlisted in the Marines at the age of seventeen, just six months after Pearl Harbor. While he was in the Marines Wood claimed he participated in the Battle Of Guadalcanal--however, his biggest fear was not dying, but that the medics would find out his secret of "the obligatory pink
underwear underneath his battle fatigues." After the Wood left the Marines all decorated as a war hero and with all his injuries it made him perfect to play the half-man half-woman in a traveling carnival.
While in the carnival, Wood played many different part up to and including a "geek." But the part he was best known for was the half-man half woman. By 1946 wood left the carnies and entered a whole new world, Hollywood.
Who Cares About School
"As a result of his obsession with film, he would often skip school in favor of watching pictures at the local movie theater."
Lost During The War
"He earned a drawer full of medals, the obligatory pink underwear underneath his battle fatigues. He lost his teeth to a rifle butt and took several bullets, from a machine gun, in the leg."
Carnival Showbiz
"With rugged facial hair, he donned the woman's clothing and completed the illusion by creating his own breasts. This was done (allegedly) by piercing a nipple and inflating the breast skin with air. The experience resulted in a respect for carnival freak shows and a reinforced adoration of the bizarre."
The Casual Company To Glen Or Glenda?
During 1948, before Wood directed, produced and wrote movie scripts, he put his talents into a stage production that was near and dear to his heart called The Casual Company. In The Casual Company Wood played "a handsome man and any pretty woman was at risk; particularly if she was wearing an angora sweater. That sweater would soon be off her and on Wood." In 1054, 6 years after The Casual Company, Wood figured that the theater life was not for him. Especially since no one came to see the production of The Casual Company. He soon turned his unusual skills to his first Hollywood projects about Christine Jorgensen. This, however, would also lead to one of several Edward D. Wood Jr flops.
The Christine Jorgensen Story was to be a sex change film about a woman trapped in a man's body. It was first called The Christine Jorgensen Story, but since Variety Magazine printed the article and the title they owned the rights to calling it The Christine Jorgensen Story. Once Movie Classics Studios bought the right to Jorgensen's story they had to change the title to I Changed My Sex when Wood applied for the directing job. As Movie Classics was in search for a director they were also looking for someone to write a script for I Changed My Sex--Wood thought that this would be his golden opportunity to hit the big times in Hollywood, but Movie Classics wanted to go in a different direction and did not want to hire Wood on the first go around. It was not until Wood had a chance meeting with one of Hollywood's former classic horror movie actor, Bela Lugosi, that Movie Classics even thought to go with Wood.
They still had their doubts with Wood, however, since he was able to produce a movie star for $1000 and they did not have to pay extra for a screen writer Wood got the job and changed the name of the film to Glen Or Glenda?. With Glen Or Glenda? underway nothing could beat the optimistic prospective of Wood, that is until the movie was released or rather when it was not released. Glen Or Glenda? did not draw much of a movie going crowd where it was released for one simple reason...no plot. So, with the first flop of the infamous Edward D. Wood Jr. underway, he tried to get money for another try. Teaming up once again with Bela Lugosi, as a mad scientist, for a film called Bride Of The Atom.
That Was Odd
"Lugosi's horror-scientist character in Glen Or Glenda? is completely out of place for a quasi-documentary on this trans-sexuality."
Bride Of The Monster to Plan 9 From Outer Space
Bride Of The Atom was a film about "mysterious disappearances in the swamp drawing attention of a nosy lady reporter--who promptly winds up the captive of a mad scientist out to create atom-powered super-men." After the movie was made the critics did not think that Bride Of The Atom was a "punchy enough title" so Wood changed the name to Bride Of The Monster.
The reason this film flopped was because of scene where Lugosi's character gets eaten by his own octopus. When the scene was made someone forgot the motor for the octopus to make it come alive so Lugosi had to shake the legs and wrap the octopus around him to make it look like the octopus was killing him. Needless to say it did not quite have the effect that movie goers and audiences alike were going for. Now with two flops to his name, Wood did not let it phase him in the slightest. The word "quit" was not in his vocabulary--onward and upward to the next adventure and possibly Wood's favorite project, Grave Robbers From Outer Space.
Grave Robbers Form Outer Space, aka Plan 9 From Outer Space, was the final film of Wood's that starred Lugosi. Point of fact, Lugosi was in it for the first 5 minutes; for one calamitous reason...Lugosi died before Wood ever started filming the movie. Wood, however, did not let the fact that his star was dead stand in his way--he hired a double for Lugosi to finish the film. Plan 9 From Outer Space went through Hell and back in order to get made. The first problem was the South Baptist Church, the movie's financiers, did not like the original title, Grave Robbers From Outer Space. As it turned out it was the South Baptist Church that suggested Plan 9 From Outer Space which even Wood admitted that that title sounded better. Next were problems two, three, and four--the Baptists wanted a member of their own church to take a lead role in the film and demanded that every member of the cast (including Vampira, Tor, 'Bunny,' and Criswell) be baptized prior to filming. They also removed much of what they
considered "profanity" from the script. But in light of everything Wood and his crew had to go through the final cut of Plan 9 From Outer Space was about "stuck-up aliens reanimating the dead in hopes of scaring the bajeezus of the living! Well, great heaping volumes have been written about this elsewhere."
Depression, Drugs & Alcohol
Such editing from the South Baptist Church and financiers, in general, was one of the factors contributing to Wood's depression and was something he personally attributed to his lack of commercial success. Reduced to being a drug addict, an alcoholic, and with no one really understanding his storytelling abilities; Wood ended up putting all his skills into pornography. On the glum side of Wood's career he wrote, produced, directed, and starred in the prono films--on the bright side, since his death on December 10, 1978 his movies have become cult classics and Wood now has many followers and fans that adore his films. He would be humbled to know that, even in the modern times, there is religion based on Edward D. Wood Jr., because he is loved so much by his fans. Even though Wood was America's worst director
he never let that stop him and he never let nay sayers get in his way. He soldiered on proving that being different never stops anyone--something we should all take away from Edward D. Wood Jr.
Pride & Joy
"If you want to know me see Glen Or Glenda?, that is me, that is my story. No question. But--Plan 9--is my pride and joy."
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