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Ed Wood Jr, you were not a failure!
Ed Wood Jr, has been called so many things over the years;
The Worst Director of All Time
A neighbor on the boulevard of broken dreams
One of the greatest bad directors of all time
Maker of b movies
commercial failure
Golden Turkey Award for being the worst director of all time
Cheap
Pulp
Of all of the terrible directors that have ever come and gone, Edward D. Wood Jr. is the grand-daddy of them all
Well you get the picture.
But I think Ed had a lot of great ideas. He certainly had the energy, drive and ambition. I think what he lacked was self control.
He just did not (could not) take the time to do things right.
His ambition got in he way. Had he just taken the time to learn a few important things about script writing, dialogue and film production I truly believe he could have been a financial success.
Being a Libra he could be diplomatic, romantic, charming, easygoing, sociable idealistic as well as indecisive, changeable, gullible, easily influenced, flirtatious and self-indulgent.
Among their faults is an impatience of criticism and a greed for approval.
But their characters are on the whole balanced, diplomatic and even tempered.
From all I have read about Ed this seems to be true about him personally.
I do, however believe that Ed was a con artist and was self indulgent.
He lied (over stated) to get money for his dreams of becoming a great movie producer/director.
He did want to see his name up in lights and wanted a million dollars in his bank account, he wanted the notoriety.
But he worked hard at his game. And devoted his life to achieving his goals.
Even after he realized he would never make it.
And along the way he made and influenced plenty of friends.
I can’t believe that his motive was to hurt the people whom he surrounded himself with.
It just does not ring true for me.
Bela’s son has called Ed “a loser and a user”. Well I do agree partially with that statement.
He did use people. But I truly believe that he thought he would take those people straight to the top with him. He believed in his mind that his work was relevant and would make everyone rich and famous.
And as far as Bela being used, perhaps, but take a look at some of the photos taken with Ed. Bela seemed to be having real fun and was working hard to help Ed with his production and his carreer.
I do think it is possible Bela saw Ed’s faults as a director/script writer. He probably knew that Ed had no real talent as a director or script writer. But it is possible Bela saw the creative side of Ed and hoped for the best for everyone.
Ed Wood, Jr. (1924 - 1978)
Biography Edward Davis Wood, Junior (October 10, 1924 - December 10, 1978) was a filmmaker known for a series of movies derided (or heralded, depending on one's fondness for kitsch) as " the worst of all time" He is probably the best-known maker of B movies, famed for his ultra low budget horror, science fiction and cowboy motion pictures. After extensive critical and commercial failure, he ended his career making pornography and writing schlock transvestite-themed novels drawing from his own fetishes.
Today, he is generally respected by film scholars and historians - not for his talent, which has so far not undergone any kind of critical re-appraisal, but for his evident zeal and honest love of movies and movie production. The very lack of conventional film making ability in his work has earned him and his films a considerable cult following. Some of his films have been lampooned on the television series Mystery Science Theater 3000, which has given those works wider exposure.
Wood's posthumous fame began two years after his death, when he was awarded a Golden Turkey Award for being the worst director of all time.
Today, he is generally respected by film scholars and historians - not for his talent, which has so far not undergone any kind of critical re-appraisal, but for his evident zeal and honest love of movies and movie production. The very lack of conventional film making ability in his work has earned him and his films a considerable cult following. Some of his films have been lampooned on the television series Mystery Science Theater 3000, which has given those works wider exposure.
Death of a Transvestite (1967) - Ed Wood
Death of a transvestite (1967). Also known as Let Me Die in Drag. This is the sequel novel to 1963’s ‘Black Lace Drag’ and sees Glen Marker on death row. He requests to die in drag. The story is mostly told through documents such as police reports. As with ‘Drag Trade’, Ed Wood features in drag on the cover of some versions of this novel although his anonymity is maintained by a black bar positioned across his eyes
Edward Davis Wood, Jr. (October 10, 1924 – December 10, 1978), better known as Ed Wood, was an American screenwriter, director, producer, actor, author, and editor, who often performed many of these functions simultaneously. In the 1950s, Wood made a run of cheap and poorly produced genre films, now humorously celebrated for their technical errors, unsophisticated special effects, large amounts of ill-fitting stock footage, idiosyncratic dialogue, eccentric casts and outlandish plot elements, although his flair for showmanship gave his projects at least a modicum of critical success.
Wood’s popularity waned soon after his biggest ‘name’ star, Béla Lugosi, died. He was able to salvage a saleable feature from Lugosi’s last moments on film, but his career declined thereafter. Toward the end of his life, Wood made pornographic movies and wrote pulp crime, horror, and sex novels. His posthumous fame began two years after his death, when he was awarded a Golden Turkey Award as Worst Director of All Time. The lack of conventional filmmaking ability in his work has earned Wood and his films a considerable cult following.
Following the publication of Rudolph Grey’s biography Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1992), Wood’s life and work have undergone a public rehabilitation of sorts, with new light shed on his evident zeal and honest love of movies and movie production. Tim Burton’s biopic of the director’s life, Ed Wood, earned two Academy Awards.
Trivia:
Reportedly went into battle during his stint in the marines wearing a red bra and panties under his uniform.
One of Mr. Wood’s pseudonyms (Akdov Telmig) is vodka gimlet spelled backwards…
At the time of his death, the industry newspaper, Variety, failed to run his obituary.
A surviving non-fiction manuscript, supposedly written by Wood, about working in Hollywood was published as “Hollywood Rat Race” in December 1998.
The continued interest in Wood led to two of his steamy adult paperbacks being reset and republished. They included “Death of a Transvestite” (1967, aka “Let Me Die in Drag”) republished in 1995 and 1999, and “Killer in Drag” (1965) that was republished in 1999.
Wood served in the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II and took part in the storming of the beaches at Tarawa.
His first wife, Norma McCarty, kicked him out of their house on their wedding night when she discovered he was wearing women’s underwear. The marriage was never consummated, serving as grounds for an annulment less than six months later.
Upon returning to the US following WWII, he briefly attended Northwestern University in Chicago before joining a traveling carnival (he started out as the Geek, biting the heads off of live chickens, before becoming the Half Man, Half Woman).
Enlisted in the US Marine Corps in May of 1942. His claims to wearing women’s underwear in battle never seem to distract him from his duty: In addition to taking part in combat in the Marshall Islands and Naumea, he also survived the bloody battle for Tarawa. By all accounts he was a fierce combat soldier. During the invasion he had most of his front teeth knocked out in hand-to-hand combat with a Japanese soldier. Wood later served in a G-2 (intelligence) unit in the South Pacific, until he was machine-gunned up one of his legs which then became gangrenous.
He served out the remainder of his time as an office typist, and was honorably discharged in 1944. He was decorated with the Silver and Bronze Stars, two Purple Hearts, and Sharpshooter’s Medal. By all accounts, Wood was an exemplary combat soldier.
Born October 10th, the same day that his idol Orson Welles died many years later.
Four of his films have been lampooned on the television series “Mystery Science Theater 3000″ (1988): The Unearthly (1957), Bride of the Monster (1955), The Violent Years (1956) and The Sinister Urge (1960). MST’s producers considered including Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959), but found it had too much dialog for the show’s format, and that it would make too obvious a target, stating that “Everyone’s made fun of ‘Plan 9 From Outer Space’.” Series regular and head writer Michael J. Nelson would, however, go on to do an audio commentary for a 2006 DVD release.
One of his regular cast members was Lyle Talbot, who also played Commissioner Gordon in one of the first Batman serials. The biopic of Ed Wood was directed by Tim Burton, who also directed two Batman films.
Executor of B-actor Kenne Duncan’s estate. Duncan and Wood were good friends and long time drinking buddies. Wood held Duncan’s (a BYOB event) wake at the pool of his apartment building and invited guests to give their recollections of his friend on the diving board.
Noted actor George Zucco, whose career had hit the skids and trying to recover from a recent stroke, approached Wood about working for him in 1953. Zucco literally begged him for work, but Wood had nothing in the casting stage at the time.
Hired Lyle Talbot and Bela Lugosi at the nadir of their careers. Both actors would be paid off daily in cash, not necessarily by their demands (although Lugosi was often insistent due to his heroin habit). Wood habitually paid off everyone, cast and crew, in cash. In the last few years of his life this habit led to him being rolled stumbling out of liquor stores in the seedy neighborhood he lived in.
Of all of the terrible directors that have ever come and gone, Edward D. Wood Jr. is the grand-daddy of them all. I am by no means an Ed Wood aficionado. I have seen “Bride of the Monster,” “Glen or Glenda,” and “The Sinister Urge,” but I am not a historian of his personal life. The bulk of my knowledge about Ed Wood comes from his Wikipedia article, and the fantastic Tim Burton biopic starring Johnny Depp, simply titled “Ed Wood.” In that movie, Ed is a romantic, hopelessly longing for Gothic horror in the Atomic age.
He idolizes Orson Wells, and tries to advance the genre of horror, as Wells advanced the art of the dramatic picture. The difference between Wells and Wood is that Wood seems to be totally incapable of discriminating between quality and crap. To Wood, everything, no matter how bad or idiosyncratic, is the greatest thing he has ever done. This absence of a discerning eye is exemplified perfectly in “Plan 9 from Outer Space,” a movie so inept and lacking in coherence, that it is considered by many to be the worst movie ever made.
Hollywood is thrown into a panic when citizens begin spotting flying saucers supported by fishing line in the night sky. It seems that the pilots of these flying saucers have discovered that human scientists are about to invent a weapon that could accidentally destroy the entire universe. In order to stop the foolish humans, the aliens raise an army of the dead, comprised of former television movie hostess, Vampira, and Ed Wood’s girlfriend’s chiropractor.
It seems that the human race is ill equipped to deal with the alien menace, because humanity’s hope comes in the form of bumbling police detectives who like to use their revolvers to scratch themselves and point at stuff. The foolish gumshoes say things like, “one thing’s for sure; Inspector Clay is dead, murdered, and somebody’s responsible.” With deductive reasoning like that on our side, the aliens better get out of Dodge while they still can. But, of course, the ornery extraterrestrials stick around, and the audience is given a glimpse inside the mother ship.
The aliens dress like extras from a Robin Hood movie and live in an environment laden with 50’s office furniture, Tesla Coils, and ham radio equipment, proof of their intellectual superiority. The aliens operate on the constant assumption that the human race is so stupid, that it can’t possibly understand the advanced weapons that it is developing. Huh? Through radio messages, the aliens remind us of our inferiority without ever using a single contraction. This command of the English language is dwarfed only by the poor execution of the movie itself.
It is beyond my understanding why Ed Wood decided to shoot the majority of the grave yard scenes on a sound stage. The cemetery set takes the movie down many notches. It is comprised of a large black back drop, a fabric flooring covered in straw, and head stones constructed from flimsy Styrofoam. A constant haze of bee keeper smoke masks the black back drop, but the haze can’t cover up the head stones that are constantly jostled and knocked over by the actors. Not only is the set unconvincing, but it is too small.
Wood tried to film chase sequences on this set, and ended up having to repeat shots to make the scenes long enough. This creates the illusion that the actors are running past the same head stones over and over again (which they are). Also, as bad guys go, the reanimated dead in Plan 9 are totally preposterous. Their power lies in their ability to select victims who simply don’t run away. The poor souls just stand there screaming as the monsters slowly walk up to them, and strike them dead with a firm whack on the shoulder. Brutal.
I think that ultimately, the story of “Plan 9 from Outer Space” is a tragic one. Ed Wood shot a short reel of footage with long time friend, and recovering drug addict, Bela Lugosi, of Dracula fame. This footage was to be part of a vampire film that Wood was developing. The project was scraped however, after Lugosi passed in 1956. Before Plan 9 was finished, Wood stubbornly included the footage in his movie, even though the footage was silent and made no sense within the context of the film. Wood’s girlfriend’s chiropractor served as Lugosi’s stand-in throughout the remainder of the film with the bottom of his face covered by a cape.
You rarely hear him described this way, but Ed Wood was an American success story. Wood, the angora sweater-wearing film producer, director, writer, editor, and actor,
With buckets of desire (and thimbles of talent) he was able to carve out a noted Hollywood career that culminated in a pinnacle of sorts, when he was awarded the Golden Turkey Award as the “Worst Director of All Time.” While certainly not the type of superlative you aim for in a movie career, it has insured Wood a certain cinematic immortality.
Wood was born in New York to a civil servant father and a mother who dressed him in girls clothes until he was twelve. He would remain a cross-dresser for the rest of his life. He served honorably as a Marine in World War II, often wearing panties and a bra beneath his uniform. After the war he joined a carnival where he worked as a freak show performer dressed in drag as a bearded lady.
Wood made it to Hollywood in the late 40s, and first made news as the director, writer, and star of Glen or Glenda?, an exploitation film about transvestitism. Wood appeared in the title roles, donning a skirt, blonde wig, and angora sweater while playing Glen’s alter-ego Glenda. (Wood, who was straight, loved wearing angora and even used “Ann Gora” as a penname.)
Wood assembled an eclectic and eccentric stock company of Hollywood has-beens and never-weres, including Vampira (Maila Nurmi), Tor Johnson, Lyle Talbot, Bunny Beckinridge, television psychic Criswell, and Bela Lugosi, who was by this time a morphine addict. The troupe appeared in a bevy of Wood’s no-budget “classics” over the next few years, like Bride of the Monster, Jail Bait, and The Sinister Urge.
Wood’s “magnum-opus” is undoubtedly Plan Nine From Outer Space, which he shot over five days in Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley. The money for the film came from a Southern Baptist church, whose trustees required that Wood and his actors be baptized first into the congregation.
Plan Nine is a story about a race of invading aliens who animate the dead to take over Earth. It has cardboard special effects, terrible acting, and even worse dialogue and direction. It’s so mind-bogglingly bad that it’s brilliant! It’s one of my favorite films.
Wood’s “career” died along with his biggest star, Bela Lugosi. He ended up making smut films around Hollywood until his death. But an auteur like Wood could never be completely forgotten.
In 1994, Tim Burton directed the hilarious film Ed Wood, starring Johnny Depp as Wood, and Martin Landau (in an Academy Award winning performance) as Bela Lugosi. Two years later, the “Church of Ed Wood,” a legally-sanctioned religion, was formed by a Sacramento man. Today, the church has over 3000 members, who are known as “Woodites, who were all baptized on-line. The organization’s motto is, “Healing souls and wearing panties since 1996.”
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