An Ed
Wood film without at least one angora sweter
can only mean that
the director himself was Wearing it,
Probably over a
pink brassier. Like many geniuses,
Ed´s success
as a failure, his failure at success and his
enormous success
as a failure, can be attributed partly to his
mother. Lillian
Wood of Poughskeepie, NY, must have had big
plans for her son,
Ed Jr. She dressed him up like a girl until he
was old enough to
encourage comment. This just may have been
the reason for her
sons´later fascination with the feminine
wardrobe. Certainly
it prepared him for Hollywood.
From the age of four
or five, Ed Jr. showed an intrest in
film, running around
the neighbourhood, often in a dress,
taking pictures.
Later he began writing screenplays and making
films with the local
kids. He spent all his time at the movies, his
favourite films
were westerns, later on he was to form a
country & western
band called ´Ed Wood´s Splinters´.
Ed sure was a fancy
dresser, but ha was no slouch
in the hetro department.
Six months after Pearl Harbour,
he enlisted into
the marines, where ha earned drawerfulls
of medals, and wore
the obligatory pink underwear under his
battle fatigues.
Wood himself was injured, losing his front teeth
to a rifle butt,
and taking several bullets in the leg. When he left the
marines he took
up with a carnival heading for California.
By 1946 Ed Wood had
reached Hollywood. By 1948 he´d
written, produced,
directed and performed in his first big failure,
a stage play, ´The
Casual Company´.Casual company was a
subject close to
Ed´s heart, he was a handsome man, and any
pretty women was
at risk, particularly if she was wearing a
fluffy angora sweater.That
Sweater would soon be off. And on to
Ed. In fact, the
duration of Ed´s relationships were often dictated
by how long a women
could stand having her clothes stretched
all out of shape.The
marriage to Norma McCarthy lasted only
one nightgown.
Ed partied, danced,
boozed and schmoozed, bluffed and fluffed
his way into the
Hollywood set. He hawked his material around
until finally, in
1952 his first feature film,
the semiautobiographical
´Glen or Glend´, starring himself and
Bela Lugosi
hit the screens. Ed didn´t care that Lugosi was
known only as a
horror film actor, he wanted a name.
Lugosi, cruelly
and unfairly dropped by Hollywood went on
to star in other
Ed Wood epics, most notably
Plan 9 From Outer
Space, which began production some five
months after his
death, whitout ever receiving much in the way of pay.
In fact only one
of Ed´s movies, `Bride Of The Monster`made money.
Unfortunately, Ed
had sold in excess of 100% of the film to backers.
But what he lacked
in business sense, Ed more than made up
for in sheer entusiasm.
Rumour has it that Ed could
type faster drunk
than most men could sober. In fact that´s mostly
how he did type.
How else can you explain `Plan 9 From Outer Space`?,
or `The Bride
And The Beast`?, or any Ed Wood film?
Ed Wood lived to
make movies, he was never in the business to
make money. And
he was a orginal.
Ed Wood died in
1978 aged only 53, an alcoholic with many
projects still in
his mind and in his battered briefcase.
He never tasted
real success, but had a hell of a good time making these films,
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