Jr. Edward D. Wood - Blood spatters quickly : the collected stories of Edward D. Wood, Jr

F or the first time in over forty years, classic short fiction by the cult filmmaker Ed Wood is seeing the light of day. These stories originally were written to fill a few pages between buxom women in various states of undress and softcore sexual situations in what were known as the girlie magazines of the late 1960s and early 1970s. At the time, Ed and his wife Kathy were struggling to pay the rent, put food on the table, and have a bottle of booze to kill the pain, attempting to inject a little fun into lives that had spiraled out of control from the late 1950s until Eds passing in December of 1978. They were forced to move from a house they loved but couldnt make the payments on to a series of apartments, first in the Burbank area, then back to a part of Hollywood that was then a very dangerous part of town.

Ed started writing for publisher Bernie Bloom in late 196869, short stories, articles mainly about the sex trade, and the copy that went with the pictorials in the skin magazines published by Pendulum Publishing. Eds time with Bernie was short-lived: he was fired for the last time in 1974, and some of his stories were reprinted after that. This was a period when the porn trade was starting to show more skin, but was before the full-on hardcore of such films as Deep Throat and Behind the Green Door. Ed had his own personal kinks. He was a known cross-dresser who went by the name of Shirley, and many of his short stories, articles, and books dealt with transvestism as well as fetishism. In fact, his very first film, I Changed My Sex, otherwise known as Glen or Glenda, dealt with these subjects.

Most of Eds short fiction deals with horror, Westerns, crime, and the macabre as did most of his films. But with only three or four pages, he had to get in and get out and have the stories make some sort of sense. You be the judge of that. So who was Ed Wood?

Edward Davis Wood, Jr. was born in Poughkeepsie, New York, on October 10, 1924. From the first, Ed loved movies of all types, but mainly the horse opera Westerns starring William Hopalong Cassidy Boyd, Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, and Buck Jones (Eds personal favorite), as well as Kenne Duncan, Roy Barcroft and Ken Maynard, all of whom later made appearances in Eds films. He also loved horror movies, especially the Dracula films starring the legendary Hungarian actor Bela Lugosi, with whom Ed formed a working relationship as well as a personal friendship over the last few years of the troubled actors life.

According to Eds late wife, Eds mother had hoped for a little girl prior to his birth, and therefore was wont to dress Ed up as such. Ed had a lifelong penchant for cross-dressing as well as a steady fetish for angora, a theme that showed up in many of his works. In fact, Ed like to dress as his alter-ego Shirley whenever he was working on his film & TV scripts as well as his pulp fiction, some examples of which are reprinted in this collection.

For a short time, Ed worked at a movie theater in Poughkeepsie. When World War II began, Ed was seventeen. He lied about his age and joined the Marines, where he was stationed in the South Pacific.

He saw action at Tarawa and the Marshall Islands, where he was wounded. He was awarded the Silver Star, Bronze Star, and a Purple Heart. The apocryphal story of Ed wearing a bra & panties underneath his uniform may or may not be true, but I like to believe it.

After his time in the service and being discharged in San Diego, his eventual move to Hollywood in 1947 is an area of mystery. Ed is said to have joined a traveling carnival where he played the half manhalf woman in the geek show. He also may have worked as a G-2 secret agent for the government while touring with the Ice Capades: Ed was always vague about this period of his life.

After his move to Hollywood, Ed tried to break into the movie business. He wrote and produced a play based upon his military service called The Casual Company which starred himself. It was panned by the few critics who took the time to see it. He also appeared in a couple of other plays. He tried to get a Western TV show off the ground titled Crossroads of Laredo, which failed to arouse any interest. He directed a few television shows and produced generic commercials, which similarly failed to sell. In 1952, he was introduced to Bela Lugosi by his then-roommate Alex Gordon (who went on to fame and success as one of the creators of American International Pictures, and who co-wrote a couple of films with Ed). Ed persuaded George Weiss, a low-budget producer, to let him make what was originally going to be an exploitation film about the recent sex change of Christine Jorgensen, but due to legal and financial reasons the picture was changed to one about cross-dressing and societal taboos, starring the one & only Daniel Davis, our Ed, in the title role, with his live-in girlfriend Dolores Fuller as his fiance and Bela Lugosi as the godlike puppet master. The film tanked at the box office, but Ed persevered. His next film, the crime drama Jail Bait (1954), also failed, followed by 1955s Bride of the Monster starring Bela Lugosi as a mad scientist bent on creating a race of super-humans to take over the world. The film ends with Lugosi being killed by a giant octopus... and an atom bomb. Lugosi passed away in 1956 after starring in two of Eds best known films, Glen or Glenda otherwise known as I Changed My Sex, and Bride of the Monster.

Post-mortem film footage of Lugosi was used in Eds best-known film, Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959) or, as it was originally titled, Grave Robbers From Outer Space (the title was changed at the urging of the Beverly Hills Baptist Church, which had provided crucial funding for the film, plus the cast & crew were asked to be baptized prior to filming, a story for another day).

The people Ed gathered around him besides Lugosi and Dolores became a kind of stock acting company and drinking companions, including the wrestler Tor Johnson (The Swedish Angel), the television psychic The Amazing Criswell (a friend of Mae West), Paul Marco Kelton the Cop, faded cowboy Kenne Duncan, Conrad Brooks, Dudley Manlove, Valda Hanson, Maila Vampira Nurmi, and others. In 1956, Eds girlfriend Dolores left him because she couldnt handle the transvestism, according to Rudolph Greys excellent Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr