Edward Davis Wood Jr. was an American filmmaker, actor, writer, producer, and director.
Background
Edward Davis Wood, Jr. was born on October 10, 1924 in Poughkeepsie, New York to Edward Sr., a postal worker and his wife, Lillian. It is said that Lillian always wanted a girl and until Ed, Jr., was 12-years-old she dressed him in girls' clothing. Young Ed loved movies and eventually found a job as a cinema usher. He also learned several musical instruments and formed a singing quartet called Eddie Wood's Little Splinters. Ed Wood received his first movie camera on his 17th birthday and his first "film" records the crash of an airplane. When he was 17, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and Wood enlisted in the Marines.
Education
In 1942, Wood enlisted in the United States Marine Corps, just months after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Assigned to the 2nd Defense Battalions, he reached the rank of Corporal before he was discharged. He was involved in the Battle of Tarawa, among others, and during the war, he lost his two front teeth to a Japanese soldier's rifle butt and was shot several times in the leg by a machine gunner. Wood later claimed that he feared being wounded in battle more than he feared being killed.
Career
Upon his discharge from the Marines, Ed Wood pursued his love of the bizarre by joining the freak show of a carnival. At times, he played the part of the bearded lady and created his own prosthetic breasts. During the 1950s, he wrote, produced, and acted in a number of very low-budget science fiction, horror, and cowboy films. These films are celebrated today for their many obvious errors, cheap special effects, strange dialogue, miscasting, and crazy plots. Wood often struggled to make ends meet and was sometimes forced to churn out film scripts in one night to keep to schedules.
In 1963, Wood wrote the screenplay for Shotgun Wedding, an exploitation film about hillbillies marrying child brides, and Wood's transitional film, once again combining two genres, horror and grindhouse skin-flick, was 1965's Orgy of the Dead, originally titled Nudie Ghoulies. Wood handled various production details while Stephen C. Apostolof directed under the pseudonym A. C. Stephen. The film begins with a re-creation of the opening scene from the then-unreleased Night of the Ghouls. Criswell, wearing one of Lugosi's old capes, rises from his coffin to deliver an introduction taken almost word-for-word from the previous film. Set in a misty graveyard, the Lord of the Dead (Criswell) and his sexy consort, the Black Ghoul (a Vampira look-alike), preside over a series of macabre performances by topless dancers from beyond the grave (recruited by Wood from local strip clubs). The film also features a Wolf Man and a Mummy. Together, Wood and Apostolof went on to make a string of sexploitation films up to 1977. Wood co-wrote the screenplays and occasionally acted. Venus Flytrap (1970), a US/Japan horror film, was based on an unproduced Wood screenplay from the 1950s.
Beginning in the early 1960s, Wood wrote at least eighty lurid crime and sex novels in addition to hundreds of short stories and non-fiction pieces for magazines. Thirty-two stories known to be by Wood (he sometimes wrote under pseudonyms such as "Ann Gora") are collected in Blood Splatters Quickly, published by OR Books in 2014. Novels include Black Lace Drag (1963) (reissued in 1965 as Killer in Drag), Orgy of the Dead (1965), Devil Girls (1967), Death of a Transvestite (1967), The Sexecutives (1968), The Photographer (1969), Take It Out in Trade (1970), The Only House in Town (1970), Necromania (1971), The Undergraduate (1972), A Study of Fetishes and Fantasies (1973) and Fugitive Girls (1974).
In Nightmare of Ecstasy, Maila Nurmi said she declined Wood's offer to do a nude scene sitting in a coffin for the film version of his Necromania, claiming she was recovering from a major stroke at the time.
In 1965, Wood wrote the quasi-memoir Hollywood Rat Race, which was eventually published in 1998. In it, Wood advises new writers to "just keep on writing. Even if your story gets worse, you'll get better", and also recounts tales of dubious authenticity, such as how he and Bela Lugosi entered the world of nightclub cabaret.
By 1978, Wood's depression had worsened, and he and his wife Kathy had become alcoholics. They were evicted from their Hollywood apartment on Yucca Street on Thursday, December 7, 1978 in total poverty. The couple moved into the North Hollywood apartment of their friend actor Peter Coe. Wood spent the weekend drinking vodka. Around noon on Sunday, December 10, Wood felt ill and went to lie down in Coe's bedroom. From the bedroom, he asked Kathy to bring him a drink which she refused to do. A few minutes later he yelled out, "Kathy, I can't breathe!", a plea Kathy ignored as she later said she was tired of Wood's bossing her around. After hearing no movement from the bedroom for 20 minutes, Kathy sent a friend to check on Wood, who discovered him dead from a heart attack. Kathy later said, "I still remember when I went into that room that afternoon and he was dead, his eyes and mouth were wide open. I'll never forget the look in his eyes. He clutched at the sheets. It looked like he'd seen hell."
Wood was cremated, and his ashes were scattered at sea. Wood's widow Kathy died on June 26, 2006, having not remarried.
Wood's legacy and cult following lives on with, for example, the University of Southern California holding an annual "Ed Wood Film Festival" for which students are charged with writing, filming, and editing an Ed Wood-esque short film based on a predetermined theme. His movies have been spoofed on Mystery Theater 3000 and many have been remade as pornographic movies. Additionally, many of his bizarre transvestite-themed sex novels have been republished. In 1994, a Tim Burton bio pic about his life was released. Ed Wood starred Johnny Depp in the title role along with an A-list cast that included Martin Landau, Sarah Jessica Parker, Patricia Arquette and Bill Murray.
Wood had a long-term relationship with actress and songwriter Dolores Fuller, whom he met in late 1952. The two lived together for a time and Wood cast Fuller in three of his films: Glen or Glenda, Jail Bait and Bride of the Monster. Fuller later said she initially had no idea that Wood was a crossdresser and was mortified when she saw Wood dressed as a woman in Glen or Glenda. The couple broke up in 1955 after Wood cast another actress in the lead role of Bride of the Monster (Wood originally wrote the part for Fuller and reduced her part to a 1-minute cameo) and because of Wood's excessive drinking.
While making Bride of the Monster in late 1955, Wood married Norma McCarty. McCarty appeared as Edie, the airplane stewardess in Plan 9 from Outer Space. The marriage was annulled in 1956.
Wood married his second wife, Kathy O'Hara, in 1959. They remained married until Wood's death in 1978.