52 Random Things I Learnt About Ed Wood

“Wood’s art is a cultural mutation. He defies comparison — there is no one remotely like him. Dispatched from time, his legend and reputation grows.“

— Rudolph Grey, author of Nightmare of Ecstasy — The Life & Art of Edward D. Wood Jr., 1991.

In the world of cinema when you really think about it, they’re only two kinds of movies — good movies and bad movies. But what if I were to tell you that there is a third kind, and that is a so-bad-it’s-good movie — basically films that are so rubbish, but they are somehow really enjoyable. A recent example would be the 2003 “classic” from the 21st-century “disaster artist” himself, Tommy Wiseau’s The Room. It’s probably the most famous film in this niche sub genre, and is now infamous, especially in the Internet circles, but before Wiseau was even thought of, there was a Hollywood Legend, who set the gold standard for making movies that were so unspeakably bad they were somewhat, not just good, but legendary! Who was this man? Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to the greatest “bad” movie director of all time, Edward D. Wood Jr. better known as just simply old Ed Wood!

What can I say about “Eddie” — Director, Producer, Scriptwriter, Actor, Stuntman, Author, Journalist, Musician, War Hero, LGBTQ+ pioneer; he was a real “jack-of-all-trades”, but a master of one — making art that was debatably so bad, it wasn’t even good, but interestingly amazing! He had a catalogue of work that included motion pictures with “no budget”, special effects and scenery comparable to a primary school play, idiosyncratic stories, semi-coherent meme-worthy dialogue, mismatched stock footage, and an unhealthy obsession with Angora sweaters! Despite lacking in budget or talent, the qualities that kept Ed Wood going were his naive optimism, determination and his endless drive and ambition — he was no slouch when it came to his work ethic, contrary to what one may think!

He churned out a cottage industry of films, screenplays and novels of consistent quality (i.e. debatably minimal) lasting from 1948, until his unfortunate death in 1978, thanks to a heart attack brought on by chronic alcoholism. He is, of course, responsible for a certain sci-fi classic, which was, at one stage, said to be the worst movie of all time Plan 9 From Outer Space (SPOILER ALERT — it’s not, and Plan 9 is not even his worst film!), which featured toy flying saucers on strings, not-so convincing aliens, a really unconvincing Bela Lugosi double and a endless book’s worth of quotable dialogue.

While he remains a figure of fun in the world of cinema, Ed Wood’s life was actually very tragic, especially in his final decade, when he was reduced to directing “nudie cutie” flicks, that made the awful UK sex comedies from that time period look tasteful in comparison (good luck trying to sit through The Love Feast!) as well as tasteless erotic novels. At the end of his life, he was so broke, he couldn’t even afford to pay the rent. The more you learn about him, it really makes you wonder, should we REALLY be making fun of him? Then of course, there is Tim Burton’s excellent 1994 biopic on the guy, where Ed was portrayed to perfection by Johnny Depp. While not particularly factually accurate, it makes up for it’s lack of historical truth by being such a lovely celebratory tribute to a not-so-perfect man, as well as the late Martin Landau’s incredible performance as Bela Lugosi, for which he won an Oscar — even if Landau’s portrayal did swear like a sailor, which the real Lugosi didn’t really do in real life!

Ed Wood was also a man of contradictions, and he had a very oxymoronic personality; he was both pathetic and inspirational, and despite his conservative political views, he was decades ahead of his time when it came to trans issues, and also considering he could be a mean, violent drunkard, practically everybody who knew Wood had nothing but glowing things to say about the man (unless your Bela Lugosi’s son, Bela Lugosi Jr.). Despite being obscure in his time, he is now, ironically, one of the most famous filmmakers of the 1950s!

On a lighter note, as October 10th 2024 marks the great man’s 100th birthday (and also 2024 marks the 30th Anniversary of the 1994 Biopic), I thought it would be a great way to honour the cinema legend by writing a fun article about the greatest anti-hero that the movie industry has ever witnessed! I could write a whole book on the guy, but, to quote his late wife, Kathy Wood, Eddie was a notorious bullshitter! Plus, I would have to be a real masochist to sit through fading prints of 1970’s 8mm “Sex Education” short films that may or may not have been directed by Ed Wood. Before I go any further, I would like to give a shout-out to two very valuable sources of information, from where I sourced some of my research — Rudolph Grey’s fantastic, but very sad 1992 oral biography on the man (Nightmare Of Ecstasy), which is a collection of interviews from many of the people in the Ed Wood entourage and their fading or distorted memories — probably the closest we will get to historically accurate information on the guy, and Joe Blevins blog Dead 2 Rights (thank you Joe, for suggesting that I put this article here!). Saying that, getting the facts right with Ed is difficult; as you will now glean, Ed was something of a man who liked to tell a good tall tale, and most of the second hand information we have on him comes from Ed’s elderly cohorts, whose memories were sadly getting increasingly more blurred with age, or completely fading away, and unfortunately, most of them are no longer with us.

With this article, I haven’t chosen the obvious facts that everybody knows, such as Wood using his wife’s chiropractor to fill in for Bela Lugosi in Plan 9 From Outer Space, but instead, chose interesting facts about which some people may not know, outside of a few die-hard Wood enthusiasts. There is probably more I could find if I had the time, but I wanted to just do a selection that I think may interest you. I also didn’t know what tone I should set for this article, as some people see Ed as being nothing more than a talentless clown, while others see him as a misunderstood genius — personally I fall somewhere in the middle, so I will make sure to balance the laughs, but also be respectful at the same time.

Before reading this article, I would highly recommend you should be, at least, a casual fan of Wood’s work, or have seen the 1994 biopic, in order to get most of the references in this article, so you know what I am talking about. The Ed Wood rabbit hole was a very interesting journey, and once you get sucked in, you’ll stay there for hours, days, weeks, months, years! The life of Edward D. Wood Jr. in many ways is a lot more interesting than most of his actual output!

So, without further ado, to quote Wood’s pal, Criswell the Psychic, let us punish the guilty, let us reward the innocent, as we have a look at 52 Random Things I Learnt About Ed Wood. Why 52 — because, why not, for each week of the year!

1. Ed’s life was actually really sad.

Don’t worry, the rest of the article will be a lot more light in tone, promise! Imagine living and breathing movies, being able to “master” directing, producing, writing and acting, and failing at all of them, being torn apart by critics, and then ending up dying in poverty. Like Vincent Van Gough — Eddie died for his art! I think Ed’s TV Tropes page sums it up best “Despite his unwavering commitment to making movies and pursuing his dreams, the real Ed Wood never made any kind of genuine impression on the moviegoing public in his lifetime, and died a penniless alcoholic. It was only until two years after his death that he started to gain the notoriety of being the “World’s Worst Director” which, despite being a form of immortality in and of itself that it’s entirely likely he wouldn’t have been totally dismissive of, is still an ignominious “honour” that was undoubtedly a far cry from what he strived for.”

Speaking of Vincent Van Gough, American film-maker Dennis Smithers Jr. (we’ll get to him later on) even directly compares the parallels of Wood to Vincent in his 2024 article “Posthumous Fame, Such a Shame”.

2. Ed liked to tell a tall tale.

Ed Wood was somewhat economic with the truth! Obviously, when you’re trying to sell yourself to apathetic producers and investors, you have to seem somewhat impressive, and Eddie’s credentials (outside of working with Dracula himself, Bela Lugosi) wouldn’t likely get him a foot in the door in Hollywood. The “story” about him wearing women’s underwear during battle in WW2 was probably made up by himself (the authenticity of his military duties are still debated today) — not to mention, he would sometimes put phony film credits on his CV to fatten it up. I think many of the would-be producers, backers etc. were smart enough to read between the lines! Then, of course, there was Ed’s claim that when he got his first film camera, when he was 12 years old, the first thing he shot was the Hindenburg passing over the Hudson River, shortly before it’s demise — maybe one of Ed’s tall tales, or a morbidly prophetic metaphor for Ed’s future in films — you decide. Another humorous tall tale from Ed was that he once claimed that his 1972 skin flick that he penned The Class Reunion was up for an Oscar? Yes, when pigs fly!

3. Ed Wood liked to work under many names.

Ed sometimes liked to write, direct, and act under a series of many pseudonyms. These included:

Daniel Davis (the name he used for his acting role in Glen or Glenda as Glen/Glenda)
Dr T.K. Peters
Hank Barnum
Edward Davis
TV Edwards (The TV stands for Transvestite FYI)
Ann Gora (groan!)
Flint Holloway
Edward Everett
Pete LeRoche
Akdov Telmig (Vodka Mimlet backwards FYI)
Don Miller
Dick Trent
Dr. Emil Moreau

It is unknown why he did this, but during his days of being reduced to doing porn, it was probably to save embarrassment, as he didn’t want to tell people how low his career had sunk (then again, there are reports that he loved plastering his name onto anything, but that was probably more to entice more business). The former claim is made somewhat evident in the 1978 linear notes he wrote for the vinyl soundtrack LP to Plan 9 From Outer Space, where he mentioned he is “retired” (he is more likely sugar coating things, as Plan 9 is a family friendly campy sci-fi romp).

4. Ed wasn’t always as likeable as he was portrayed in the 1994 biopic.

“At the end, Ed totally lost his mind. Completely. Just flat-ass lost his mind.“

— John Andrews, Ed Wood associate.

One of the things that Tim Burton’s excellent biopic film does heavily downplay, is Ed’s absolutely atrocious addiction to alcohol, which really only gets mentioned in the film’s “Where Are They Now?” epilogue at the end. While the drinking wasn’t good in the 1950s, by his 1970s stage, it got incredibly hideous. As I want to keep this article light-hearted, I won’t go into the finer details. His chronic boozing was probably the reason why Ed ended up broke, as he spent what little profits he made, on making nudie flicks and writing erotic novels, into buying more booze (that, and his lack of business smarts). The Eddie of the later years was chronicled in some way in the Joseph Robertson directed 1968 sex comedy film The Love Feast where Ed himself plays the main role of a drunk, pervy middle-aged photographer — something that he had devolved into in real life by that stage. It’s absolutely heartbreaking to watch, and I don’t recommend it to anybody, unless you are a total masochist! Basically, the Ed Wood of the 1950s may have seemed like a fun, likeable, charismatic, but eccentric fellow, without a mean bone in his body (when sober) but the Ed Wood of the 1970s was sometimes a pretty unpleasant scumbag, usually when the excess of Imperial Whiskey kicked in (poor Kathy, his wife, got the worst of this side of him). Though saying all this, Wood associate Casey Larrain said he was very similar to his Depp portrayal in real life.

Thanks to the alcohol, his dashing traditional Errol Flynn style good looks were basically destroyed by the mid 1960s, and he became bloated, and incredibly unkempt looking, aptly resembling a low-rent sleazy con man, who you would cross the street to avoid, or alternately a really bad end-of-the pier comedian (as seen in the aforementioned Love Feast)!

One message we should really learn from this, is that alcohol, while OK in moderation, should NOT be drunk in excess, as it can really damage who you are both mentally and physically. Slightly “preachy” I know!

5. Plan 9 From Outer Space is NOT the worst film of all time and is definitely NOT the worst Ed Wood movie!

Having watched many bad films myself, Plan 9 is definitely not the worst movie of all time, it’s not even Ed Wood’s worst movie! I would say that, a lot of what Ed was involved in from 1965 onward, when it got a little more “50 Shades Of Wood”, is far more deserving of that title, which all I can say is: if you’re looking for laughs or titillation, you will be disappointed on both counts! But If there was one thing that the porn films of Ed Wood genuinely provided, it was a completely uncensored and non nostalgic observation of the absolute grimness of 1970s culture — warts, tacky mustaches and all!

6. I think everybody who is a fan of Wood knows, he was a cross dresser…

…but what you might not know, is that his drag/female alter ego name was Shirley! The name would even appear in some of his films with Betty Boater playing a character called Shirley in 1960’s The Sinister Urge, Pat Barrington playing a character called Shirley in 1965’s Orgy of the Dead and Adult move legend Rene Bond playing another character called Shirley in 1972’s Necromania.

7. Ed’s favourite programme on the television was a forgotten 1962 comedy show.

After a hard days work, either directing, or writing wonderful trash, Ed mentioned in his 1965 book Hollywood Rat Race, that he would settle down to watch his favourite TV show — The Bell Brothers, which leads us to a classic Ed Woodism “I liked the television series The Bell Brothers starring the Bell Brothers”. In reality, the show was called Oh! Those Bells, which ran for one series back in 1962, and it starred the German/Austrian born slapstick comics, The Wiere Brothers. They were popular from the 1920s to the 1960s. 

8. Ed’s pet dog was supposedly named by future US president Ronald Reagan.

One of Eddie’s alleged acquaintances was fellow b-movie actor, Californian governor and future 40th President of the United States, Ronald Reagan! In an interview with psychic Baron Von Brenner in 1973 for Psychic Review, Wood revealed that he was a dog lover, and owned several of them. One of them was named Bumper Sticker, and was supposedly christened by none other than Gov. Reagan himself, while Ed was campaigning to elect Sam Yorty as the 37th Mayor of Los Angeles in 1965. As this was said by Ed himself (a master of misinformation) the authenticity of this claim is debatable. Interestingly, Reagan was reportedly one of the inspirations behind Depp’s performance as Ed in the 1994 Burton Biopic film.

9. Glen or Glenda was going to have a lavish New York premiere.

In 1981, after Ed Wood’s posthumous career resurrection, thanks to the Medved Brothers infamous book The Golden Turkey Awards, Paramount Pictures were going to re-release his classic 1953 major cinematic debut Glen or Glenda, and give it a lavish premiere in New York City on April 1st 1981 under the pretense that the film was a lost classic in the vein of Citizen Kane or The Godfather. Many film buffs assumed It was some big April Fool’s Day prank, but Paramount then abruptly pulled the plug on it, citing the attempted assassination of President Reagan on March 30th. Paramount did eventually re-release it, albeit in a low-key way.

10. Glen or Glenda was once rejected by the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification).

In 1958, Border Films attempted to release Glen or Glenda here in the UK, but the BBFC rejected a release of the film on the 26th February — maybe a film dealing with transvestites and transgender issues was possibly too progressive for British audiences to handle at the time, or maybe it was the “stag” footage that was edited into the film by producer George Weiss without Wood’s permission? It would eventually be given a 15 Certificate on January 18th 1995.

11. The classic 1994 biopic film Ed Wood cost more to produce than every Ed Wood film put together.

Of course, this is not adjusted for inflation!

12. Ed’s possible connection with Christopher Lee.

One of Ed’s goals in his final years was to exit the seedy porn business, and go back into legitimate cinema (he could have, if he’d sobered up), and he supposedly had that opportunity with the schlocky 1977 slasher flick Meatcleaver Massacre (filmed in 1974). According to some sources, the Keith Burns (under the pen name Evan Lee) directed film was, as mentioned on the website, Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, “partially directed by a boozed-up Ed Wood shortly before his death.”, while a man on an Ed Wood Facebook page told Joe Blevins from the Ed Wood themed blog Dead 2 Rights that Jim Bryan, who edited the film, claims that Ed “directed around 60% of Meatcleaver Massacre” because “the original director was fired.” with the movie’s cinematographer also backing up this claim on Facebook in 2022. Imagine a director of a film being so bad, they had to get Ed Wood to replace him! Though saying that, Wood’s late widow, Kathy, denied Eddie having worked on this film, and the film never appeared on any known C.V. Wood carried around.

Ed supposedly has a very brief cameo in the movie, as a photographer (which is apt, as he played photographers in some of his adult films), and he even receives an on-screen credit. While it does strongly resemble the Wood of his final years, acclaimed Ed Wood historian, Rudolph Grey, says the noses don’t match, but I’ll let you decide (I think they’re a match)!

What does the legendary film actor (and one of the coolest people that ever lived!), Christopher Lee, have to do with all this? Lee plays the role of the on-screen narrator for the film (think Criswell in Plan 9, and like Criswell, Lee is reading off cue cards!) The story of how he supposedly crossed paths with Wood, was a producer hired Lee to narrate a completely different film, and then sold the footage without telling him. Lee then initiated legal action against the producers of this film, but gave up, as it would be a long and time-consuming procedure. I think this would be very much in character with Wood to shoe-horn in Christopher Lee stock footage, as, like fellow Dracula, Bela Lugosi, in Wood’s 1950’s heyday, he needed to have a “name” in order to sell his cheap and cheerful horror film.

On a side-note, the movie was sometimes shown in the UK under the title of Revenge of the Dead, which was an alternate name for Wood’s then-lost 1959 film Night of the Ghouls, and Ed was known for recycling ideas for unfinished projects into new ones.

Personally, I really want to believe that Meatcleaver Massacre was indeed Edward D. Wood Jr’s final film that he directed to “fanonically” give his movie career a slightly happier ending, as this was released a year before he died, and that Ed had one last go at a “legit” film. To add some credibility to this, the listing for Meatclever Massacre on Amazon Prime lists Edward D. Wood Jr. as a director alongside Evan Lee (though it could be to increase sales/streams), as well as the website for the BBFC in 2023 for it’s Blu-ray reissue, passed with a 15 certificate.

On another side-note, If Ed Wood had survived into the 1980’s, and maybe experienced a career “resurgence”, I’m pretty sure his career would have gone from making awful soft-core porn to making awful “video nasties”.

13. Ed narrated movie trailers.

Sometimes, Ed’s distinctive musical voice would lend itself to film trailers. In 1974, he narrated the theatrical trailer to a grind house flick named Fugitive Girls (directed by Ed’s friend, Stephen Apostolof) , which Ed also wrote, and in which he had small cameos as different characters. By 1974, thanks to his unfortunate addiction to Imperial Whiskey and the pollution of living in the seedier side of L.A., his voice had somewhat changed from how it sounded in Glen or Glenda back in 1953. Eddie’s narration is completely “hammy”, and theatrical, channeling William Dozier in the 1960’s Batman TV series. It’s a shame he didn’t get to do more of these gigs, as you can tell he had a lot of fun with it!

14. Ed Wood was involved with the famous Japanese film company, Toei.

Ed Wood’s confirmed last film he was involved in (unless you count Meatcleaver Massacre) that wasn’t part of the “gentleman’s special interest” sub-genre, was having an old script of his being used in a micro-budget 1970 sci-fi horror flick called Venus Flytrap AKA The Revenge of Dr. X. It was based off a screenplay Ed wrote in the 1950’s and was picked up by fellow B-movie director, Norman Earl Thomson, who drastically rewrote Ed’s original screenplay. It was distributed by none other than the legendary Japanese film company, Toei, who Anime fans will probably recognise for works such as Dragonball Z and Sailor Moon, and western cartoons such as Transformers, G.I.Joe, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Real Ghostbusters, Muppet Babies, and My Little Pony as well as the animated interludes to the videogame, Sonic The Hedgehog CD. Toei also are responsible for the Super Sentai series AKA Power Rangers. It’s weird to think that Ed Wood once loosely worked for Toei, albeit very briefly!

15. Ed Wood may have illegally used music from other films!

Joe Blevins of the Ed Wood themed blog Dead 2 Rights, uploaded a bootleg soundtrack to the latter Ed Wood film Necromania (1972) onto his Soundcloud account, and for fun, I gave the title theme a Shazam. Guess what — it was originally a tune called Festa Indiana from an Italian film called Sexy released in 1962, composed by Armando Sciascia and his Orchestra! It seems that Ed Wood was stealing music form other films!

It doesn’t stop there — his 1971 softcore movie Nympo Cycler features an instrumental cover version of Black Magic Woman originally by Fleetwood Mac, memorably covered by Santana. As Wood’s later films were basically no-budget skin flicks for pervy middle-aged men (into which, ironically Wood had sadly devolved by that stage), I can’t imagine he could have afforded to license out well-known pop music (and I can’t imagine Fleetwood Mac or Santana wanting to degrade themselves by associating themselves with that kind of smut!).

16. The guy who composed the music for Plan 9 also had music used in Monty Python, Doctor Who, and SpongeBob Squarepants!

British library music composer, Trevor Duncan, who composed much of the stock music that Ed used for Plan 9 From Outer Space, which includes the film’s iconic theme tune Grip of the Law, also had his music used in another piece of classic sci-fi, Doctor Who! In the now-lost episode Mission To The Unknown (broadcast 1965), Duncan’s music cues were used, that sounded very similar to the ones used in Plan 9. Duncan’s music was also used in a 2002 episode of SpongeBob Squarepants, as well as Ren & Stimpy, Morecambe & Wise and Monty Python’s Flying Circus among many others.

17. Glen or Glenda had two sequels, but only in novel form.

One of Ed’s most famous films was the “daring for it’s time” 1953 film Glen or Glenda, which was VERY loosely based on the life of Christine Jorgensen, the first publicly known male-to-female sex change. It was instead rewritten by Ed to be a fictionalised autobiography about his struggles with his own transvestism, as Jorgensen didn’t want anything to do with it. Despite the movie being wonderfully weird, it was a film that was very forward thinking in the conservative world of early 1950s America, as it was a plea for tolerance for transvestite and transgender acceptance.

Despite the movie fading away to obscurity at the time (until Ed’s death, that is), it actually had a sequel in the form of a “dime store” novel 10 years later in 1963 called Killer In Drag. By the early 1960’s, Ed’s career as a legit film-maker was basically over, and before he made a “comeback” in films 2 years later in the adult market, he wrote ENDLESS pulp novels to make ends meet. In the sequel novel, Glen (whose full name is revealed to be Glen Marker), uses “Glenda” as his assassin alter ego, who works for an organisation only known as The Syndicate (which was also the name of the “Smut Picture Racket” organisation in his 1960 film The Sinister Urge). We also learn that he has an ex-girlfriend called Barbara, who was his girlfriend in Glen or Glenda, memorably played by Ed’s real life girlfriend at the time, Delores Fuller. While Glen or Glenda remains a campy cult classic in LGBTQ+ cinema, the sequel Killer In Drag is a lot more dark and edgy. The book received a further sequel in 1967 called Death Of A Transvestite, where Glen is now on Death Row, and their final wish is to die in drag as “Glenda”.

18. Glen or Glenda‘s theme is actually the theme song for Lassie!

As Ed Wood couldn’t afford to get a proper composer to score one of his films, he would have to rely on library music (or stealing music from other films!). For the theme tune of 1953’s Glen or Glenda, Wood chose the William Lava stock tune Presenting The Doctor, which, was renamed, and recomposed as Secret of the Silent Hills, AKA the theme song for the famous TV Show, Lassie, about a beautiful Rough Collie dog, who helps people. Presenting The Doctor had it’s debut in 1940 in the RKO production The Courageous Dr. Christian. Wood also used the tune 2 years earlier for his TV short The Sun Was Setting.

William Lava, who composed Presenting The Doctor/Secret of the Silent Hills would later compose music for the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons for Warner Bros. during it’s “dark age” of 1962-1969.

19. Ed once staged a live Las Vegas residency for Bela Lugosi.

Ed is often “cliched” as being a total failure, but he did manage to achieve some form of legitimate success, and a couple of his films were actually commercially successful (more on that later). According to his 1965 (but released in 1998) book Hollywood Rat Race, Wood staged a comedic Las Vegas revue for his idol, and star of Ed’s three most famous films, Dracula himself, Bela “PULL THE STRING!” Lugosi. The Bela Lugosi Revue started in February 1954 at the Silver Slipper, and was contracted to four weeks, but was extended to seven, doing four shows per day. The show was written entirely by Ed himself, and the whole intention was to, hopefully, bring Lugosi more work — sadly, this wasn’t the case, and Lugosi was reduced to working with his sole employer and new friend, Ed Wood.

20. Ed Wood has a small religious cult dedicated to him (?!?).

Yes, I am NOT making this up — there is a very small group of people that worship Ed Wood as their lord and saviour! In 1996, an Oklahoma based Ed Wood fan called Reverend Steve Galindo started a joke religion, that boasts more than 3500 baptised followers. If you are curious enough to check out this cult, they have a website (edwood.org), though it hasn’t been updated since 2016. Their equivalent of Christmas, is known as Woodmas, which is celebrated every October 10th, which is, of course, Ed Wood’s birthday!

21. Criswell wrote his own dialogue in Plan 9.

Apparently, Ed’s dialogue was so boring, that everyone’s favourite inaccurate prognosticator, Criswell (who, coincidentally had a song written about him by Peggy Lee), had to step in and rewrite it himself! All those classic memetic lines of his — all Cris work…well some of it! His introductory ramble of “Greetings, my friends! We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives!” actually dates from the 1939 New York World’s Fair as part of the captions and narration for General Motor’s Futurama Ride and it’s accompanying film New Horizons. But what about “Future events such as these will affect you in the future” — A classic Ed Woodism? NO! One of Criswell’s signature lines from his now lost television series Criswell Predicts (Wood directed some episodes). Despite all of this, Criswell couldn’t remember anything, and still had to read his lines off cue cards!

22. The Movie Ed Wood might actually be a story told by Ed himself.

Not so much trivia, but a plausible fan theory. As hardcore Wood fans may know, the story of Tim Burton’s biopic film is highly romanticised (though not in a bad way), and I (and the fans) would like to believe that the whole film might have been told through the drunken mind of Eddie himself. As the YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary) section for Ed Wood on TV Tropes puts it “While the film plays loosely with history throughout, it’s also been described as “the kind of biopic Ed Wood would have made for himself.” Everything that happens after Ed storms out of the Plan 9 shoot in drag is completely made up: he certainly didn’t meet Orson Welles and the movie definitely didn’t have such a lavish, heavily publicised premiere. Is the film simply being kind to Ed by giving him a happy ending he could only wish he’d ever get, is the film supposed to be Ed’s memories and he’s remembering them in more flattering ways than they happened or, considering that Wood was an alcoholic and immediately goes to a bar, is it all just a drunken stupor?

This theory alone, vindicates the film, for all those snobs, who want everything factually accurate, and Eddie hog-washing the facts is very much in keeping with who he was. There is possibly one canonical clue to the film being told through Wood’s eyes — when Ed meets Orson Welles, Orson’s physical appearance resembles that of how he did circa 1941, when he made Citizen Kane, when he was fresh-faced and youthful looking. By 1956, when the fantasy meeting sequence took place, he was overweight, and his hair was greying. My fan-theory is that the whole movie was Wood’s life flashing before his eyes (with his memories being somewhat distorted, obviously thanks to his alcoholism), before his final breath on that fateful day on the 10th December 1978.

23. 14 Minutes of Glen or Glenda is nothing but stock footage!

Ed loved stock footage — in fact, he could have made a movie completely out of random clips, something the Johnny Depp portrayal of him suggested to his editor. In Wood’s first main picture “Glen or Glenda, 14 minutes of the film’s running time was nothing but rather random stock footage, with some shots being repeated more than once (a shot of fake lightning appears SIX times, and would later show up in other Wood films!). The most infamous, of course, was the random footage of Bison overlayed during Bela Lugosi’s now famous “PULL THE STRING! PULL THE STRING!” rant. Some of it was padded out by the film’s producer, George Weiss, to make it feature length, from a modest 65 minutes to a slightly more beefy 71 minutes. This included a bizarre dream sequence (not directed by Wood) featuring burlesque footage, which had nothing to do with the rest of the film, with unrelated shots of Lugosi and Wood reacting to it. Ed didn’t approve of this additional smut, which is, in-hindsight, hypocritical, as the sort of footage Weiss added was comparable to the sort of carry-on that made up 95% of Wood’s output from 1965 onwards (though somewhat tamer).

24. The boom mics in Plan 9 were actually not meant to be seen!

The actual intended aspect ratio, was that Plan 9 From Outer Space was meant to be widescreen (16:9) instead of fullscreen (4:3), so those visible boom mics in the cockpit scene were not a usual Ed Wood oversight of him refusing to do a retake to save money, but an oversight of the movie (certainly in home media releases) showing more than what was meant to be shown on screen! Hilariously, visible boom mics would show up again in his 1960’s anti-porn propaganda film The Sinister Urge.

25. The writers of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were fans of Ed Wood.

People like me, who grew up in the 1990s, are quite likely going to be fans of the amphibious Fab Four of Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo and Raphael AKA The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles AKA The Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, if you lived in the UK like myself! In the classic 1987 cartoon series, the Turtles sometimes used Tor Johnson Halloween masks as disguises, plus one episode was called Plan Six From Outer Space!

26. Ed might have made a profit with two of his films!

According to the man himself, his wonderfully inept 1955 horror flick Bride of the Monster actually made a profit at the box office, but Eddie oversold the film and could not reimburse all the backers, who funded the movie. A movie that Ed wrote, but not directed, 1956’s The Violent Years also apparently made a profit (coincidentally not one of Wood’s most well known films). The primary reason for Wood’s decline into “Nudie Cuties”, sexploitation, and eventually straight up porn, was for this reason alone, as you are always guaranteed to make a profit, and it helped pay the bills (which sadly, eventually went into buying more booze), and, the fact that Ed was a poor businessman.

27. Bride of the Monster was actually called Dracula’s Bride in Greece.

An obvious attempt on cashing in on Bela Lugosi’s fame as Dracula! Maybe that’s where the film’s alleged profits came from?

28. Ed was, at times, self-aware.

While it is somewhat true that he believed his films to be masterpieces, he once acknowledged, in an interview featured in the book Nightmare of Ecstasy, that the infamous scene in Plan 9 From Outer Space, where Bela Lugosi’s character dies by having him run over by a car off-camera, with a scream (obviously not in Lugosi’s voice, probably provided by Ed himself) with the film footage freezing during that moment, that the scene looked phoney. This is actually referenced in the 1994 Tim Burton Biopic. During the end of the movie, when Ed is at the gala premiere of Plan 9, you see him lip reading the whole film, and when it gets to that scene, he actually turns his head around to make sure nobody was laughing at that scene.

On a side-note, Ed Wood himself considered the 1953 Phil Tucker sci-fi film Robot Monster to be the worst film ever made — another so-bad-it’s-good “classic”, which one guy on IMDB actually claims is “WAY more fun than Plan 9 From Outer Space“.

29. Sometimes, Ed actually did shoot a scene with more than one take.

While it is true that, a lot of the time, Ed liked to shoot movies with as little takes as possible (obviously, as he worked to incredibly tight deadlines and budgets), occasionally, he would sometimes ask for a retake, and there actually is film proof of that! In the theatrical trailer for Glen or Glenda, there is an alternate take used of the famous scene where Barbra (Delores Fuller) hands over Glen’s (Ed Wood AKA Daniel Davis) angora sweater, where, in this alternate take, it’s done a lot quicker and more bluntly. Delores considered this alternate take a metaphor, for what she thought of the film. There are two places where you can watch genuine Ed Wood outtakes — firstly, some rather dull outtakes for the equally dull TV mini-film Ed directed from 1951 The Sun Was Setting and outtakes also exist for his 1970 detective sex comedy film Take It Out In Trade.

On my DVD of Plan 9 From Outer Space, there is about a couple of minutes or so of deleted scenes, but they are comedic ones manipulated by Legend Films, who issued the DVD back in 2006.

Speaking of doing things in only one take, this was actually something quite common for micro budget film productions back in the day. In the 1930s over here in the UK, we had the Quota Quickies, which were no-budget films where everything had to be, practically, shot in one take, and even vintage television, such as early Doctor Who, had most of the studio work shot in only one take too, not to mention that a lot of children’s and dramatic TV shows from the 1940s, 50s, and 60s were even broadcast live, so if you screwed up — you’re screwed!

30. Ed actually had a small cult fanbase before his death in 1978.

Believe it or not, there was a very small, but dedicated, group of Ed Wood fans that existed before his death in 1978, thanks to his 1950’s “golden age” films being a staple of the graveyard slots on local American TV stations. Some of them organised a special Ed Wood Day (think when people screen The Room today), where they showed some of his films. When Ed found out about this, he was absolutely delighted, and he was so heartened to know that people still remembered him and his old films. One of these early fans, a student named Scott Zimmerman, actually befriended Ed after a 1975 TV screening of Bride of the Monster. According to Scott, Ed seemed like a pretty cool guy (obviously catching him on one of his good, i.e. sober, days), and Ed even invited him to his home to watch Plan 9. Scott would also be one of the contributors to the oral biography Nightmare of Ecstasy. Another Wood fan called Fred Olen Ray actually teamed up with Eddie to write a screenplay called Beach Blanket Bloodbath in 1978, which would have seen Wood make his comeback into “legit” cinema, which sadly didn’t get properly finished, due to Wood’s death, with only a few minutes shot.

In fact, it was those very fans, that gave Ed Wood the love and fame he deserved, as they were the ones that affectionately got him voted into the Golden Turkey Awards book as The Worst Director of all Time, and Plan 9, the Worst Movie of all Time, skyrocketing him into a level of notoriety, which he never got to experience in his lifetime.

31. Ed sometimes was intentionally funny.

Well, Ed Wood movies are unintentionally hilarious, but in all honesty, we should be laughing with him, NOT at him! His 1947 WW2 Stage play The Casual Company (as portrayed in the beginning of the 1994 Johnny Depp Biopic) was actually an intentional comedy with the programme for the play even referring to it as “an original farce in three acts” — even some of the characters names are deliberately comical such as PFC Elbo Joints. In Ed’s sordid final years as a director/writer/producer for the “amorous” market, some of these so-called-films were meant to be comedies, such as Take It Out In Trade — a detective parody, 1 Million AC/DC — a caveman film featuring probably the “best” scene from this era of Ed Wood (a character gets eaten by a unconvincing toy dinosaur) and most infamously, Ed’s return to acting in The Love Feast, which is about as comedic as Ed’s own life by that stage (i.e. not funny at all and pretty depressing). One unreleased project of Wood’s was a sci-fi flick named Invasion of the Gigantic Salami — think Plan 9, but only intentionally funny!

Also, Ed would sometimes rather tastelessly dress up as a certain Austrian monster with a toothbrush moustache, to amuse people at parties. He also liked to cosplay as Jesus too!

32. Some of Criswell’s predictions actually came true!

Frankly, despite his alleged 87% accuracy rate, Ed’s cohort, Criswell, did talk a lot of old cobblers… or maybe he was the real deal? Some of his predictions, believe it or not, actually happened. He successfully predicted a shift from paper money to credit cards, e-mails, constantly updated news reports transmitted electronically, greatest increased reliance on technology (or “automation” as he would call it), a generation of people who derive pleasure from complaining and, more harshly, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. On March 10th 1963 on the Jack Paar Program, he prophesied “I predict that President Kennedy will not run for reelection in 1964, because of something that will happen to him in November 1963.” If he were around today, could he predict the lottery numbers for next week for me, please?

33. There were other biopics on Ed Wood before Tim Burton’s Ed Wood!

Ed’s first major film, 1953’s Glen or Glenda, was a loose biopic of sorts, as the protagonist, Glen (played by Ed himself under the alias of Daniel Davis) was directly about Wood’s own struggles with transvestism, plus Barbra, Glen’s fiancee, is played by Wood’s real-life squeeze at the time, Delores Fuller.

The first attempt at making a biopic on the not-so great man, was actually all the way back in the 1980’s… sorta! Well, one of Wood’s associates, David Ward, was working on a fictionalised account of his life, called Edward Ford. One of the side characters in his screenplay was a fictionalised version of Ed Wood, named Harry Blake, but, unlike the version of Ed portrayed by Johnny Depp in Tim Burton’s 1994 biopic, Ward did not downplay the darker side of Ed’s personality, such as his out-of-control alcoholism, and his downward descent into trashy erotica. Despite the script getting critical praise, the movie was never made.

Another more amateur attempt was made in 1986 called Ed and Bela directed by a student named Scott Allen Nollen. In this film, Ed is played by Jim Singletary, while Lugosi is played by Bart Aitkens. Rudolph Grey’s acclaimed Ed Wood “bible”, Nightmare of Ecstasy, started life as a biopic of a B-movie director, who descended into making bad pornography, before being reinvented into a book about our favourite cinema anti-hero.

Also, the famous Monty Python sketch Scott of the Antarctic features a drunken movie director called James McRettin (played by John Cleese), who is, in many ways, quite similar to Ed Wood, personality wise, but Wood’s anti-fame hadn’t really kicked in back when it was made (1970), unless the Pythons were early fans of his?

34. There is an Ed Wood film festival.

There is an annual film festival in the United States, where university students have to make a movie in 24 hours, which is part of the USC Cinematic Arts in L.A.. The catch….. make something better than what Ed would have done! It has been going since 1996, and is still happening to this day!

35. Ed’s movies sometimes had reoccurring characters.

What do Bride of the Monster, Plan 9 From Outer Space and Night of the Ghouls all have in common? They are directed by Ed Wood = yes, they are debatably so-bad-it’s-good = yes, and they all have a character named Kelton The Cop = yes. The late Paul Marco (birth name Angelo Inzalaco) was one of Eddie’s regular performers, and all films featured a bumbling police officer named Kelton, who has the tendency to say “Yes Sir!” a lot. Wood fans like to consider these films to be the “Kelton Trilogy”. Marco would later become the president of the official Paul Marco Fan Club. Interestingly, the character of Lobo, memorably played by Swedish Wrestler, Tor Johnson, appeared in a non Ed Wood film in 1957 called The Unearthly, directed by Boris Petroff (though it could be argued they are two separate characters with the same name). The movie is probably best remembered for Johnson’s line “TIME FOR GO TO BED!” which is now an internet meme.

36. Clean versions exist of Ed Wood’s more “amorous” films.

A brave filmmaker/YouTuber, who goes by the handle of Beast Releasing (real name Dennis Smithers Jr.) has re-edited some of Wood’s later films (dubbed, the Circumcised Cuts) from 1965-1978 to remove all the boobs and simulated conjugal activity, only leaving the story, acting and dialogue. Doesn’t make these films any better, though, but it’s good for those who want to watch some of Wood’s later films in a more PG-rated form!

On the opposite end of the spectrum, while most of Ed’s “nudie” feature films were more-or-less strictly softcore affairs (the same can’t be said for this “loop” shorts), they were sometimes re-edited by the distributors to include “hardcore” inserts to make the films more appealing to porno theatres, which was common practice back in the day.

37. Ed was a notorious trend hopper.

Following trends is one of life’s optional necessary evils, and Eddie liked to capitalise on what was big at the time. As the world of 1953 wasn’t ready yet for a movie about trans acceptance with Glen or Glenda, Ed basically cashed in on what was hot, and be “down with the kids”. Bride of the Monster — obviously a cash-grab on the monster movie craze, Plan 9 — a rip off of every other sci-fi out there at the time, and both films were filled with all the Cold War paranoia, which was happening in the world at the time. Obviously Ed’s decline into adult films in 1970’s, was a cash grab on rising softcore directors like Russ Meyer, and even hardcore films like Deep Throat, which were surprise box office successes, and the fact that even mainstream flicks during the period were borderline porn, like the “Confessions” comedies over here in the UK (on a side note, Confessions of a Window Cleaner was the UK’s highest grossing movie in 1974 outgrossing the Disney animated classic The Aristocats) — it was a strange period where the line between mainstream cinema and pornography were blurred, and a lot of Wood’s contemporaries were going down that route to make a quick buck. What makes this even more depressing is that by most accounts, Ed HATED making pornography, which some believe fed into his depression and helped fuel his ever-increasing alcoholism.

38. Ed Wood’s Connection with the Batman franchise.

One of Ed’s regulars was an actor named Lyle Talbot (1902-1996), who had been acting since the days of silent cinema. He played Inspector Warren in Glen or Glenda, Inspector Johns in Jail Bait, and General Roberts in Plan 9 From Outer Space. Despite having a massive filmography, he is probably best known for playing Commissioner Gordon in the 1949 low-budget Columbia serial, Batman & Robin, which is probably the closest we will get to what a Batman movie directed by Ed Wood would have been like! Johnny Duncan, who played Robin The Boy Wonder in the same 1949 serial, also had a small uncredited role in Plan 9 From Outer Space as a stretcher bearer, which leads to one of the few regrets of my life (more on that later). Wood regular, B-movie cowboy actor, Kenne Duncan, also had an uncredited role in an earlier Batman movie serial from 1943 as Fred the Mechanic. To add to his superhero credentials, Kenne Duncan was also in movie serials for Superman, Captain Marvel (Shazam) and Captain America.

Eddie Parker, who was a stuntman for Bela Lugosi on Bride of the Monster (the one who ACTUALLY fought the rubber octopus) also doubled for Lewis Wilson’s portrayal of Batman in the 1943 movie serial, as well as double for House Peters Jr. in the role of Earl, and he also played a minor character named Holt in the 1949 Batman serial.

In Plan 9, during the Flying Saucers Over Hollywood montage, we pass the exterior of the Macombo Club on Sunset Boulevard, where there is a marquee saying that Eartha Kitt is doing a concert. Eartha Kitt, of course, played Catwoman in the 1966 Batman TV series with Adam West. Kitt would also appear in the 1998 film I Woke Up Early The Day I Died, which was based off an old Ed Wood script, that was written in 1974.

Back to Johnny Duncan — when I was kid, I was actually in touch with the great man himself, but this was long before I became an Ed Wood fan — if only I were a Wood fan at the time, I would have LOVED to have asked him if he had any interesting stories about Eddie. There is also an image online of Ed Wood hanging about with the legendary Caesar Romero, who delightfully played The Joker in the classic 1966 Batman TV series.

39. Ed Wood was a master of misinformation.

While clickbait, fake news, and misinformation is apparently an invention that began in 2016 or so, Ed liked his tall tales and to misinform people with his work. His 1954 movie Jail Bait has a title that is thankfully misleading, as it’s, in reality, a rather dull film noir movie about a guy who blackmails the dad of his friend’s plastic surgeon into fixing up his face, so he can evade the cops (in fact, the original title of the movie was The Hidden Face, but Ed potentially thought, having a provocative title would get more interest — it didn’t!).

He did the same again with the 1965 Stephen Apostolof “monster nudie” film, that he wrote and produced called Orgy of the Dead — No Orgy is present in the movie, and in reality, it’s a rather tame 90 minute collection of topless burlesque pieces featuring some Poundland Raquel Welch lookalikes, with a drunk or high Criswell spectating, making cringy observations. His 1972 horror-themed porn film Necromania has a thankfully very misleading title too, though the closest we do get to that sort of awfulness in the film is, that we see a couple… ahem….”dance the horizontal mambo” in a coffin!

Another pointer to Meatclever Massacre being Ed Wood’s potentially final film, was that the movie actually didn’t have any meat cleavers, with the name obviously cashing in on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (also see Ed being a notorious trend-hopper).

It wasn’t just misleading titles — Ed’s final “mainstream” film, 1960’s The Sinister Urge was a super-exaggerated Reefer Madness-esque propaganda flick on the evils of pornography, or, as the movie puts it, the “smut picture racket”. In a harsh act of prophecy, Ed himself 5 years later would join the “smut picture racket”, until his death in 1978. Ironically, that movie would even be shown in adult cinemas at the time, possibly as a joke (a bit like how Reefer Madness is popular with stoners).

40. Ed Wood did some stunt work.

In 1950, Wood was a stuntman in the Samuel Fuller directed film The Barron of Arizona starring Vincent Price and Ellen Drew. Wood allegedly doubled for Drew (being a crossdresser, this would come naturally to him) in a scene where her character, Sofia, gets pushed off a moving coach by an angry mob. As Glen or Glenda proved, Wood wasn’t particularly attractive in drag, and the editing concealed Wood’s face as much as possible.

This wasn’t the first or last time Ed was a stuntman. Wood did some horseback riding in his first movie Crossroads of Laredo (made 1948 released 1995) and the unsold TV pilot Crossroad Avenger and Wood also doubled for Mona McKimmon in Plan 9 From Outer Space in a scene where she is being pursued by NOT Bela Lugosi being played unconvincingly by Ed Wood’s wife’s chiropractor using a cape to cover his face to hide the fact that he looks ABSOLUTELY NOTHING like Lugosi.

41. Ed never got to meet his idol, Orson Welles… or did he?

The beautiful scene in Tim Burton’s 1994 Biopic, where Eddie had a chance encounter with his Hollywood idol, Orson “Citizen Kane” Welles, was admitted by the film’s scriptwriters to be nothing more than fiction… but a meeting with the two Hollywood legends was a possibility within the realms of reality. Welles once dated Ed Wood’s pal, Vampira, so you never know, Vampira might have introduced Welles to Wood in real life, though I think that’s just basically hopeful speculation from myself! A cinematographer called Gary Graveller also worked with both Welles and Wood, having worked on the film One Million AC/DC written and produced by Ed Wood.

42. Ed Wood’s early attempts in the music industry.

When he was a teenager in his birth town of Poughkeepsie in New York in the 1930s, he attempted a career in the music industry, where he was a vocalist and played drums in a band. He also formed a quartet named Eddie Wood’s Little Splinters, where he sang and played various string instruments. It is unknown what sort of music he made, but one would naturally assume Country & Western, because of his love of Buck Jones and Western Movies, which Wood would later direct. No recordings exist of the Little Splinters, but don’t assume, as it’s Ed Wood, that their output would be of poor quality! Wood was also in a group called the Sunshine Mountaineers, who were a pseudo hillbilly band, that wore beards more fake than those of a Santa Claus at a local winter village gala!

43. Ed never liked an idea to go to waste.

I think Wood buffs all know that the Lugosi footage for Plan 9 wasn’t actually shot for that, but was intended for another project (speculated to be either two unreleased films The Vampire’s Tomb and The Ghoul Goes West). This wouldn’t be the first or last time, Ed would recycle ideas into other projects. One piece of footage that would get recycled more than once, was a shot from an unreleased Wood project entitled Hellborn (AKA Rock & Roll Hell,) which features teenagers having a brawl outside a cafe (with one of them unconvincingly played by Ed Wood himself) — this footage was recycled into Night of the Ghouls as well as The Sinister Urge.

44. Ed was an incredibly fast typist.

If Ed Wood did have one legitimate gift, it was that he was incredibly speedy on the old typewriter, in fact he even won an award for “Fastest Typist” by President Roosevelt! He could literally complete a movie script or a novel in an entire day, and this was a valuable resource in the latter part of his career, when he was writing sleazy pulp novels, leading to a very prolific career. Wood would also ghostwrite several Bela Lugosi fan letters in Bela’s final years, with the two obvious clues to this being that he would often add a P.S. to his fan letters, and in some surviving examples, the fact that the capital letters are at a different level than the rest of the text, meaning the shift key did not have time to return properly.

One very sad thing in his final years, was that he had to pawn his beloved typewriter in order to help pay the rent and get more money for Imperial Whiskey.

45. Wood once wrote a script called I Watched Football Early The Day I Died — a title that forecast his own fate.

Incredibly harshly prophetic, as that was what Ed was doing the day that he died! One might speculate that Criswell may have thought of the title for him. Interestingly, the script was actually a biopic about American football player Frank Leahy. Ironically, Ed Wood HATED football (as in American Football, not Soccer)!

46. Some of the music cues in the Ed Wood biopic are inspired by the music in real Ed Wood Movies.

Howard Shore, who composed the music in the Ed Wood biopic, was clearly inspired by the actual music in Ed Wood movies. Case in point, the title music is like a loose, more uptempo reimagining of the Trevor Duncan Library Piece, Grip of the Law, which, is the library tune used as the theme tune to Plan 9 From Outer Space. A tune based off the William Lava stock tune Presenting The Doctor AKA the Glen or Glenda theme AKA the Lassie theme, was reimagined during the more “tender” scenes in the film and during the montage of Wood filming Plan 9, the reimagining of Presenting The Doctor is mashed up with a tune, based off the library piece Towards Adventure by Gilbert Vinter, which was used during Criswell’s scenes in Plan 9. On a more touching note, the Tchaikovsky tune Swan Lake plays during the more emotional scenes with Bela Lugosi, which, was used as the theme tune for his most famous film, 1931’s Dracula.

47. One of Wood’s associates wanted to dig out Lugosi’s corpse for the premiere of Plan 9.

This is either hilariously morbid or morbidly hilarious. According to Wood himself “I can still remember the day one of our associate producers came up with the idea of digging up Bela Lugosi’s body and propping him up in his coffin near the theatre lobby.” It would have been a great publicity stunt, but the more I thought about it, the more tasteless the idea became. We ended up putting my plastic octopus from “Bride of the Monster’”. At least he admitted the octopus in Bride of the Monster was fake!

48. Ed Wood: Record Producer.

During Ed’s dark final days of being a sleaze merchant for the money, he still had a nostalgic reflection for the good old days when he made “good” family-friendly films like Plan 9 and Bride of the Monster. He had a brief career as a record producer in 1970, with two records produced by Wood including Tor Johnson reading a story by Wood called The Day The Mummy Returned (those familiar with Tor’s distinct thick Swedish accent can imagine how that worked out!) and Criswell narrating another story of Wood’s called The Final Curtain (which was also the name of an unsold TV Pilot of Ed’s). It is unknown if the records were ever released.

49. Ed Wood wrote a fan script for The Beverly Hillbillies and had the audacity to send it over!

If you are of a certain age, you would have probably heard of a famous American sitcom from the 1960s called The Beverly Hillbillies. Well, according to Ed’s associate, Don Fellman, Wood sent a fan script to CBS, who were broadcasting the show, only to, according to Wood, have it “rejected at the last minute”.

50. Nat King Cole may have sung a song about Ed Wood.

As most Wood fans would know, his former girlfriend, Delores Fuller, became a successful songwriter, who’s resume included major hits for Elvis Presley including Do The Clam and Rock-A-Hula Baby. One of Fuller’s songwriting credits was for classic crooner, Nat King Cole for his song Someone To Tell It To. The song was featured in the 1995 Ed Wood documentary The Haunted World of Edward D. Wood Jr, and Delores recites the lyrics while getting emotional throughout. Have a look at the lyrics, and you can make up your mind if it’s about our Eddie…

“What good is a dream,
A plan or a scheme,
The rainbow that you pursue?
It’s everything, and it’s nothing
Without someone to tell it to.
How eager you are
To get to that star,
But after the journey’s through,
You’re only a lonely dreamer
Without someone to tell it to.“

On a side-note, probably the only thing I didn’t like about the Ed Wood biopic was Sarah-Jessica Parker’s portrayal of Delores, which makes her out as this air headed prima donna. From what I can tell from documentaries about Wood, the real Delores seemed like a really sweet old lady.

51. The guy who did the poster for Plan 9 also did the poster for Star Wars.

Other than (maybe) Christopher Lee, there is another man, who has crossed paths with both George Lucas and Ed Wood — probably the most famous and most infamous sci-fi directors of all time — the legendary poster designer, Tom Jung. Arguably the most unironically good thing about Plan 9 was the film’s really awesome poster, that was somewhat misleading (a bit like Ed himself!) and even the famous and iconic poster Jung designed for Star Wars (the first one AKA A New Hope) which was a little bit far fetched, as it had the already very beautiful Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher beefed up and exaggerated looking to help sell the film. Jung would also make posters for other legendary movies such as Raiders of the Lost Ark and loads of Eddie Murphy comedies.

52. One of Ed’s actors only appeared in movies directed by Ed Wood!

The actor’s name was Duke Moore (1913-1976). He starred in Wood’s very first film Crossroads of Laredo in 1948 and was also in one of his final films in the Director’s chair, the 1970 softcore sex comedy Take It Out In Trade as aristocrat Frank Riley. I’m presuming Wood was one of his buddies.

His most infamous line in the Wood canon would have to be this gem in Plan 9 From Outer Space, as the character of Lieutenant Harper “But one thing’s sure. Inspector Clay is dead, murdered, and somebody’s responsible!”

So there you have it — I hope you enjoyed reading this long ramble, about an old B-movie legend from the 1950’s. Before I go, I will leave you with these words from an old 2011 YouTube video, by a guy named OgreVI

“Anyone can make his mark on the world if he’s got talent, vision and genius, but Ed Wood made his mark without those things. All he had was intransigence and a dream. To me, that is far more inspiring [than most mainstream heroes]. Ed Wood makes no empty promises to us. The lesson of his career is, that if we pursue our dreams with passion and determination, if we commit ourselves to body and soul to the things we love. If we ignore the people who say we’re no good, even when we know they’re right, we will still fail most of the time. We might fail every time. Sometimes though, we can fail gloriously.“

Happy 100th Birthday Edward D. Wood Jr. — may you rest in peace, and provide us all with more affectionate laughter for another 100 years!

Peace, love, and all that good stuff.

— Rory

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