Ed Wood

In 1942, Wood enlisted in the United States Marine Corps, just months after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Assigned to the 2nd Defense Battalion, he reached the rank of corporal before he was discharged.[8] Although Wood reportedly claimed to have faced strenuous combat, including having his front teeth knocked out by a Japanese rifleman, his military records reveal this to be false; apart from recovering bodies on Betio following the Battle of Tarawa, and experiencing minor Japanese bombing raids on Betio and the Ellice Islands, a recurring filariasis infection left him performing clerical work for the remainder of his enlistment, and his dental extractions were carried out over several months by Navy dentists, unconnected to any combat.[9][10] Wood later claimed (erroneously or otherwise) that he feared being wounded in battle more than he feared being killed, mainly because he was afraid a combat medic would discover him wearing a bra and panties under his uniform during the Battle of Tarawa.

In 1947, Wood moved to Hollywood, California, where he wrote scripts and directed television pilots, commercials and several forgotten micro-budget westerns with names such as Crossroads of Laredo and Crossroad Avenger: The Legend of the Tucson Kid. In 1948, Wood wrote, produced, directed, and starred in Casual Company, a play derived from his unpublished novel, which was based on his service in the United States Marine Corps. It opened at the Village Playhouse to negative reviews on October 25.[11]

In 1952, Wood was introduced to actor Bela Lugosi by friend and fellow writer-producer Alex Gordon, Wood's roommate at the time, who was later involved in creating American International Pictures. Lugosi's son, Bela Lugosi Jr., has been among those who felt Wood exploited the senior Lugosi's stardom, taking advantage of the fading actor when he could not refuse any work.[12] However, most documents and interviews with other Wood associates in Nightmare of Ecstasy suggest that Wood and Lugosi were genuine friends and that Wood helped Lugosi through the worst days of his clinical depression and drug addiction. Lugosi had become dependent on morphine as a way of controlling his debilitating sciatica over the years, and was in a poor physical state.[13]

Wood billed himself under a number of different pseudonyms, including Ann Gora (in reference to Angora, his favorite female textile) and Akdov Telmig (the backwards form of his favorite drink, the vodka gimlet).[13]

In 1953, Wood wrote and directed the semi-documentary film Glen or Glenda (originally titled I Changed My Sex!) with producer George Weiss.[14] The film starred Wood (under the alias "Daniel Davis"), his girlfriend Dolores Fuller, and Lugosi as the god-like narrator.[15]

Wood directed and produced a crime film, Jail Bait (1954, originally titled The Hidden Face), along with co-writer Alex Gordon, which starred Lyle Talbot and Steve Reeves (in one of his first acting jobs).[16] Bela Lugosi was supposed to play the lead role of the plastic surgeon, but was busy working on another film project when filming started and had to bow out.[17]

Wood produced and directed the horror film Bride of the Monster (1955, originally titled Bride of the Atom), based on an original story idea by Alex Gordon which he called The Atomic Monster.[18] It starred Bela Lugosi, Swedish wrestler Tor Johnson, and Loretta King.

In 1956, Wood produced, wrote, and directed the science fiction film Plan 9 from Outer Space (originally titled Grave Robbers from Outer Space), which featured Lugosi in a small role (his final film role; Lugosi died during production), Tor Johnson, Vampira (Maila Nurmi), Tom Mason (who doubled for Lugosi in most scenes), and the Amazing Criswell as the film's narrator. Plan 9 premiered (as Grave Robbers) at a very small screening in 1957, was only released theatrically under the title Plan Nine from Outer Space in 1959, and was finally sold to late night television in 1961, thereby finding its audience over the years.

It became Wood's best-known film and received a cult following after 1980, when Michael Medved declared this film "the worst film ever made" in his book The Golden Turkey Awards.[19]

In 1956 Wood extended his creative input for the film The Violent Years (originally titled Teenage Girl Gang) with director William M. Morgan, starring Playboy model Jean Moorhead.[20]

1957 saw Wood write and direct a pilot for a suspense-horror TV series that ultimately failed to sell. Final Curtain sees an old and world-weary actor wandering in an empty theatre, imagining ghosts and strange beings haunting the backstage area. The episode has no dialogue, and Dudley Manlove narrates the thoughts of Duke Moore as the actor. Parts of the pilot were recycled for use in Night Of The Ghouls. A complete copy of the episode was thought forever lost, before an intact print was located circa 2010. It was remastered and given its first ever cinema showing in February 2012. It is widely available online and on disc.

In 1958 Wood wrote, produced, and directed Night of the Ghouls (originally titled Revenge of the Dead), starring Kenne Duncan, Tor Johnson (as "Lobo" from Bride of the Monster), Criswell, Duke Moore, and Valda Hansen.[21] The film may have been released marginally in March 1959, and then promptly vanished from sight for a quarter century. For many years, it was thought to be a lost film but it was rediscovered and finally released on home video in 1984.

In 1958 Wood also co-wrote the screenplay for The Bride and the Beast (1958), which was directed by Adrian Weiss.

Wood wrote and directed the exploitation film The Sinister Urge (1960),[19] starring Kenne Duncan, Duke Moore, and Carl Anthony. Filmed in just five days, this is the last mainstream film Wood directed, although it has grindhouse elements. The film contains an "eerily prescient"[22] scene, in which Carl Anthony's character states, "I look at this slush, and I try to remember, at one time, I made good movies".

The scenes of teenagers at a pizza place had been shot in 1956 for Wood's unfinished juvenile delinquency film Rock and Roll Hell (a.k.a. Hellborn)

In 1963, Wood wrote the screenplay for Shotgun Wedding (an exploitation film about hillbillies marrying child brides [incorrect]) and his 1965 transitional film Orgy of the Dead (originally titled Nudie Ghoulies), combining the horror and grindhouse skin-flick genres. Wood handled various production details while Stephen C. Apostolof directed under the pseudonym A. C. Stephen. The film begins with a recreation 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) aka The Revenge of Dr. X, a US/Japan horror film, was based on an unproduced Ed Wood screenplay from the 1950s.[23]

In 1969, Wood appeared in The Photographer (a.k.a. Love Feast or Pretty Models All in a Row), the first of two films produced by a Marine buddy, Joseph F. Robertson, portraying a photographer using his position to engage in sexual antics with models. He had a smaller role in Robertson's second film, Mrs. Stone's Thing, as a transvestite who spends his time at a party trying on lingerie in a bedroom.

In 1970, Wood made his own pornographic film, Take It Out in Trade. The following year, he produced, wrote, and directed Necromania (sometimes subtitled A Tale of Weird Love) under the pseudonym "Don Miller". The film was an early entry to the new subgenre of hardcore pornographic film. Thought lost for years, it resurfaced in edited form on Mike Vraney's Something Weird imprint in the late 1980s, then was re-released on DVD by Fleshbot Films in 2005.

Throughout the 1970s, Wood worked with friend Stephen C. Apostolof, usually co-writing scripts, but also serving as an assistant director and associate producer. (Together they had made Wood's Orgy of the Dead in 1965.) His last known on-screen appearance was in Apostolof's Fugitive Girls (a.k.a. Five Loose Women) in 1974, where he played both a gas station attendant called "Pops" and a sheriff on the women's trail.

Beginning in the early 1960s up until his death, Wood wrote at least 80 lurid crime and sex novels in addition to hundreds of short stories and non-fiction pieces for magazines and daily newspapers. Thirty-two stories known to be written by Wood (he sometimes wrote under pseudonyms such as "Ann Gora" and "Dr. T.K. Peters") 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). [Many of these titles are films not novels. Peters was an actual person whose work was used in part by Wood & colleagues, always coupled with another name.]

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.[24]

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.

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.[25]

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. They broke up in 1956, and while it has been reported that the marriage was annulled,[26] according to film archivist Wade Williams, they neither annulled the marriage nor divorced.[27][28]

Wood married his second wife, Kathy O'Hara, in 1959. They remained married until Wood's death in 1978.[29] Kathy died on June 26, 2006, having never remarried.[29]

In Rudolph Grey's 1992 biography Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood Jr., Wood's wife Kathy recalls that Wood told her that his mother dressed him in girls' clothing as a child.[2] Kathy stated that Wood's transvestism was not a sexual inclination, but rather a neomaternal comfort derived mainly from angora fabric (angora is featured in many of Wood's films).[30] Even in his later years, Wood was not shy about going out in public dressed in drag as Shirley, his female alter ego (who also appeared in many of his screenplays and stories).[31] In his partly autobiographical film Glen or Glenda, the heterosexual Wood takes pains to emphasize that a male transvestite is not automatically, or even usually, also a homosexual. At least one edition of Wood's films on DVD includes a brief silent 8mm cine clip of Wood in drag.

• Flying Saucers Over Hollywood: The Plan 9 Companion, was released in 1992. This exhaustive two-hour documentary by Mark Patrick Carducci chronicles the making of Plan 9 from Outer Space and features interviews with Maila Nurmi (Vampira), Paul Marco, Conrad Brooks, et al. In 2000, Image Entertainment included the documentary on the DVD reissue of Plan 9 from Outer Space (in a two-disc set with Robot Monster).
• The Haunted World of Edward D. Wood Jr., written and directed by Brett Thompson, came out in 1995. This documentary - about the life and films of Ed Wood - features interviews with Wood's friends and co-workers and closely resembles Wood's own style, albeit with slightly better miniatures.
• Wood was profiled in The Incredibly Strange Film Show, presented by Jonathan Ross.