- Date de naissance : 10 octobre 1924
- Date de décès : 10 décembre 1978
- Nationalité :
United States - Activités : Réalisateur, Scénariste
- Personne
Edward Davis Wood Jr. (October 10, 1924 – December 10, 1978) was an American filmmaker, actor, and author.
In the 1950s, Wood directed several low-budget science fiction, crime and horror films, notably Glen or Glenda (1953), Jail Bait (1954), Bride of the Monster (1955), Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957), Night of the Ghouls (1959) and The Sinister Urge (1960). In the 1960s and 1970s, he moved towards sexploitation and pornographic films, and wrote over 80 pulp crime, horror and sex novels.
Notable for their campy aesthetics, technical errors, unsophisticated special effects, use of ill-fitting stock footage, eccentric casts, idiosyncratic stories and non sequitur dialogue, Wood's films remained largely obscure until he was posthumously awarded a Golden Turkey Award for Worst Director of All Time in 1980, renewing public interest in his life and work.
Following the publication of Rudolph Grey's 1992 oral biography Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood Jr., a biopic of his life, Ed Wood (1994), was directed by Tim Burton. Starring Johnny Depp as Wood, the film received critical acclaim and various awards, including two Academy Awards.
Early years
Wood's father, Edward Sr., worked for the United States Post Office Department as a custodian, and his family relocated numerous times around the United States. Eventually, they settled in Poughkeepsie, New York, where Ed Wood Jr. was born in 1924. According to Wood's second wife, Kathy O'Hara, Wood's mother Lillian would dress him in girl's clothing when he was a child because she had always wanted a daughter. For the rest of his life, Wood crossdressed, infatuated with the feel of angora on his skin.
During his childhood, Wood was interested in the performing arts and pulp fiction. He collected comics and pulp magazines, and adored movies, especially Westerns, serials, and anything involving the occult. Buck Jones and Bela Lugosi were two of his earliest childhood idols. He often skipped school, in favor of watching motion pictures at the local movie theater, where stills from that day's film would often be thrown into the trash by theater staff, allowing Wood to salvage the images, and to add to his extensive collection.
On his 12th birthday, in 1936, Wood received as a gift his first movie camera, a Kodak "Cine Special". One of his first pieces of footage, and one that imbued him with pride, showed the airship Hindenburg passing over the Hudson River at Poughkeepsie, shortly before its disastrous crash at Lakehurst, New Jersey. One of Wood's first paid jobs was as a cinema usher, and he also sang and played drums in a band. Subsequently, he formed a quartet called "Eddie Wood's Little Splinters" in which he sang and played multiple stringed instruments.
Military service
In 1942, Wood enlisted at age 17 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 in 1946 at age 21. 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. 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 pink bra and panties under his uniform during the Battle of Tarawa.
Career
Directing and screenwriting
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. He joined the Hollywood union in 1951, and worked very briefly as a stuntman among other things.
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 afford to refuse any work. 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.
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).
Glen or Glenda
In 1953, Wood wrote and directed the semi-documentary film Glen or Glenda (originally titled I Changed My Sex!) with producer George Weiss. The film starred Wood (under the alias "Daniel Davis"), his girlfriend Dolores Fuller, and Lugosi as the god-like narrator/ scientist.
Jail Bait
Wood directed and produced a crime film, Jail Bait (1954, originally titled The Hidden Face), along with his co-writer/ roommate Alex Gordon, which starred Lyle Talbot and Steve Reeves (in one of his first acting jobs). Bela Lugosi was supposed to play the lead role of the plastic surgeon, but was busy with another project when filming started and had to bow out.
Bride of the Monster
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 had originally titled The Atomic Monster. It starred Bela Lugosi, Swedish wrestler Tor Johnson, and Loretta King.
The Violent Years
In 1956 Wood wrote the screenplay (uncredited) for the film The Violent Years (originally titled Teenage Girl Gang), which was directed by William M. Morgan, starring Playboy model Jean Moorhead.
Plan 9 from Outer Space
In late 1956, Wood produced, wrote, and directed the science fiction film Plan 9 from Outer Space (originally titled Grave Robbers from Outer Space), which featured Bela Lugosi in a small role (Lugosi actually died in 1956 before production began but Wood inserted some footage into the film that he had taken of Lugosi back in 1955), Tor Johnson, Vampira (Maila Nurmi), Tom Mason (who doubled for Lugosi in some scenes), and the Amazing Criswell as the film's narrator. Plan 9 premiered in March of 1957 (as Grave Robbers) at a small screening at the Carlton Theatre in Hollywood, and was later put into general release in July of 1959 under the title Plan Nine from Outer Space. It 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.
Final Curtain
In 1957 Wood wrote and directed a pilot for a suspense-horror TV series to be called Portraits in Terror 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.
Night of the Ghouls
In 1958 Wood wrote, produced, and directed Night of the Ghouls (originally titled Revenge of the Dead), starring Kenne Duncan, Tor Johnson (reprising his role as "Lobo" from Bride of the Monster), Criswell, Duke Moore, and Valda Hansen. The film played at the Vista Theatre in Hollywood in March 1959 as Revenge of the Dead, and then promptly vanished from circulation. For many years, it was thought to be a lost film, but the negative had really been sitting in a film laboratory for 25 years -- because Wood hadn't paid his lab bill. A video producer paid the bill and released the film on videocassette (retitled Night of the Ghouls) in 1984.
In 1958 Wood also co-wrote the screenplay for The Bride and the Beast (1958), which was directed by Adrian Weiss. Wood also wrote the screenplay for a 1959 "nudie cutie" film called Revenge of the Virgins, which was directed by Peter Perry Jr.
The Sinister Urge
Wood wrote and directed the exploitation film The Sinister Urge (1960), 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" 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 the teenagers at the pizzeria had been previously shot in 1956 for Wood's unfinished juvenile delinquency film, Rock and Roll Hell (a.k.a. Hellborn), which Wood never completed.
Also in 1960, Wood wrote the screenplay for The Peeper, which he intended as a direct sequel to his 1960 film The Sinister Urge, but it was never produced.
Wood also contributed to the screenplay of the 1961 film Anatomy of a Psycho. In 1963, Wood wrote the screenplay for Shotgun Wedding (an exploitation film about hillbillies marrying child brides in the Ozarks).
Orgy of the Dead
Wood's 1965 transitional film Orgy of the Dead (originally titled Nudie Ghoulies) combined 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 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 with Apostolof and occasionally even acted in the films.
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 (1970), as a transvestite who spends his time at a party trying on lingerie in a bedroom.
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.
Take It Out in Trade
In 1970, Wood wrote and directed his own pornographic film, Take It Out in Trade, starring Duke Moore and Nona Carver. Wood played a transvestite named Alecia in the film.
Necromania
In 1971, he produced, wrote and directed Necromania (subtitled A Tale of Weird Love) under the pseudonym "Don Miller". The film was an early entry to the new subgenre of hardcore pornographic films. Thought lost for years, it resurfaced in edited form on Mike Vraney's Something Weird imprint in the late 1980s, and was re-released later on DVD by Fleshbot Films in 2005. In the Rudolph Grey biography Nightmare of Ecstasy, Maila Nurmi said she declined Wood's offer to do a nude scene sitting in a coffin for Necromania, claiming she was recovering from a major stroke at the time.
From 1971 to 1972, Wood directed an unknown number of short X-Rated films produced by the Swedish Erotica film company. Wood's friends Kenne Duncan and Tor Johnson both passed away during this period.
Throughout the 1970s, Wood worked with his friend Stephen C. Apostolof, usually co-writing scripts with him, but also serving as an assistant director and an associate producer. (Together they had made Wood's Orgy of the Dead back in 1965.) Wood's last known on-screen appearance (a dual role) was in Apostolof's 1974 film Fugitive Girls (a.k.a. Five Loose Women), in which he played both a gas station attendant called "Pops" and a sheriff on the fugitive women's trail.
At the time of his death, Wood was working on a biographical screenplay based on the last years of actor Bela Lugosi to be called Lugosi Post Mortem, which was supposed to star Peter Coe as Lugosi and Karl Johnson as his father Tor Johnson. The nearly completed script was left behind the last time Wood was evicted and is presumed to have been destroyed. Wood was also working on a screenplay for a film called Venus De Milo, a mystery that would explain the famous statue's missing arms.
Technically, Wood's last acting job was in the 1978 Stephen Apostolof film Hot Ice. Ed Wood played a janitor in the film, but his scene was cut out at the last minute due to his drunkenness on the set. Wood died soon after this film was made in 1978, at age 54.
Books and novels
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), Parisian Passions (1966), Watts the Difference (1966), Side-Show Siren (1966), Drag Trade (1967), Watts After (1967), Devil Girls (1967), It Takes One to Know One (1967), Death of a Transvestite (1967), Suburbia Confidential (1967), Night Time Lez (1968), The Perverts (1968), Bye Bye Broadie (1968), Raped in the Grass (1968), Sex, Shrouds and Caskets (1968), Love of the Dead (1968), The Sexecutives (1968), Young, Black and Gay (1968), Hell Chicks (1968), The Photographer (1969), Carnival Piece (1969), Toni, Black Tigress (1969), Mama's Diary (1969), To Make a Homo (1969), Mary-Go-Round (1969), Take It Out in Trade (1970), The Only House in Town (1970), The Sexual Woman (1971), Necromania (1971), The Undergraduate (1972), The Only House (1972), A Study of Fetishes and Fantasies (1973), Tales for a Sexy Night Part 1 and 2 (1973), Death of a Transvestite Hooker (1974). Forced Entry (1974), Fugitive Girls (1974), and TV Lust (1977).
In 1965, Wood wrote the quasi-memoir Hollywood Rat Race, which was only 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.
Unrealized Projects
- Dr. Acula --- Wood was supposed to write and direct this proposed 1953 TV program in which Bela Lugosi was supposed to play a mysterious investigator of the supernatural, produced by Ted Allan. (Lugosi mentioned it when he appeared that year on You Asked for It.)
- The Vampire's Tomb --- This was a planned 1954 horror film starring Bela Lugosi as the "Dr. Acula" character again. The cast would also have included Loretta King, Bobby Jordan, Dolores Fuller, Lyle Talbot, Duke Moore, Tom Keene and a Vampira-lookalike named "Devila". Wood shelved this project and filmed Bride of the Monster instead.
- Doctor Voodoo --- A projected 1954 horror film (similar in plot to the 1934 The Black Cat) that was supposed to have starred both Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, but Allied Artists rejected the script.
- The Ghoul Goes West (or The Phantom Ghoul) --- Wood worked on this script for two years, and had planned to produce it in Color/ Widescreen. It was a proposed 1955 Western/Horror film that would have starred Gene Autry, Bela Lugosi, Tor Johnson, Lon Chaney Jr. and John Carradine, with Harold Daniels slated to direct. Gene Autry dropped out, and Wood tried to replace him with either Bob Steele or Ken Maynard, to no avail. Lugosi was reading the script the whole time he was staying at the Norwalk State Hospital in 1955, where he was being treated for drug addiction. (Coincidentally, Lugosi, Chaney, Tor Johnson and Carradine all appeared together the following year in The Black Sleep.)
- Rock and Rock Hell (or Hellborn) --- Wood's version of Rebel Without a Cause, it was supposed to have starred Conrad Brooks, Duke Moore, Tom Mason and Wood himself, to be produced by George Weiss. It began shooting in June of 1956, but Weiss decided to abandon the project and sold whatever footage he shot to Conrad Brooks. Footage from this film was later incorporated into Wood's 1959 Night of the Ghouls.
- The Dead Never Die --- Criswell and Paul Marco came up with the story for this 1957 project, which Wood was slated to direct. It would've starred Criswell, Paul Marco, Bunny Breckinridge and Vampira, but it never got off the ground.
- How To Make a Monster --- Wood's widow Kathy claimed in a 1992 interview that her husband always felt that the idea for How to Make a Monster (1958 film) was stolen from him by AIP producer Sam Arkoff. She said "Eddie condemned Arkoff, he really hated him. Eddie gave them a script for approval, and they changed the characters a little bit around. Eddie had written it for Lugosi. It was about this old horror actor who couldn't get work any more, so he took his vengeance out on the studio. (They changed it to) a make-up man who takes revenge on a studio". Arkoff denied Wood's claim was true, stating Herman Cohen originated the entire project.
- House of Horrors --- Kenne Duncan and Tor Johnson were supposed to star in this 1960 film, which never materialized. Kenne Duncan was to play a mad artist who paints pictures of kidnapped women he confines in a dungeon, while Tor played a Lobo-like henchman.
- Attack of the Giant Salami --- A 1964 horror film spoof that would've starred Boris Karloff, Joe E. Brown and Valda Hansen, Wood no doubt inspired by the 1964 Brown/Karloff collaboration The Comedy of Terrors. Unfortunately, Joe E. Brown passed away before the filming could get started.
- Tangier --- A 1966 proposed action-adventure TV series that was supposed to be produced by Wood's friend Stephen Apostoloff. Wood wrote a sample screenplay for the series which was never produced.
- 69 Rue Pigalle --- In 1966, Stephen Apostoloff was set to produce and direct a film called 69 Rue Pigalle, based on Ed Wood's novel Parisian Passions, but the financing never materialized. The plot was supposed to be about a transvestite who solves a series of murders in Paris, and Lon Chaney Jr. was supposed to have been in the cast.
- The Enchanted Isle --- An unfilmed 1966 Ed Wood screenplay for a film that was supposed to feature Lon Chaney Jr., Dana Andrews and John Ireland, about a Mafia princess stranded on a South Sea island and a mystery involving black pearls.
- Devil Girls --- An unrealized 1967 Crime Drama about a drug-smuggling teenage girl gang who hang out at a seedy hamburger joint. Tor Johnson was to have played the brutish "Chief", a goon who works for a retired race car driver named "Jockey". It was based on Wood's eponymous novel.
- The Life of Mickey Cohen --- A 1967 proposed Crime Drama Wood was working on, in which Paul Marco was supposed to play the infamous gangster (a full decade after Marco appeared in Plan 9 From Outer Space).
Wood's list of unrealized film projects also included scripts called Piranhas (1957), Trial by Terror (1958), Ghouls of the Moon (1958), Masquerade into Eternity (1959), The Peeper (a proposed 1960 sequel to The Sinister Urge), Joaquin Murieta (a 1965 biopic about the infamous bandit of the Old West), Mice on a Cold Cellar Floor (1973), Epitaph for the Town Drunk (1973), To Kill a Saturday Night (1973, which was set to star John Carradine), The Teachers (1973), The Basketballers (1973), The Airline Hostesses (1973), I Awoke Early the Day I Died (1974), Heads, No Tails (1974), and Shoot Seven (1977, Wood's proposed musical based on the St. Valentine's Day Massacre).
Personal life
Relationships and marriages
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 in a very brief appearance, in 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 for the first time in Glen or Glenda. The couple broke up in 1955 after Wood cast another actress for the lead role in Bride of the Monster (Wood originally wrote the part for Fuller but later reduced her part to a brief cameo appearance) and because of Wood's excessive drinking.
In 1956, soon after his breakup with Fuller, Wood married actress Norma McCarty. (McCarty appeared as Edie, the airplane stewardess, in Plan 9 from Outer Space, and was recently divorced with a son from her earlier marriage.) Their marriage was just suddenly announced one night when Wood called everyone to the sound stage for what they thought was a cast party, but when everyone was present, Wood brought out a huge wedding cake and a preacher, and announced he was getting married. The marriage broke up several days later, as soon as McCarty discovered that Wood was a cross dresser, and while it has been reported that their marriage was annulled, according to film archivist Wade Williams, they neither annulled the marriage nor legally divorced.
Wood moved in with Paul Marco for a short while after Norma left him, then moved in with his second wife, Kathy O'Hara, in 1956. He had met her in a bar where he was drinking one night with Lugosi, and she fell in love with him immediately. They were married in Las Vegas a short while later, and Wood always considered him and Kathy to be married even though technically his first marriage had not been legally annulled. Wood and O'Hara lived together until Wood's death 22 years later. Kathy died on June 26, 2006, having never remarried.
Cross-dressing
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. Kathy stated that Wood's cross-dressing, at that time called transvestitism, was not a sexual inclination, but rather a neomaternal comfort derived mainly from angora fabric (angora is featured in many of Wood's films). 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). 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.
Death
By 1978, Wood's depression had worsened, and he and his wife Kathy had both 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 while the others were watching a football game on TV. 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 bossing her around. After hearing no movement in the bedroom for 20 minutes, Kathy sent a friend to check on Wood, who discovered him dead on the bed 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.
Legacy and homages
In 1986 in an essay paying homage to Wood in Incredibly Strange Films, Jim Morton wrote: "Eccentric and individualistic, Edward D. Wood Jr. was a man born to film. Lesser men, if forced to make movies under the conditions Wood faced, would have thrown up their hands in defeat".
In 1994 director Tim Burton released the biopic Ed Wood, starring Johnny Depp in the title role and Martin Landau, who won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Bela Lugosi. It also won an Academy Award for Best Makeup for Rick Baker. Conrad Brooks appeared in the movie, in a cameo role of Barman, along with Gregory Walcott as a potential Backer.
The film premiered on September 30, 1994, just ten days before what would have been Wood's 70th birthday. Despite receiving mass critical acclaim, the movie did poorly at the box office; however, it has since developed a cult following.
In 1996 Reverend Steve Galindo of Seminole, Oklahoma, created a legally recognized religion with Wood as its official savior. Founded as a joke, the Church of Ed Wood now boasts more than 3,500 baptized followers. Woodites, as Galindo's followers are called, celebrate "Woodmas" on October 10, which was Wood's birthday. Numerous parties and concerts are held worldwide to celebrate Woodmas. On October 4–5, 2003, horror host Mr. Lobo was canonized as the "Patron Saint of late night movie hosts and insomniacs" in the Church of Ed Wood.
In 1997 the University of Southern California began holding an annual Ed Wood Film Festival, in which student teams are challenged to write, film, and edit an Ed Wood-inspired short film based on a preassigned theme. Past themes have included Rebel Without a Bra (2004), What's That in Your Pocket? (2005), and Slippery When Wet (2006).
Films
| Titre | Activités | Genre |
|---|---|---|
| Plan 9 from Outer Space | Réalisateur, Scénariste | Science fiction |
Sources
Publicité
