Joe Blevins's Blog, page 19

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 193: The mystery of Henry Kekoanui (UPDATED!)

This actor appeared in Ed Wood's The Sinister Urge and nothing else that we know of.
Do you know what an artesian well is? It's a naturally-occurring site where pressurized water rises to the surface of its own accord, without human intervention. In other words, it's a well you don't have to pump. Rudolph Grey's book Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1992) is a lot like that—the literary equivalent of an artesian well. Turn to just about any page in it, and interesting little details will bubble to the surface on their own. I've had my copy for about 30 years, and I'm still finding new things in it.
There's an entire section in the book, for instance, about the making of The Sinister Urge (1960). This was Ed Wood's final "mainstream" film as a writer-director before he descended permanently into the world of softcore and hardcore pornography. Since Sinister deals with the so-called "smut racket" and even includes a flash of nudity, it's tempting to think of it as a transitional film in Eddie's career, i.e. a signpost to where his career was heading.
On page 101 of Nightmare of Ecstasy, you'll find a small gallery of images—Grey fancifully calls it a "quartet"—from The Sinister Urge. What caught my attention recently was the photo in the upper left-hand corner, a publicity still of someone identified as Henry Kekoanui. It's a striking image. The dark-haired, mustachioed man is shirtless and has an intense look in his eyes, like he's about to strike. Imagine Gomez Addams as a 1950s bad guy wrestler. Henry's arms and upper body are muscular, but his midsection is a bit paunchy. He's being photographed in some strange, eerie void where a dramatic shadow looms over him. And he seems to be carrying something, perhaps a garment, in his left hand.
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Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 193: The mystery of Henry Kekoanui

This actor appeared in Ed Wood's The Sinister Urge and nothing else that we know of.
Do you know what an artesian well is? It's a naturally-occurring site where pressurized water rises to the surface of its own accord, without human intervention. In other words, it's a well you don't have to pump. Rudolph Grey's book Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1992) is a lot like that—the literary equivalent of an artesian well. Turn to just about any page in it, and interesting little details will bubble to the surface on their own. I've had my copy for about 30 years, and I'm still finding new things in it.
There's an entire section in the book, for instance, about the making of The Sinister Urge (1960). This was Ed Wood's final "mainstream" film as a writer-director before he descended permanently into the world of softcore and hardcore pornography. Since Sinister deals with the so-called "smut racket" and even includes a flash of nudity, it's tempting to think of it as a transitional film in Eddie's career, i.e. a signpost to where his career was heading.
On page 101 of Nightmare of Ecstasy, you'll find a small gallery of images—Grey fancifully calls it a "quartet"—from The Sinister Urge. What caught my attention recently was the photo in the upper left-hand corner, a publicity still of someone identified as Henry Kekoanui. It's a striking image. The dark-haired, mustachioed man is shirtless and has an intense look in his eyes, like he's about to strike. Imagine Gomez Addams as a 1950s bad guy wrestler. Henry's arms and upper body are muscular, but his midsection is a bit paunchy. He's being photographed in some strange, eerie void where a dramatic shadow looms over him. And he seems to be carrying something, perhaps a garment, in his left hand.
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WATCH! The Candy Land commercial that haunted me for years! (Updated for 2024!)

This is what Milton Bradley's Candy Land looked like in 1978.
The game board as it looked in '78.It's funny how an utterly ephemeral piece of music will become firmly lodged in one's brain for decades. Take, for instance, the instrumental music in an early '80s ad for the Milton Bradley board game Candy Land. There was a particular 30-second spot for this product that I must have seen dozens of times while watching Popeye and Andy Panda cartoons as a kid. Obviously, Milton Bradley bought up a lot of advertising time on children's TV shows, and I was smack dab in the middle of the target demographic.

The commercial itself is typical of the era. In a sunshine-yellow suburban kitchen somewhere, a young brother (played by a pre-Christmas Story Peter Billingsley) and sister play the game with their mom, while a gentle-voiced male announcer explains how it all works.

But underneath the narration is a jaunty, repetitive little melody with a whistle-like sound. To this day, I remember that insidious little ditty by heart. I will likely never forget it. As for the narrator's spiel, I didn't commit every word of it to memory, but there are certain passages that stick out: "You'll discover the Gingerbread Plum Tree, a Rainbow Pass, and Gumdrop Mountain! But be careful of the Cherry Pit Falls, and don't get stuck in Molasses Swamp!" The way he weirdly emphasizes "Rainbow Pass," as if it's a major selling point, is rather memorable.

Incidentally, one thing I learned in the course of researching this article is that there is no "definitive" version of the classic game. The internet can't even decide whether it's called Candy Land or Candyland. Under either spelling, the game goes back to 1949. The gameboard itself and the box it comes in have been redesigned and revamped many times since then. What was once merely "Molasses Swamp," for instance, is now a sentient creature unappealingly named "Gloppy." Other characters, like "main antagonist" Lord Licorice, have been added to Candy Land since the days of my youth. (In my day, bad luck was the only antagonist in Candy Land.)

Through trial and error, I learned that the version of the game seen in the famous ad dates back to 1978. Most sources say the commercial first appeared in the early 1980s, possibly 1983.

The indelible Candy Land jingle played a minor yet arguably-significant role in my life. I can remember humming it over and over to annoy my older sister during a long car trip. She must have identified the song, too, because she said, "Mom, tell Joey to stop singing the Candy Land song!"

A few years later, when I joined the school band, a few of my fellow musicians-in-training and I would try to learn as many pop songs, TV and movie themes, and advertising jingles as possible on our respective instruments. Then as now, I played the euphonium—a little-understood and much-neglected instrument to which I was dutifully assigned after failing to make the grade on the cornet. 
Being relegated to the low brass section was moderately more fun if I could play a reasonable facsimile of '"Black Dog" by Led Zeppelin or "The Ballad of Jed Clampett." I remember it was a major victory (in my own mind) when I learned the familiar seven-note "Miss Gulch" theme from The Wizard of Oz. But there was this one kid, Marc Wojtowicz, who played the saxophone and had a dizzying range of tunes at his command. And one of them was—you guessed it—the Candy Land jingle. That may not impress you, but it impressed the hell out of me.
Anyway, here's the commercial. If the song takes up permanent residence in your subconscious, remember that I tried to warn you.


UPDATE FOR 2024: Reader Dan Mahoney informs me that the jingle used in the Candy Land commercial is actually a piece of stock music called "Whistling Robot" by British composer and organist Harold Smart (1921-1980). In more recent years, Harold's music has turned up on SpongeBob SquarePants and its various spinoffs. Thanks for setting the record straight, Dan!
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Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 192: I bought a stack of Ed Wood books. So how did I do?

Yes, I bought this stack of books. Did I overpay? Underpay? Let's find out together.
Way back in the spring of 2015, there was a massive auction of Ed Wood memorabilia in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I knew I couldn't afford anything pricy, like Eddie's actual suitcase, but I felt like I wanted to get something. I settled for a poster advertising Glen or Glenda (1953) under one of its many alternate titles, I Led 2 Lives, and a collection of Mexican lobby cards for Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957) aka Espectros del espacio. The poster I had framed; it now hangs in my kitchen and greets me every morning. The lobby cards I keep in a binder and rarely look at. 
All in all, this set me back about $400—then and now a huge sum of money for me. When things got particularly lean a few years ago, I even considered selling these items at a loss before deciding that it was more trouble than it was worth. Not to mention depressing. So I kept them as stern reminders of what not to do with my money.
Because of that experience, I vowed I would never make another major and totally unnecessary Ed Wood-related purchase again.  I also knew that, someday, I would more than likely do it again. I bravely (?) held out for nearly a decade. Then, in the spring of 2024, I saw on Facebook that a fan was selling off some of his collection, including a stack of Wood (and Wood-adjacent) books. Since I rely mostly on e-books and PDF files in my research for this series, I own very few paperback and hardcover editions of Ed's work. So I was tempted.
After a couple of weeks of hemming and hawing and exchanging a few direct messages with the seller, we eventually settled on a deal: nine books for $350, including shipping. For you non-mathematicians out there, that's about $38 or $39 a book. Was I cheated? Did I do pretty okay for myself? Let's break it down, book by book, and find out.
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Podcast Tuesday: "Must Be the Season of the Witch"

Fonzie, Mr. Cool, and a witch on The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang.
In many ways, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? (1969-1970) was a major breakthrough for Hanna Barbera. Not only was the show a ratings success and the beginning of a multimedia empire that is still going today, it reached a teenage audience beyond just the grade schoolers who normally watched Saturday morning TV. Little wonder, then, that HB attempted one Scooby clone after another in the 1970s and '80s, including Speed Buggy, Jabberjaw, and Goober and the Ghost Chasers.
It took me a while to realize that The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang is essentially another Scooby wannabe, imitating the original show almost character for character. Instead of leader Fred, we have Fonzie (Henry Winkler). Instead of ditzy Daphne, we have Cupcake (Didi Conn). Instead of nerdy Velma, we have Richie (Ron Howard). Instead of cowardly Shaggy, we have Ralph Malph (Don Most). Naturally, we need a humanlike animal mascot. Instead of Scooby or Scrappy, we have Mr. Cool (Frank Welker). And the gang needs a flashy mode of transportation, so instead of the Mystery Machine, we get the time machine.
The episode that made me realize this was "You'll Never Get Witch,"  in which Fonzie and his pals travel to Salem in 1692 and get caught up in the witch trials. The only thing to distinguish it from Scooby-Doo is that it features the Happy Days kids. Is that a good thing? A bad thing? Find out when you listen to the latest installment of These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast .
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Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 191: 'Rue Pigalle' (1966)

A Texas sheriff investigates the seamy underbelly of Paris in the unproduced Rue Pigalle.

"I'd not go behind scripture but it may be that there has been sinners so notorious evil that the fires coughed em up again and I could well see in the long ago how it was little devils with their pitchforks had traversed that fiery vomit for to salvage back those souls that had by misadventure been spewed up from their damnation onto the outer shelves of the world. Aye. It’s a notion, no more. But someplace in the scheme of things this world must touch the other."-Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian (1985)

In many ways, Ed Wood's kinky crime novel Parisian Passions (1966) serves as a companion piece to the film Orgy of the Dead (1965), which Eddie scripted for producer-director Stephen C. Apostolof. They're from the same era of Ed's career and feature a lot of the same phrases, like "it would seem..." and "evening's pleasure." As I was making my way through Parisian Passions, I kept thinking, "Hmmm. That sounds like a line from Orgy of the Dead. It's almost like these two things were written back-to-back." Which they basically were. We'll get into it.
Parisian Passions and Orgy of the Dead.Beyond their superficial similarities, these two works are linked thematically. Both of these stories are built around the idea that so-called "night people" engage in wicked, sinful acts while all the decent people are in bed asleep. In Parisian Passions, undercover cop Buck Rhodes is forced to witness such shameful rituals while overseas on a murder case but does not partake of them. (Heaven forfend!) In Orgy of the Dead, straight-laced couple Bob (William Bates) and Shirley (Pat Barrington) are likewise compelled to witness some supernatural debauchery, but they do so strictly from the sidelines.
As it turns out, Parisian Passions would likely not exist at all without Orgy of the Dead. In 1966, after striking a distribution deal for Orgy with a company called F.O.G., director Stephen C. Apostolof received three checks totaling $15,000 (nearly $150K in today's money) from the company's founder, Fred O. Gebhardt. Like any true red-blooded filmmaker, Steve immediately made plans to take that money and invest it in several new productions. These productions would need scripts, and Steve turned to Ed Wood because he knew Eddie could write something very quickly. The result was a screenplay called 7 Rue Pigalle, which centers around a Texas sheriff investigating a series of murders in the red-light district of Paris.
This strange, never-to-be-completed project has surprisingly deep roots. From 1948 to 1950, after fleeing his native Bulgaria and briefly dwelling in Istanbul, Steve Apostolof actually lived in Paris. He remembered his address there as being 7 Rue Pigalle. There is, in fact, a street in Paris named after sculptor Jean-Baptiste Pigalle (1714-1785). The surrounding neighborhood, the Quartier Pigalle, became a notorious tourist trap in the 20th century due to its numerous sex shops and adult theaters. During World War II, American soldiers even started calling it "Pig Alley." (The pun only works in English; the French word for pig is cochon.)
The actual 7 Rue Pigalle. Yes, it's a real address in Paris. var infolinks_pid = 3415273; var infolinks_wsid = 0;

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 190: 'Parisian Passions' (1966)

Parisian Passions is one of Eddie's earlier novels, but it has all the earmarks of his work.

"But do not trust to luck, at the full of the moon, when the night is dark. Make a wide path around the unholy grounds of the Night People. Who can say that we do not exist? Can you?"-Criswell, Orgy of the Dead (1965)

Recently, while writing about the numerous recurring characters in Ed Wood's work, I realized I had given short shrift to Sheriff Buck Rhodes. This rugged Texas lawman played a starring role in two of Eddie's novels from the 1960s: Parisian Passions (1966) and Devil Girls (1967). While I already reviewed Devil Girls and its 1999 film adaptation in one of the earliest articles in this series, I hadn't even approached Parisian Passions in the subsequent decade. So let's do that now, huh? Better late than never.
Big in '66: the Pigalle Stranger and Robin.Published by Greenleaf Classics as part of its  Sundown Reader  series in 1966 and credited to the nonexistent "J.X. Williams," Parisian Passions is one of Ed Wood's earliest known novels. It is clear, though, that Eddie had already found his very idiosyncratic voice as a writer by this point in his career. There's a phrase I've come to use to describe certain of Ed's books and films: "Wood at his Woodiest." That means he allows his quirks and obsessions to run rampant, no matter what his editors or his readers may want. Well, Parisian Passions is a book like that. In Nightmare of Ecstasy (1992), Rudolph Grey describes it as "alternately absurd, comic and poetic." And it is all those things, though some, uh, other adjectives also sprang to mind.
A mysterious, costumed Jack the Ripper-type madman has been stalking and killing the drug-addicted strippers and prostitutes who frequent the Pigalle, the notorious red light district of Paris. I pictured the killer as looking like the Phantom of the Opera, but the cover painting by Darrel Millsap makes him look more like Robin the Boy Wonder. Either way, Inspector Henri Goulet of the Sûreté (the local police force) is utterly baffled by this case. Fortunately, his department is participating in an exchange program with the United States: they send one of their men to America, and America sends a genuine Texas sheriff to Paris. This gives Goulet an idea.
A latter-day reprint of the novel.When Sheriff Rhodes finally arrives, Goulet arranges to have him "arrested" in a train station so as not to arouse suspicion from the criminal element of the city. Once Buck is in custody, Goulet unveils his plan to catch the so-called "Pigalle strangler." Buck will pretend to be a visiting Texas millionaire looking for a good time, and he will infiltrate the Parisian underground and root out the killer. Buck has never been anywhere near Paris and knows nothing of the city, but he soon finds a guide named Pierre who is willing to take him to the lowest, scummiest sex clubs or "cellars" in the city.
As Buck becomes familiar with these vile establishments, he sees the same few people again and again at different venues. One such habitué is Jacques, the local pusher who supplied heroin to several of the victims and also had sexual relationships with them. Another is Noreen "Norm" Clampett, a butch lesbian from England who identifies as male. They both seem to be likely suspects. But maybe Pierre or even Goulet is secretly the killer. Or is the true culprit someone else entirely?
After a few more murders, Buck decides to spring a trap for the strangler. He and the French police set up a decoy sex club of their own and recruit Lorry/Lorraine, a female impersonator from America, to perform there. When the killer inevitably attacks, they'll nab him. Surprisingly, this works. In the end, Buck, Goulet, and Lorry celebrate their success in a most unexpected way. var infolinks_pid = 3415273; var infolinks_wsid = 0;

Podcast Tuesday: "I Never Drink... Milkshakes"

Cupcake, Fonzie, and a vampire on The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang.
On December 20, 1980, just in time for Christmas, The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang aired the episode "The Vampire Strikes Back," in which our heroes travel to Transylvania and meet a vampire named Count Wolfgang von Wolfenstein (voiced by sitcom veteran Henry Polic II). Such are the vagaries of TV scheduling. Maybe the episode wasn't ready in October or something. Besides, kids are already bombarded with Christmas-themed animation in December, so maybe a story about monsters and mad scientists would make a nice change of pace. And The Nightmare Before Christmas was still 13 years away.
As unlikely as it sounds, this madcap mashup of Happy Days and horror ends up being one of the most entertaining episodes of the animated series. There are a few spooky episodes of the live-action Happy Days series -- "Haunted," "Welcome to My Nightmare," and (arguably) "Fonzie's Funeral" -- and they're a lot of fun, too.  I may be prejudiced, though, because I love horror movies so much, especially the Universal classics from the 1930s and '40s. "The Vampire Strikes Back" takes a lot of tropes from those films. I guess, if you were a kid watching this 44 years ago, it would all be new to you.
Anyway, you can hear what my cohost and I had to say about "The Vampire Strikes Back" by listening to the latest installment of These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast . And because I'm such a nice guy, I've embedded it below so all you have to do is push play.
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Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 189: 'Ed Wood Jr. Graphic Novel' (2022)

I only recently learned of this strange, great graphic novel about Ed Wood.
In 1982, musician Brian Eno told Los Angeles Times reporter Kristine McKenna that the album The Velvet Underground and Nico (1967) only sold 30,000 copies in its first five years, but "everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band." We could quibble here. The seminal art-rock album had sold more than 30,000 copies by 1972, and it's impossible to say how many bands were formed as a direct result of its release. But you get Eno's point: the VU album had an influence far bigger than its meager commercial success would indicate. Somehow, this weird little LP inspired creativity in others.
Who knew this existed?I feel Ed Wood has had a similar effect on his fans. He's the Velvet Underground and Nico of directors, if you will. Popularity eluded him during his lifetime, and even a big-budget, mainstream biopic about him massively underperformed at the box office in 1994. But still the Wood-inspired tribute projects continue to materialize, nearly half a century after his death. In the course of writing this column, I have discussed feature films, short films, albums, books, musicals, trading cards, fan art, and even toys inspired by the works of Edward D. Wood, Jr. 
Just a couple of weeks ago, I reviewed John Wooley's graphic novel version of Plan 9 from Outer Space from 1990 and lamented that there weren't more Wood-inspired comics for us fans to enjoy. But I was in luck! The ever-reliable Bob Blackburn posted recently on Facebook about something called  Ed Wood Jr. Graphic Novel (2022) credited to one Diana Wood , a Portland-based illustrator presumably unrelated to Eddie. This was totally outside my field of experience. I'd never heard of this artist or this book, but it was inexpensive and looked promising, so I took the plunge. To kill the suspense, I'm glad I did.
Incidentally, I bought this graphic novel  from Amazon , and a page near the back of the book indicates that my personal copy was printed the day I ordered it at a facility near where I live. I must be a luddite or something, but is that how books work now? If so, I'm in. The book arrived remarkably quickly and was very slick and professional, like anything you'd find at Barnes & Noble. Très impressionnant! And this makes every copy unique. I'm happy to have this as a physical object and not a PDF file or a folder of JPGs. 
The novel itself is a phantasmagoria that freely intermingles elements from Ed Wood's movies, Eddie's real life story, and author Diana Wood's fertile imagination. It's set in the early-to-mid-1950s, the same years covered in Ed Wood (1994). You will not see the booze-bloated, long-haired Eddie directing porno flicks or writing tawdry paperbacks. Instead, the book focuses most heavily on the making of Ed's first two features, Glen or Glenda (1953) and Jail Bait (1954), though Bride of the Monster (1955) and Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957) are evoked here as well.
After a suitably dramatic introduction from Criswell, we commence with the making of Glen or Glenda in 1953. A young, eager Eddie interviews with producer George Weiss, gets the job of writing and direction the film, tells girlfriend Dolores Fuller the good news, and then dons women's underwear, makeup, and a wig to get inspired to write the screenplay. Later, on the set, an elderly, ill Bela Lugosi is coughing terribly but still manages to give a performance that brings tears to Ed's eyes. With that in the can, Eddie dons female attire to shoot his own scenes. This surprises but does not anger or upset Bela. Ed's friend Bunny Breckinridge drops by the set and is impressed by Ed's boldness. Dolores is initially upset to see her boyfriend dressed as a woman but soon gets over it. Together they shoot the film's famous dream sequence, bringing the graphic novel's first chapter to a close.
Some panels from Ed Wood Jr. Graphic Novel. (Photo by Bob Blackburn.)
In the second chapter, budget-conscious George Weiss drops by the set and is shocked to find Ed not only dressed in drag but starring in the movie in addition to writing and directing. Eddie reassures him that all is well and completes the movie. We then see several iconic moments from Glen or Glenda: Glen confessing his secret to Barbara; Glen discussing his problems with his friend Johnny (Charlie Crafts); Glen having a nightmare in which his father (Captain DeZita) is depicted as the Devil; and Barbara reluctantly handing over her angora sweater to Glen. Ed Wood proudly screens the finished movie for an appalled George Weiss, who tells him it is terrible and will bomb at the box office. Eddie fumes, declaring that George is wrong.
We are then treated to a six-page mini-biography of Maila "Vampira" Nurmi called "The Story of Vampira," complete with many portraits of the lady herself. After growing up in Oregon, Maila moves to Los Angeles and becomes a glamour model. One night in the early 1950s, she attends a Halloween party dressed as a Morticia Addams-type female ghoul character called Vampira and lands a job hosting a TV horror show. The program is an immediate sensation—a true succès de scandale—and Maila becomes, in the book's words, "the first queen of counter culture." But Vampira's show only lasts a year, and Maila nearly lapses into poverty before accepting a role as a zombie in Ed Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space.  Against all odds, that film gains an "accidental fame" that rescues both Maila and Ed from obscurity.
The cover of Bad's first issue.Back to the main story. It is now 1954, and Eddie is in production on his sophomore feature, Jail Bait. Unfortunately, he's also being evicted from his apartment... again. Eddie has lunch with Bunny and talks about casting wrestler Tor Johnson in his next film. ("His arms are like tree trunks of solid muscle!") Later, on the set of the movie, poor actor Tim Farrell struggles to function with his face wrapped in bandages. He can't really breathe very well, and his peripheral vision is so limited that he keeps bumping into things and injuring himself.
Problems continue to mount on the set of Jail Bait. A stern-faced union representative shows up to tell Eddie that the production will be shut down soon for numerous violations. Elderly actor Herbert Rawlinson is so frail he has to be seated for all his scenes. Bodybuilder Steve Reeves wants to do his scenes with his shirt off, and Dolores Fuller gets into a full-on cat fight with costar Tedi Thurman. Meanwhile, Ed's landlord has thrown out his possessions, and a toilet at the film studio explodes.
But the worst news is yet to come. Herbert Rawlinson dies before his scenes are completed. Undeterred, Ed Wood decides to keep filming with the deceased actor's body, treating him rather like poor Bernie Lomax (Terry Kiser) in Weekend at Bernie's (1989). Somehow or another, Eddie manages to finish filming Jail Bait, but Dolores Fuller has had enough and walks out on him. A dejected Ed Wood has lunch with actor Charley Crafts, who kindly offers to hold onto Eddie's wigs while the director seeks out more permanent accommodations. And that's the end of the graphic novel, apart from a quick plug for Bad Magazine (2022) , a Mad parody/homage.
The book concludes with some thoughtful notes from author Diana Wood. "I feel in Edward a kindred spirit," Diana writes, noting how difficult it must have been to be a transvestite in the conformist 1950s. The author explains that she had ambitions of being a filmmaker and took inspiration from Eddie as he was portrayed in the Tim Burton biopic from 1994. She leaves us with a passage partly taken from that film:

Why spend your life making someone else's dreams come true? Why not make your own dreams come true? This book is part of that dream for me.

While Ed Wood Jr. Graphic Novel is not sexually explicit and contains no nudity, there is a recurrent motif of what I'd call cheesecake or pinup-style artwork throughout this book, somewhat reminiscent of the work of Peruvian painter Alberto Vargas . Dolores Fuller and Vampira are frequently glimpsed in scanty outfits, casting seductive looks at the reader and striking Playboy-esque poses. That's to be expected and in keeping with the Woodian spirit.
But the artist made one major stylistic choice I did not anticipate. When Ed Wood appears in drag in this novel, he is depicted as fully female in appearance, complete with very convincing female anatomy. (He claims at one point to be wearing falsies, but they appear true enough to my eyes.) While some who knew Ed personally say he looked alarming while dressed as "Shirley," especially in his later years, I think it was always his goal to achieve the height of feminine beauty and sex appeal. And here, he does. That's just one of the reasons why I think he would have been extremely flattered by this book.
In all, though it may not be for every taste, Diana Wood's Ed Wood Jr. Graphic Novel is the kind of discovery that makes me glad to be a Wood fan, even after all these years. It combines two of my longtime passions—Ed and comics —so how could I help but love it? I'm certain that fans will enjoy poring over these pages, especially the dramatic full-page panels such as the one of Bela Lugosi on the set of Glen or Glenda. This project has "labor of love" written all over it, made by a fan for the enjoyment of other fans. Do yourself a favor and pick up a copy today.
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Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 188: Ed Wood's recurring characters (including Kelton and Lobo)

For some reason, Ed Wood kept bringing Officer Kelton back.
Three of Ed Wood's 1950s films—Bride of the Monster (1955), Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957), and Night of the Ghouls (1959)—are collectively known as "The Kelton Trilogy" because they all feature actor Paul Marco as bumbling, cowardly Officer Kelton, a uniformed cop who repeatedly comes into contact with the otherworldly and supernatural. In Ghouls, narrator Criswell gives us a succinct description of the character:

Patrolman Paul Kelton, 29 years of age, four years with the department, eager for the glory of the uniform but wide-eyed with fear at the thought of actually being on special duty. Unfortunately, though eager, not what the department usually looks for in their officers.

Ouch. The other characters in these movies tend to treat Kelton with utter contempt. In Night of the Ghouls, the character even describes himself as "the whipping boy of the whole police force." He's basically the Jar Jar Binks of the Ed Wood universe. So why did Ed keep bringing back Officer Kelton, reusing him the way Shakespeare reused Falstaff? A few reasons, I think. First, Paul Marco was one of his closest buddies and wasn't exactly drowning in work outside of Eddie's films. I'm certain the zany Kelton character was written especially with Paul Marco in mind. ("Hey, Paul, I've got a great part for you in my next picture!")
Beyond that, Ed Wood was heavily inspired by the Universal horror movies of the 1930s and '40s, and those films tend to include broad comic relief provided by wacky supporting characters—chambermaids, English bobbies, villagers, etc. It seems like a Universal movie isn't complete until some Cockney-accented stooge gets spooked by the monster du jour and trips over his own feet trying to run away. Paul Marco's scaredy-cat Officer Kelton is very much in that tradition. As unnecessary as the character may seem to modern viewers, he has his roots in classic horror. var infolinks_pid = 3415273; var infolinks_wsid = 0;