Joe Blevins's Blog, page 45

Podcast Tuesday: "Chachi Threatens a Small Child"

Erin Moran and Scott Baio on Happy Days.
For seven of its eleven seasons, Happy Days featured a character named Chachi Arcola. This character, introduced as the cousin of Arthur Fonzarelli (Henry Winkler), was played by an actor named Scott Baio. Many people have strong negative feelings associated with Chachi Arcola, and many more have strong negative feelings associated with Scott Baio. Mr. Baio is very politically outspoken on a number of issues and has been accused of sexual misconduct by coworkers. Chachi is just kind of an annoying little twerp with a dumb catchphrase. ("Wa wa wa!")
The question is, do we equate Chachi Arcola and Scott Baio? I have been cohosting a Happy Days podcast for over three years, and in that time, I have said little to nothing about Mr. Baio's life and career after the show ended in 1984. My cohost has been more outspoken on this topic. I choose to ignore it. Not that I condone Mr. Baio's actions, far from it, but I try to focus on the fact that we are talking about a fictional character played by an actor who was in his teens and early 20s at the time. When I comment on the Chachi Arcola character, I try to focus on Scott Baio's acting and the types of scenes and situations the writers invent for him. Here, too, there is room for criticism, but is of an aesthetic nature rather than political or moral.
This week on These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast , we are reviewing the Season 7 episode "Fools Rush In," which casts a spotlight on the relationship between Joanie Cunningham (Erin Moran) and Chachi. In fact, it's about their first real date and the trepidation they both feel. As I reviewed this episode, I tried to concentrate on the inner reality of Happy Days, i.e. the fictional universe these characters inhabit. My cohost was more concerned with the outer reality of Happy Days, i.e. the real lives of the actors who appeared on the show.
Whose viewpoint ultimately wins out? Find out when you listen to the latest installment of These Days Are Ours!

Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex: ""Not So Easy—This Life" (1972)

This artwork used to be a lot more explicit.

 

NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex (BearManor Media, 2021).

The article: "Not So Easy—This Life." Originally published in Body & Soul (Pendulum Publishing), vol. 6, no. 1, February/March 1972. No author credited.
Excerpt: "There is no such thing as an easy change over from the small town life to the big city life. And she learns fast that many of the parental horrors were founded on fact. She is a walking target for any character when the streets become dark. She is a sure lure for a pickup in the cocktail bars. . . . And she is certain to have one hell of a time locating a job before her money runs out and she would be forced back to the tank town from where she came."
There are plenty of career opportunities for women.Reflections: "Not So Easy—This Life" has been included in the section of When the Topic is Sex dealing with Ed Wood's views on various social and political issues, and I guess it could be loosely interpreted as Ed's take on women in the workplace. In truth, however, this article flits from topic to topic so often that it's difficult to summarize. Let's say that, in the broadest sense, it's about career opportunities for women, including stripper, prostitute, nude model, and porn star.
Women used to be content with staying at home, going directly from school to marriage and family. Their parents took care of them until they were 18. Then their husbands took over. But now, thanks to the sexual revolution, they're entering the work world. What is there for them to do? Ed points out that there are numerous unskilled and entry-level jobs for men out there, but not so many for women. The guys are even starting to move in on those coveted secretarial positions. 
Ed then describes a small town girl leaving behind her worried parents and boarding a Greyhound Bus for the big city. Once she's there, if she's lucky, she might snag a job as a file clerk. If she's not so lucky, a waitress at a greasy spoon. If those don't work out, then what? If she's pretty enough, says Ed, she might become a topless waitress or a hooker. Not many girls dream of becoming prostitutes, but the pay and the hours aren't bad, Ed reminds us. The topless (and sometimes bottomless) joints, meanwhile, are a great place to make business contacts, especially for lesbians. 
Maybe a young woman will discover that being a model or actress is more her speed. Plenty of career opportunities there. "Magazine publishers are always in need of new faces and new figures and every new girl who is willing to take her clothes off has an automatic job," Ed says. Meanwhile, adult movies provide work for men and women. Interestingly, Eddie doesn't even mention theatrically-released feature films as a possibility here, even though he'd already been making them himself by the time he wrote this article. Instead, he only talks about silent 8mm and 16mm loops, made "for bars, coin operated machines and home distribution."
All that remains is for Ed Wood to bring this article home with some kind of stirring conclusion, the moral of the story if you will. Here's how he sums it all up:

But there is the market, and we might find that the girl doesn't have to pack up and head home simply because some office job was not open to her. And if she is smart, while she is making the photos and the films she will be taking a course with some business school . . . thus when her day as a model is over, she will have the studies needed to fall back on. And that goes for the guys as well. Where there's a will there's a way, as long as it is always remember that it's not so easy—this life!

Keep your chin up, little missy. Can't get that secretarial job you wanted? Don't worry. You can strip your way to success!
Next: "A Tax on Sex" (1975)

Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex: "Is it Really All That Important?" (1971)

Since Ed Wood wrote an article about it, I'm guessing the answer is yes.

NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex (BearManor Media, 2021).

The article: "Is it Really All That Important?" Originally published in Black and White (Pendulum Publishing), vol. 1, no.3, October/November 1971. 
The Green Pastures (1936)Excerpt: "The front end of the bus was going to the same location as the back. But he didn't see why he had to be the one who sat in the back all the time. And he couldn't see why there was one entrance to restaurants and markets, etc., for blacks and another for whites. After all that could mean perhaps one day there might be several other entrances, like one for the yellow race, or one for the Indian race, or the Mexicans, and if the space probes find there is life on Mars, there might even be entrances for the Martians. Far fetched? Ask any black man if that seems so far fetched."
Reflections: We are now entering a section of When the Topic is Sex that I have been looking forward to for quite some time—Ed Wood's opinions on various social and political issues. Because the topic doesn't always have to be sex, despite what it says on the cover of this book. Take the 1971 article "Is it Really All That Important?" as an example. This one is Ed's take on race relations in America.
Now you might be preparing to cringe. Ed Wood, after all, is the man who included incredibly offensive footage of blackface performer Cotton Watts in his film Jail Bait (1954). And Eddie's "Rocky Alley" novels, Watts... The Difference (1966) and Watts... After (1967) , have been criticized as racist as well, tastelessly capitalizing on the Watts uprising and playing on the paranoia of white readers. Eddie even defends segregationists in his book Drag Trade (1967)  and makes integrationists the villains. In fact, whenever civil rights workers show up in one of Eddie's books or articles, you can bet they'll be depicted as Northern agitators, perhaps even communists, who just want to stir up trouble. Black characters are rarely if ever featured in Eddie's movies.
However, "Is it Really All That Important?" is a more nuanced (by Ed Wood standards), sympathetic take on the struggle of African-Americans to be taken seriously and given equal economic opportunities. This is Eddie in no-research mode, and his approach to the topic is wide-ranging and scattershot. No books, articles, or specific historical events are cited. Ed mentions a few prominent black entertainers (Rex Ingram, Ethel Waters, Hattie McDaniel, Louis Armstrong, Stepin Fetchit, and Eddie "Rochester" Anderson) and names the one all-black production he can think of, The Green Pastures (1936). But names like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. are absent.
Eddie wrote this piece in 1971, the same year that Melvin Van Peebles' Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song ushered in a whole new era of black-centric films that would continue for the rest of the decade. It must not have been on Eddie's radar when he wrote this article. Nor does Eddie seem aware of the tradition of so-called "race films" made specifically for black audiences for decades, ending in the 1950s. Again, only The Green Pastures, a mainstream Warner Bros. production, crossed Eddie's transom.
Ed writes vaguely of blacks being treated as "second class citizens" by whites for decades and finally responding with violence. "Perhaps at times his move was much too violent," Ed writes. "But through the violence he was heard." So now that the black man has the white man's attention, what does the white man do about it? Try to sell the black man things, naturally! Whites marketed everything from soap to cigarettes to the newly-powerful black consumer. 
As I've made my way through When the Topic is Sex, I've learned that Ed Wood viewed nearly every issue, from racism to censorship, from an economic perspective. To Eddie, it's all about who profits from what. I guess, when you're a penniless writer struggling to pay his meager rent, money is on your mind all the time. This obsession with money leads to passages like this:

Big business has finally realized that with the millions of blacks there are many more millions of dollars in his pocket and they want to keep getting their slice of the black pie. 

"The black pie." Now that's a classic Wood-ism.
Apparently remembering that he was writing for an adult magazine, Eddie eventually steers "Is it Really That Important?" toward the topic of sex. In this article, he acknowledges the longstanding sexual stereotypes about black men:

The white man has always been frightened, because of sexual stupidity, that the black man was built sexually more powerful than he. Therefore his woman, the white woman, was always in danger of being invaded by the black man's sexual prowess. It has been a bug-a-boo for centuries and in many places still is. And for a time, while the black man was coming out of his rut, he was seen with many of the white girls who really wanted to see what it was all about. 

This topic must've fascinated Ed because he wrote about it at greater length in the book Black Myth (1971). He may've also written A Study of Black Sexual Habits and Techniques (1970). But Eddie says that younger black men are now being encouraged to marry black women and create "a civilization among themselves which everyone can be proud of." Even here, though, Eddie can't resist getting in one more comment about money:

Everything on the outside is costly. But he then looks to his woman and realize that sex in this way is still free. Or perhaps, the best things in life are free.

 Typically, when confronted with the phrase "free love," Ed Wood will concentrate on the "free" part.

Next: "Not So Easy—This Life" (1972)

Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex: "Sexual Terminology" (1971)

Time for another vocab lesson from Ed Wood.

NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex (BearManor Media, 2021).

The article: "Sexual Terminology." Originally published in Switch Hitters (Calga Publishing), vol. 2, no. 2, June/July 1971. No author credited.
Excerpt: "TRANSVESTISM: A form of sexual behavior in which the person derives pleasure by dressing in the clothes of the opposite sex. Not necessarily associated with homosexuality."
Ed Wood is the "Dr. Know" of smutty words.Reflections: It seems as though Ed Wood had a few mini-franchises going as a magazine writer. Yesterday, for instance, I covered "Odds and Ends and Oddities," which I think was the last of Ed Wood's numerous "oddity" articles. Today, I'm reviewing what I believe is the last of his "glossary" articles, consisting simply of definitions of sex-related terms. "Sexual Terminology" is not the last glossary Ed ever wrote or compiled, you understand, but it's the last of its type to be included in When the Topic is Sex.
And, just as "Odds and Ends and Oddities" was the most bare-bones of Ed's "oddity" stories, "Sexual Terminology" is the most basic and plain of Ed's glossaries. Unlike "Did You Ever Know...?" (1973) and "There Are Different Words" (1974), "Sexual Terminology" does not feature any kind of preamble or postscript from Ed. There is no editorializing or philosophizing here whatsoever. It's simply a list of terms and their meanings. Nuts-and-bolts stuff. A pessimist might say this was Ed at his least imaginative. An optimist might say this was Ed at his most disciplined.
At this point in When the Topic is Sex, most of the terms were already quite familiar to me. Many of these proudly polysyllabic words refer to sadomasochism, group sex, fetishism, cross-dressing, oral sex, homosexuality, lesbianism, and bisexuality. In other words, the basic building blocks of When the Topic is Sex. I said that "Sexual Terminology" contains no editorializing, but that's not entirely true. When Ed defines "transvestism," a term now frowned upon, he makes sure to point out that it is not interchangeable with homosexuality. Why was Ed so focused on mentioning this fact over and over throughout his career? What was he trying to prove and to whom was he trying to prove it? To us? To himself?
Given this article's extremely basic layout, visible in the header image above, and its one-page length, it seems likely that "Sexual Terminology" was strictly intended as filler. It carries no byline, not even a pseudonym. I can imagine publisher Bernie Bloom telling Ed, "We're one page short in this month's Switch Hitters, Eddie. What've you got for me?" And this was what he came up with. All in all, not a terrible way to fill up a page. Do you think it's possible that, for some readers, even a passionless list like this was sexually arousing? If anyone used "Sexual Terminology" as an autoerotic stimulant, that would give a new meaning to the phrase coming to terms.
Speaking of that layout, however, I could not help but be charmed by this article's retro-futuristic headline. It has that distinct look of 1970s sci-fi films like Rollerball (1975). I asked around on Twitter, and several users identified it as a font called Amelia BT. It seems to have been a favorite of the British Invasion bands. The Beatles used a version of it on the cover of their Yellow Submarine album in 1968, but The Kinks used it first on their album The Live Kinks (later renamed Live at Kelvin Hall) in 1967.
The Amelia BT font in action: The Live Kinks and Yellow Submarine.
Incidentally, I would like to thank Bob Blackburn for going above and beyond in assisting with my research for this article.
Next: "Is it Really All That Important?" (1971) 

Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex: "Odds and Ends and Oddities" (1972)

Ed Wood rummages through his junk drawer.

NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex (BearManor Media, 2021).

The article: "Odds and Ends and Oddities." Originally published in Swap (Pendulum Publications), vol. 6, no. 2, May/June 1972. No author credited.
Excerpt: "The potpourri of news items is an endless stream of words and information . . . however many such items never reach the larger or metropolitan newspapers. Perhaps they seem unimportant for space in those dailies; therefore, they are lost to many who might enjoy the knowledge. If these particular types of items are seen at all it is because they are accidentally stumbled over when one is reading some lesser known paper or periodical."
Reflections: As far as I know, "Odds and Ends and Oddities" is the last of Ed Wood's "oddity" articles to be included in When the Topic is Sex. While these stories are both educational and entertaining, I am not exactly sorry to see them go. Why? Well, to be frank, they include very little in the way of exclusive Ed Wood content. Ed rummaged through some tabloids, picked out a few stories he liked, and quoted them shamelessly while offering just a smidgen of commentary along the way. 
I have to wonder whether the publishers of these other tabloids objected to their material being recycled by Pendulum in such a brazen, bald-faced way. Did none of them send an angry cease-and-desist letter to Bernie Bloom? Maybe they never found out about it. Remember that Bernie's magazines were relatively pricy for their time. A Pendulum mag might cost you more than a Playboy. The tabs, on the other hand, were extremely cheap, representing the low-end of the adult publishing market. You'd think they would be the ones ripping off Pendulum, not the other way around.
"Odds and Ends and Oddities" might be the most bare-bones of all these articles. Apart from the intro and the conclusion, both brief, Eddie makes almost no intrusions into the text here. It's just quote after quote from Midnight and National Examiner. That excerpt above is the very first paragraph of the piece. I selected it because it has the spacy expansiveness that is typical of Ed Wood's writing. Eddie loved far-reaching words like "endless." I think this passage would sound great being read aloud by either Criswell or Bela Lugosi. (More about Cris in a moment.)
Did Jean Seberg love ugly men?And what did Ed Wood dredge up for our amusement this time? A quick rundown:An angry letter to the editor from a married photographer who wants us to know that shooting nude pictorials is strictly business. He doesn't get involved with his models, thank you.A psychologist tells us why women have sex outside of marriage. For unmarried women, it may be "an attempt to deal with a separation for which they are not emotionally prepared." For the married ones cheating on their husbands, this behavior may be a way of expressing their independence or even demonstrating "respect for an old friend." Don't any of these women have sex because they enjoy having sex? I only ask.A psychiatrist tells us that couples whose marriages are on the rocks can relieve some tension by screaming at each other and smashing items. I think this item must've caught Ed Wood's attention for obvious reasons.A doctor tells us he does not object to nudist camps but feels that children should only be indoctrinated into the nudist lifestyle at a very young age. By the time they are teenagers, they are likely to feel shame about their bodies, so making them go to nudist camps is traumatic.A British doctor speculates that the first test-tube baby could be born in 1972. For the record, such an event did not occur until July 1978, less than half a year before Ed Wood died.Glamorous film actress Jean Seberg, best known for Breathless (1960) and Saint Joan (1957), declares her love for "ugly men," claiming they are better lovers and generally more considerate than handsome men.A Los Angeles doctor predicts that, by 1990, couples will be matched by computer and enter into a marriage contract. Birth control will also be more sophisticated and will be strictly monitored and enforced by the state.A criminologist speculates that women may equal or even surpass men when it comes to committing crimes! What's notable about this portion of the article is that it quotes a real-life police officer, William C. Trussell, who confirms that women are breaking more laws these days. While I suspect many of the people mentioned in "Odds and Ends and Oddities" are imaginary, Trussell is very real. In 1983, he successfully defended himself against allegations of interfering in homicide investigations.Another British doctor says that young people who listen to rock music may be trying to recreate the feeling of being in the womb. Apparently, the driving beat is similar to that of a mother's heartbeat.The article concludes with a description of a 285-pound Vancouver man named Fred who is an unlikely lothario. This is one of the rare times in "Odds and Ends and Oddities" when Ed interjects with a joke: "What better way to close this article than with the heaviest story of all." Look, I didn't say it was a good joke.I mentioned Criswell earlier in this review, and I thought of that old Indiana hoodwinker several times while reading "Odds and Ends and Oddities." I've often wondered if Ed Wood collaborated with Cris on any of the latter's books or articles. It's my personal theory that Eddie may have ghostwritten for him on several occasions, though I have scant evidence of this. Either way, there are several items in this very article that would have appealed to Criswell. That part about women outpacing men in the field of crime, for instance, could have come directly from one of his books. That inaccurate prediction about test-tube babies? Ditto. Criswell would have also enjoyed the section about nudists, since nudism was a major motif in his predictions. (His own wife, Halo Meadows, was an avid sunbather.)
It was the section about futuristic "marriage contracts" that really stopped me in my tracks, however. Cris has a very similar item on his 1970 LP The Legendary Criswell Predicts Your Incredible Future. Come to think of it, he also talks about nudism quite a lot on that album. Maybe Ed Wood and Criswell just had very similar interests and tastes.
Next: "Sexual Terminology" (1971)

Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex: "More Oddities in the News" (1973)

Someday, love will find you. Break those chains that bind you.

NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex (BearManor Media, 2021).

The article: "More Oddities in the News." Originally published in Passion (Gallery Press), vol. 2, no. 2, March/April 1973. Credited to "Dick Trent."
Excerpt: "Most of us leaving work think about that drink waiting at home, the cocktail hour, or another great many of us stop at our local cocktail lounge to lift a couple. Few of us ever think that there are those people who are confined, because of their age, between the walls of an old people's home, and they too would like to indulge a bit. It's pleasant to think that some people are taking the trouble to look into such a situation."
The Canadian tabloid Confidential Flash.Reflections: Some of you sharper-eyed readers may have noticed a trend the Ed Wood articles I've been reviewing lately. First, there was "Sex Oddities and the Law," then "Sex Oddities and the Newspapers," and now "More Oddities in the News." Still to come is "Odds and Ends and Oddities." Eddie obviously went through an "oddities" phase in his magazine writing career. Basically, these articles are an excuse for Ed to cram in lots of brief, unrelated news items about sex, violence, crime, death, and booze into one article. Think of them as sampler platters of sleaze. 
By Ed's own count, "More Oddities in the News" was his third article of this type. He optimistically calls it a "series," though these pieces were scattered across various Calga, Gallery, and Pendulum titles between 1971 and 1973. As near as I can tell, "More Oddities" is the only one credited to "Dick Trent." The others have no byline whatsoever. Woe to the "oddities" fan who actually tried to follow this piecemeal franchise from beginning to end.
When I reviewed "Sex Oddities and the Newspapers" yesterday, I mentioned that Ed cited no sources whatsoever in it, leading me to believe he had fabricated the entire thing. Well, the pendulum swings the other way today. "More Oddities in the News" seems entirely sourced from other publications, particularly a tabloid called Confidential Flash. From what little information I can find , this seems to have been a Canadian ripoff of the famous American magazine, Confidential . Eddie also cites a tabloid called the Star Chronicle, presumably the National Star Chronicle published in New York.
But enough dull talk of continuity! Which items did Eddie dredge up for our amusement this time? Well, he starts off with an item about senior citizens in Toronto trying to get the Ontario Liquor License Board to allow the consumption of alcohol in the city's homes for the aged. Since Eddie was a prodigious alcoholic and may have imagined himself ending up in a squalid nursing home, this is a story that would have plucked his heartstrings. Ed then mentions a Confidential Flash article about an "absentminded" rapist who mistakenly assaults his own wife. This is another example of Ed Wood taking a disturbing story and trying to pass it off as light entertainment.
Ed then moves on to a pseudo-scientific article that claims women in miniskirts have fewer traffic accidents. I thought for sure he'd make a joke about how these women also cause men to have more traffic accidents, but Ed resisted that urge. (Or perhaps the idea didn't occur to him.) Up next is the sad tale of a West German man who built his own guillotine and decapitated himself because he couldn't keep up with his mortgage payments. After that is the story of a nude woman who escaped from her would-be kidnapper and flagged down a police car.
Eddie then devotes several paragraphs to a study by one Dr. Irving Miller suggesting that job-related stress may have a ruinous effect on a man's sex life. A stressed-out businessman may even have an extramarital affair, but this will only cause him added guilt and make him even less sexually potent. I cannot help but think of the character Ben in Ed Wood's The Young Marrieds (1972) and wonder if his problems aren't rooted in his job. This is another item that seems to have struck a raw nerve within Ed Wood. As Eddie writes:

Today more than ever before in history we find the guy hitting the end of his forties or the first of his fifties and dropping dead from some form of heart disease. The guy of today feels that he has to fight harder than anyone else because the competition is that much stronger. But there's a lot of competition for the graveyard also, and the road there is much easier attainable.

As a reminder, Ed would have been about 48 when he wrote "More Oddities in the News.'
There are yet more wonders to be found within "More Oddities in the News." From the Star Chronicle comes the incredible saga of Steven Zunic, a Yugoslavian man who went to rather outrageous lengths to shame and torture his unfaithful wife, only to end up with 40 days in jail and a divorce. That same publication also included an article about incest and inbreeding that Ed clearly found fascinating. In case you were curious, Ed Wood was officially against inbreeding due to the high levels of birth defects it causes.
"More Oddities in the News" ends with an outrageous story that may have some basis in truth, though Eddie provides no source for it. It concerns two young women, Lola and Shirlene (a good start already), who took a self-improvement course from a an organization called Leadership Dynamics Institute, Inc . of San Francisco. For their $4,000 enrollment fee, the women were mentally and physically abused in a variety of bizarre and kinky ways more in line with S&M roleplaying than business training. (I think the illustration for this article is supposed to depict either Lola or Shirlene.) According to Ed, these ladies were suing LDI for $250 million. What surprised me is that Leadership Dynamics was a real, short-lived organization that lasted only from 1967 to 1973 and was accused of just such practices as Ed describes. Sometimes, the real world is every bit as strange as an Ed Wood movie.
UPDATE: Reader Shawn Langrick provided me with a very enlightening passage about Flash Confidential from  a book  called For Enquiring Minds: A Cultural Study of Supermarket Tabloids (1992) by Elizabeth S. Bird. Note the references to both the National Examiner and National Exploiter, two of Ed Wood's other tabloid favorites:

"The now defunct Confidential Flash was a 'singularly humorless tabloid' published out of Toronto. Its specialty, in addition to the usual sex and violence, was extreme political views. One of its columnists offered this solution to the Vietnam conflict: "Rape the women and burn the men -- that's the way to bring these scum into line." Cliff Linedecker, former National Examiner associate editor, also remembers the National Exploiter, "which they used to print on pink paper. It was terrible. It really had some outrageous stories. I remember one: 'Cement Mason Finishes Wife' showing the body of the woman and a splash cover headline. We would never get away with that kind of thing now.'"

Bird's book lumps Flash Confidential in with the "tabloid also-rans." Barry Goubler further recommends Bill Sloan's I Watched a Wild Hog Eat My Baby: A Colorful History of Tabloids and Their Cultural Impact (2001) for its insights into the tabloid industry.
Next: "Odds and Ends and Oddities" (1972)

Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex: "Sex Oddities and the Newspapers" (1971)

Apparently, Ed Wood could find dirty material anywhere, even the newspapers.

NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex (BearManor Media, 2021).

The article: "Sex Oddities and the Newspapers." Originally published in Belly Button vol. 2, no. 1, January/February 1971. No author credited.
Excerpt: "The case never got to court, but it did make headlines in that particular town. The citizens read and savored every word of the copy. However the most interesting part about the entire story is the fact that they, the citizens, formed a group to look into the asinine laws governing sex acts which should have been struck from the books years ago."
A vintage steam cabinet.Reflections: To be honest, I don't know whether the article "Sex Oddities and the Newspapers" represents Ed Wood at his most or least creative. I'll be optimistic and say most. On the surface, this article is a sampler platter of various crazy and salacious stories that Ed supposedly found in the tabloids. Ed's been known to write that kind of thing. "Those Hidden Happenings" is an example. If "Sex Oddities" was written in the same manner as "Happenings," then the only original Wood content in the piece appears at the beginning and end of it. The rest is filched from other writers.
But when Eddie quotes from other articles, he tends to name the titles and the authors. He's an honest thief, in that sense. But he makes no such citations in "Sex Oddities and the Newspapers," so my supposition—more accurately, my hope—is that he just fabricated the contents of it from thin air, based on nothing at all except his imagination and the pressure of a looming deadline. One point in this article's favor is that I cannot corroborate even one of its wild tales. Had such events actually occurred or such people actually existed, surely there would be some record of them.
And there are some real lulus in "Sex Oddities and the Newspapers." Some of these anecdotes feature the kind of gruesome, macabre humor you might expect from an episode of Tales from the Crypt. A jealous Parisian man cooks his unfaithful lover alive in a steam cabinet. ("My God, she was roasted like a pig on a poke," Eddie writes, mixing his metaphors just a little.) Another unlucky fellow is crushed by peat moss in a warehouse after passing out from too much drinking and lovemaking. Two Memphis neighbors get into a shooting war because one refuses to stay quiet during the other's afternoon sex romps. Ed treats all of these stories with an attitude of wry detachment.
On the other hand, Ed Wood presents certain stories that are supposed to be amusing (I think that's how they're intended, anyhow) but are actually disturbing or sad. For instance, Eddie heartily congratulates three male welfare workers who force female recipients to have sex with them in exchange for their monthly relief checks. "They're really under gainful employment," he enthuses. Then there's the story of the pimp and the prostitute who get into a violent argument when the former expects the latter to have anal sex with an entire convention's worth of tile salesmen. Eventually, after mutually inflicting injuries on each other, the two reconcile. "A whore generally loves her pimp," Eddie explains.
At its best, "Sex Oddities and the Newspapers" reads like a miniature collection of Ed Wood's short stories. These are little bite-sized tales of sex and sadism. (Hey, Tales of Sex and Sadism might make a decent title for a fourth collection of Eddie's magazine work, should such a thing ever come out.) Maybe Ed did just steal all these stories from various tabloids. If so, I'd rather not know about it. Let me enjoy this one for what I imagine are its merits.
Next: "More Oddities in the News" (1973)

Podcast Tuesday: "Allison, I Know the Fonz is Dating You"

Henry Winkler and Linda Bove on Happy Days.
Stories about deaf characters just aren't that common in popular culture. Try to think of some. Well, there's the movie Children of a Lesser God from 1986. That was definitely about deaf people. A whole deaf school, in fact. And then, uh... wasn't there a biopic about Beethoven a while back? Not the dog, the composer. I think Gary Oldman was in it. Immortal something. Was he even deaf in that one? I wouldn't know, since I didn't see it. And now I'm out of ideas. I guess there are occasional deaf and hard-of-hearing characters on TV, like Mrs. Richards (Joan Sanderson), the old biddy on Fawlty Towers  who refused to use her hearing aid because it runs down the batteries. Not exactly a role model.
You'd think there would be more movies and TV shows about deaf characters since those are supposed to be visual media. But, in reality, most films and shows are really quite talky and dependent on dialogue. Especially sitcoms, which developed directly from radio programs. I wonder if deaf people appreciated silent movies and the work of wordless comedians like Keaton and Chaplin. Those were the golden days before Al Jolson opened his big mouth and ruined things forever.
I suppose I should be grateful for the 1980 Happy Days episode "Allison," which features Sesame Street regular Linda Bove as a deaf woman who briefly romances Fonzie (Henry Winkler). The problem is that, since stories about the deaf are so uncommon, when one does come along, it carries a tremendous responsibility to portray the deaf accurately, fully, and fairly. Can any one story be a "perfect" representation of deaf people or deaf culture? I don't think so. It's certainly an issue that Children of a Lesser God faced back in 1986, judging by some of the vintage reviews I read. The problem would disappear or at least recede a bit if there were more deaf characters in popular culture. There wouldn't be so much pressure on any one story to get all the details right.
This week on These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast , we talk about "Allison" and whether or not it's a good story or a good representation of deaf people. Join us!

Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex: "Sex Around the World" (1973)

Ed Wood is in a globetrotting mood today.

NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex (Bear Manor Media, 2021).

The article: "Sex Around the World." Also known simply as "Around the World." Originally published in Spice 'N' Nice (Pendulum Publishing), vol. 4, no. 1, February/March 1973. Credited to "Dick Trent."
Excerpt: "San Francisco, and especially the North Beach section, has long had a spectacular night life. However, the topless boom cut severely into straight entertainment. The fine clubs that lined Broadway and intersecting Columbus Avenue felt the bite no less severely than did the girl with the boa of the gay nineties. After all, visitors to the city can be forgiven if they passed up fine entertainment to spend their pennies on a topless fling."
A matchbook from the Blue Note.Reflections: I may have to revise what I said previously about prostitutes being far more common than strippers in the Ed Wood canon. In retrospect, I had not taken Ed's short-form nonfiction work into account when I said that. Prostitutes sill have the edge, but the gap is narrowing. Today's article, "Sex Around the World," is at least the third piece about stripping in When the Topic is Sex, and it's similar in tone and content to the others. (One of those, "To Produce a Lovely Creature," was also written for Spice 'N' Nice magazine.) Once again, Ed tells us about the kinds of girls who gravitate toward stripping and what they have to do to make it to the top in that profession.
Based on the title of this story, I had thought it might be about sexual morality or even popular sex practices and fetishes in foreign countries. But, no, it's just about young women taking off their clothes for money. Ho hum. The article isn't really even all that concerned with international strippers. As you can see from the excerpt above, Ed devotes a portion of this column to the topless dancers of San Francisco. The strip club circuits of New York, New Orleans, and Las Vegas are discussed as well. Ed's discussion of Vegas is at least sort of interesting. According to Eddie, a number of movie and television actresses got their start while dancing there, since Hollywood producers frequent the nudie joints looking for talent. Yeah, I'll bet.
To be fair, Ed does discuss the strip joints of a few other countries. For example, he singles out a venue in Amsterdam called the Blue Note, located "just off the Leidseplein," a busy square at the south end of the city famous for its theaters and bars.  There definitely was a nightclub called the Blue Note in Amsterdam in the 1960s, and there seems to be a concert venue by that name in the city today, but I cannot confirm that the Blue Note ever featured nude or topless dancers. Did Eddie even visit Amsterdam at any point in his life and see the "high quality" entertainment he praises in this article?
UPDATE: Reader Shawn Langrick informs me that the Blue Note in Amsterdam opened on Christmas Day 1957 as a high-class music venue but was featuring topless dancers by 1970 due to audience demand. "Looks like it lasted into the early 1980s," Shawn writes. Thanks, Shawn. This confirms my theory that Ed Wood must've heard about the Blue Note second-hand, since there was no way he could afford to travel to Amsterdam by 1970.
There's another portion of "Sex Around the World" devoted to the strip clubs in Mexico. Here, Eddie may actually be speaking from experience, since he is known to have traveled to the land south of the border. He even wanted to film The Day the Mummies Danced down there. In this story, he writes with a certain wistfulness about the Plaza de Garibaldi in Mexico City:

We then look to the small burlesque houses in the Plaza de garibaldi, perhaps not what might be classed the top of the heap for around the world strippers . . . but it should be mentioned so the young girls will know it's there if they receive an invitation to work there one day. They put on a bewildering variety of performances in clubs that are nothing if not intimate. That's one of the nice results of the small sale of things in that part of town. Between the peso-a-dance girls, the bar girls, and the strippers, there's a nice display of flesh for the weary traveling man. In days gone by, the street named The Sixteenth of September used to feature cubicles right on the sidewalk where a gent could stop in and pass the time with a lady.

Eddie also talks about Tijuana, the border city that also provided the setting for his 1969 short story, "The Unluckiest Man in the World."  His portrayal of Tijuana in that story was rather unflattering, but he's somewhat more complimentary to the city in this article. He says that a venue called the Torero has "a better than average floor show." and allows that "the quality of acts has been getting steadily better" at "flashy" places like the San Souci and the Panama Club.
Oddly, Ed Wood chooses to end this article with a lecture/warning for all the young women thinking of entering the stripping profession. He seems to want them to take stripping as seriously as he takes it and warns them against copying each other's acts. His little sermonette reads, in part:

The top jobs never come easy . . . and instead of attempting to copy somebody elses work ... look at it . . . study it . . . then throw the memory into the nearest ash can and come up with your own ideas. The business needs fresh ideas and routines just as much as it needs fresh talent. 

Preach, Brother Wood, preach!
P.S. Here is the artwork that originally accompanied this article in the February/March 1973 issue of Spice 'N' Nice. Enjoy! (You can see why I didn't know if this article was called "Sex Around the World" or just "Around the World.")
Fresh from the pages of Spice 'N' Nice.
Next: "Sex Oddities and the Newspapers" (1971)

Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex: "Japan—Sex and Today" (1972)

Ed Wood ventures once more to the ancient land of Japan.

NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex (BearManor Media, 2021).

The article: "Japan—Sex and Today." Originally published in Flesh & Fantasy (Pendulum Publishing), vol. 5, no. 1, March/April 1972.
Excerpt: "In reality, for a great many years, Japan has had certain claims to being the SMUT CAPITAL OF THE WORLD and the government didn't like that label, therefore they put up a sort of sea wall about eight years ago just before the 1964 Olympics in order to establish favorable images abroad about the sexual morals to be encountered there. But from that date on the authorities, even with a heavy campaign, have been running headlong into the sexual revolution ever since."
 Japanse politician Hideji Kawasaki.Reflections: Generally, the things that obsessed Ed Wood—such as old cemeteries, rotgut whiskey, and angora sweaters—found their way into both his movies and his writing. In that way, his career has a lot of what Frank Zappa used to call "conceptual continuity." But there are some themes, certain persistent motifs, that really only emerge from Eddie's print work and not his films. The country of Japan is one of these motifs. Quite simply, Ed Wood was fixated on the sexual practices of the Japanese people in a way that you'd hardly guess from just his movies. His 1972 article "Japan—Sex and Today" is but one example of that.
I first learned about Ed Wood's stubborn Japanophilia when I reviewed his bizarre 1967 book Drag Trade . At first, that quasi-novel is devoted to the case histories of American men for whom transvestism led to a life of crime. But then, about midway through Drag Trade, Eddie suddenly shifts the book's focus and starts writing about the cross-dressing "sister boys" of Japan. When I dove deep into Ed's other fiction and nonfiction books, I encountered similar Japan-centric material throughout his vast and bewildering bibliography—never a whole book, mind you, just a random chapter here and there. Eddie seemed particularly fixated on the idea of Japanese female impersonators becoming highly-trained political assassins and spies.
"Japan—Sex and Today" is a more general survey of Japanese sexuality. There is no surgical precision to this article. Rather, it's a shotgun blast of information, spraying out in all directions. It looks like Eddie actually did some research for this one, since he uses specific names and even quotes from a December 5, 1971 article in The Los Angeles Times. Thematically, however, Ed Wood is all over the place. Here are just some of the many, many ideas contained within this approximately 1,900-word article:The Japanese people are less inhibited about nudity because they live in such close proximity.Japan's young people are challenging the strict sexual morals of their elders.Japan produces more pornography than any other place in the world, but some politicians may be uncomfortable with this.America has had a corrupting influence on Japan, especially when it comes to the production of pornographic films.In Japan, X-rated films are called "pink movies" rather than "blue movies."The Japanese people are obsessed with sex, partially because fertility is such a key component of the country's native religion, Shintoism.The Japanese people have two sets of morals: one for "the streets" and another for home.A Japanse politician named Hideji Kawasaki tried to start a nudist colony, but his efforts were stopped by the police. Some found this reminiscent of Nazi repression.People in Japan still read very explicit magazines and comic books in public, even though there have been attempts by the government to crack down on these.The Japanese have long had a liberal attitude toward sex, but the sexual revolution has somehow made them more inhibited. Even mixed public baths are becoming less common.
I honestly don't know what to make of all that. (And, believe me, there's more. That list above is just a sample.) Is Japan a country of libertines or prudes? Are they highly moral or highly immoral? Are they leading the world in pornography or are they being led by the rest of the world? Are we corrupting them or are they corrupting us? Most importantly, are things becoming stricter or less strict in Japan nowadays? It seems like Ed Wood will make a point in this article and then contradict that point in the very next paragraph, until you realize by the end that he hasn't really said anything.
As baffling as this article is, I still loved reading it because it's a treasure trove of quintessentially Wood-ian prose. When Ed Wood was in the zone, he had a way of stringing together words and phrases that was strictly his own. A prime example occurs in this article when Eddie discusses the differences between the generations and their attitudes toward sex:

After all, sex has been an intricate part of the entire history of Japan, and the broad-mindedness dates back into antiquity. But the elders are now wondering just how far the broad-mindedness should stretch. The young have really put themselves out on a sexual limb and some of the elders wonder if they might not be cutting the limb off behind them. But the young are quite sure they are in the right, the same as the young all over the world who have decided to take the sexual world by the tail and give it a few twirls and see what happens. The problem would seem that when they take sex by its sexy tail they are not quite sure, in their youth, just when to let go. The feeling is, if they hang on with all their might they might learn all the secrets of the ages which have previously been denied them.

That passage is alternately poetic, philosophical, and preposterous. I especially savor phrases like "put themselves out on a sexual limb" and "take the sexual world by the tail." Those tortured and torturous metaphors are especially indicative of Ed Wood's writing style.
Next: "Sex Around the World" (1973)