1Much has been written about the failure of exploitation filmmaker Edward D. Wood Jr. since 1980, when—just two years following his death—he received the “Golden Turkey” lifetime achievement award for being “the worst director of all time” (Medved 180-181). Being the best at being “the worst,” an auteur of a cinema ‘so bad it’s good,’ has become part of Wood’s legacy, arguably even more so after Tim Burton’s biopic Ed Wood (1993), which introduced Wood to mainstream audiences and, additionally, fuelled the narrative of the failed and peculiar filmmaker.
- 1 By his own account, Wood authored around 130 published novels and over 1000 short stories (Ray 30).
2However, in addition to being a reputedly failed filmmaker, Wood was also a screenwriter, an occasional actor, and authored a plethora of pulp novels and short stories, many with a focus on “cross-dressing” (Gardner and Maclay 20) and homosexuality–themes also addressed in his films.1 His debut film, Glen or Glenda (1953), has progressively been added to queer and trans canons (Benshoff 159, Benshoff and Griffin 14, Horak 13, Gardner and Maclay 17-29), despite its blunt homophobia. Later works following his comeback in 1970 also contain representations of queer characters worthy of attention, and the homosexuality he rejected in his initial feature was gradually embraced. Most discourse concerning Wood nonetheless refers to him as “eccentric and individualistic” (Morton 158), “opportunistic and incompetent” (Mathijs and Sexton 208), a “laughably untalented pervert” (Sconce, Sleaze Artists 288), or, more harshly put, a “freak of nature, a literary clown, an alcoholic buffoon of fringe Hollywood” (Craig 1).
3Failure acts as a lure which draws spectators’ attention to the phenomenon of Wood, and the best/worst dichotomy gives rise to a tension furthered by conflicts of gender and sexuality. In Wood’s case blurred borders between good/bad, success/failure, male/female, and straight/queer create fascinating and enabling ambiguities. This paper addresses these ambiguities by adopting an expanded approach to Wood’s work, suggesting that we should view him not as a failure but as a mediator of queer representations.
4Outwardly, Ed Wood embodied the classic Hollywood philanderer, with good looks, an Errol Flynn pencil moustache, and a reputation for “chasing broads” (Grey 26). However, there was another side to Wood: a queer side which saw him identify as a transgender person who, “the minute he got home—chapow,” would embrace his feminine side, personified through his female alter ego, Shirlee (Grey 33). Materials recently located by queer historian Elizabeth Purchell2 reveal that Wood submitted photographs of himself as ‘Shirlee’ to 1961 periodical Letters from Female Impersonators. The pages also included a biographical letter in which Wood talks of his career as a filmmaker, how he went “all the way” (Shirlee 10) as a cross-dresser following World War II, and the many articles and stories “about my subject of transvestism” (16).
5In this paper, I use the word queer as an all-encompassing umbrella term rooted in 1990s activism, when Queer Nation and scholars such as Teresa De Lauretis reclaimed and reappropriated it. It is used to describe a vast array of sexualities that exist outside of hegemonic and monogamous heterosexual structures (Benshoff & Griffin 6). The approach taken furthermore promotes queer readings influenced by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (1985) and Alexander Doty (1993). Such readings challenge heteronormativity and reveal subversive queer connotations (Björklund 8). They are not alternative readings or misreadings of text, but rather a recognition of the complexities of queerness that have saturated “popular culture texts and their audiences all along” (Doty 16). While Wood himself would not have used terms such as queer and transgender (at least in relation to his early work), there is nonetheless a queerness in many of his works and he was making films that relate to “the idea of queer” long before it was developed (Benshoff and Griffin 111); it is furthermore suggested that Wood “was uncommonly aware of the spectrum of LGBTQ+ identities for a person of his time,” which adds to the growing understanding of the queer representations within his work (Sloan 32). This terminology is thus relevant when reassessing representations created and demonstrated by Ed Wood. I also use queer theory’s “evil twin” (Stryker, GLQ 212), the term transgender, to refer to people whose identity differs from their birth sex, those who are non-binary, gender queer, or/and have their own gender expression, which is the case of Wood himself, as demonstrated in Letters from Female Impersonators, but also of many of the characters in his work within the fields of exploitation, sexploitation, and, at the end of his career, pornography.
6In his study of the “classical exploitation film,” Eric Schaefer explains that such films were produced by independent firms and likewise distributed independently. As they were made at low cost, their aesthetics were also low, and poor compared to Hollywood films. Exploitation films engaged with forbidden topics that mainstream cinema could not address, such as hygiene, sexuality, drugs, and crime (Schaefer 5). Selling sensation exploitation films, among other things, served as a means to enable and share representation and narratives of the Other, namely individuals who chose alternative lifestyles to those of the hegemonic heteronormative American society (Schaefer 39). Today, depictions such as those showing homosexuality, lesbianism, transgender identity, and Wood’s cross-dressing, would be regarded as queer images. This is why I suggest that Wood’s significance lies primarily in what he was saying, not how he was presenting it. Low aesthetics and technical inferiority are a consequence of working in exploitation cinema and not entirely fair evidence to judge Wood’s work by. Furthermore, Benshoff and Griffin suggest that exploitation films could be regarded as queer through the way they “distort and generally sexualise Hollywood narrative formulas” (110), and working outside of mainstream cinema may have been what made it possible for Wood to implement queerness in his films.
- 3 Research on Wood should arguably also refer to the extensive research into his body of work that is (...)
7In a recent study, Becky Bartlett notes that research on Wood stalls when it limits itself to exploring one short period of his filmography, a brief moment of his early career (654), and thereby avoids the sexploitation and pornographic films. As Bartlett points out, these “less comfortable, less coherent aspects” (664) are resources that contribute to further understanding Wood’s films and what he wanted to mediate.3 Because much research passes over the “period that many casual fans chose to ignore” (Sloan 87), Glen or Glenda is presented as the only film where Wood engaged with sexuality, gender, and queerness, which is far from the truth. Representations of queer embodiments, experiences, and sensibilities are to be found throughout his work, and I propose these to be a powerful feature of Ed Wood’s work.
- 4 Jorgensen is an important landmark in transgender history. Her celebrity became a moment “that woul (...)
8Second to Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959), deemed the “worst film of all time” (Medved 204-208), his most recognised work is his debut feature, Glen or Glenda. The piece was inspired by the media sensation following former American G.I. Christine Jorgensen’s gender transition in a Danish hospital and her return to the US on 1 December 1952.4 Exploitation producer George Weiss set out to profit from this story with a film that was intended to tell Jorgensen’s tale. Jorgensen declined to participate, but this event nevertheless gave twenty-nine-year-old Edward D. Wood Jr. the chance to direct his first feature, Glen or Glenda.
- 5 The prefatory to Glen or Glenda suggests that several queer roles were held by queer performers: “I (...)
9Glen or Glenda uses a faux documentary framing, a common approach taken by exploitation films of the period to portray their topic in a scientific, yet sensational and commercially enticing manner. Enabled by the opportunities of exploitation cinema, Wood has advocacy for queerness and represents this by sharing his own experiences as a cross-dresser (Fig. 1) and those of the other transgender performers in the film.5 There is not much known of these performers, although it is suggested that “Tommy” Hayes was transsexual, and therefore hiding behind the de-identifying pseudonym (Gardner and Maclay 19). However, it is not the educational or self-representative ambition of Wood that explains why the film was made. Nor is it any potential goodwill on the part of producer George Weiss. It was the commercial profit he anticipated that he would make by exploiting the voyeuristic expectations of the film audience still fascinated by the sensation of Jorgenson’s transitional journey.
Fig. 1 Ed Wood as Glenda. Still from Glen or Glenda (1953)
Public Domain
10Most approaches to Glen or Glenda engage with the main narrative of Glen (Ed Wood), a man who is struggling to keep the secret of his transgender female persona, Glenda (also Wood), from his fiancée Barbara (Dolores Fuller). This is the main representation of queerness depicted within the film, which concludes with Glen’s ultimate decision to abandon his female persona, Glenda, for the heteronormative marriage that will ‘save’ him. However, there are other cases of representation contained in Glen or Glenda that are equally important in terms of its function as a larger representative body of work. One such case is Patrick/Patricia (Walther Hadjwiecy), who, as the film opens, has already ended their life following a third-time arrest for wearing female clothing in public. This becomes the instigating subplot that leads Inspector Warren (Lyle Talbot) to seek an understanding of the conditions and the cross-dressing that led to the tragic outcome. It is also an important moment that reflects American gender politics at the time of Glen or Glenda, when, in most places, it was illegal for a man to dress as a woman (Redburn 681). Hence, the film adopts a clear sociopolitical position as it suggests that Patrick/Patricia would rather die as a woman than live as a man. Glen or Glenda concludes with the tale of Alan/Anne (“Tommy” Hayes), a former G.I. who, following the war, undergoes the operation that changes his sex. Following a montage of surgery stock footage and a narrated medical discourse, Alan becomes Anne and lives a fulfilled life as a woman.
11Throughout the film, several passages of dialogue and actions advocate for further representation of queer experiences. One example shows a person in a dress sitting in an armchair reading a newspaper that covers their face. The narrator explains how transgender people often are ridiculed, while the person lowers the newspaper only to reveal themselves to be a bearded man wearing a dress. The narrator confronts the spectator by suggesting that they/we are “doing it now, laughing” at the transgender person depicted. (Glen or Glenda, 00:18:26-00:18:28). The reprimand is possibly intended to shed light on the spectator’s ignorance as they are presumed to be laughing at the transgender person, most likely a situation Wood may have experienced himself. Another moment sees Glen’s friend Johnny share a story about unintentionally being caught and outed by his wife, rekindling the main issue, that of keeping queerness a secret. Later, sturdy workers reveal they are wearing women’s satin underpants, and we see a milkman, who, in the secrecy of his own home, experiences comfort in crossdressing. A further example, set to images of industrial stock footage, includes a dialogue between two off-screen characters, blue-collar workers Joe and Jack, as they discuss gender affirmation surgery. Jack mentions he would prefer that society accepted men wearing women’s clothing rather than rejecting them. They subsequently say their goodbyes, Joe first, then Jack. However, Jack’s voice is now female as it replies, “Yeah, so long Joe…until tomorrow,” (00:30:10-00:30:16). By suggesting that Jack is a cross-dresser, a transperson, or is simply embracing a female persona, the film presents a moment of gender fluidity through the simple exchange of dialogue.
12Glen or Glenda contains a number of queer representations, mainly cross-dressing and transgender identity, many of which are depicted sympathetically. Yet a recurrent problem in Wood’s work is that characters often return to heteronormativity following their queer adventure. Glen/Glenda make an excursion to queer spaces where gender is blurred, and hetero/cisnormativity is challenged through transgender expressions and experiences, but Glen abandons his cross-dressing persona, Glenda, for heteronormativity as the Glen/Glenda section ends. Wood may have conformed with societal expectations on this occasion; however, the film does end with the representation of transgender identity through Alan/Anne. More troubling in Wood’s advocacy for cross-dressing, though, is that he promotes this at the cost of being homophobic (Barefoot 42):
But Glen and Glenda, and all the Glens and Glendas have an even bigger problem. The homosexual, it is true, at times does adopt the clothing or the make-up of a woman to lure members of his own sex. But this is not so for the transvestite. The transvestite is not interested in those of their own sex. The clothing is not worn to attract the attention of their own sex, but to eliminate themselves from being a member of that sex. (Glen or Glenda, 00:27:55-00:28:45)
13While depicting “a broad coalition of queer people,” it is the homosexual who becomes the “ultimate Other to be excluded” (Benshoff 161), making Glen or Glenda a multifaceted film in terms of queer representation. It appears a deliberate decision to single out homosexuality, which at the time was considered to be bad, dangerous, far beyond the normal, and linked to sex crimes and juvenile delinquency (Benshoff and Griffin 87). Furthermore, society failed to recognise a difference between homosexuality and cross-dressing, which in many states and cities were illegal behaviour (Redburn 687). But where homosexuality was regarded as an existential threat to American society, cross-dressing was a misdemeanour. Therefore, it seems plausible that Wood, in his attempt to normalise cross-dressing, points to a larger threat as leverage to regularise his conduct. Craig suggests that it would be “surprising to find out that Wood did not have any dealings with the gay community” (260) because of his cross-dressing, and Sloan points to Wood’s work being progressive, although in a complicated way (12). Considering that Wood eventually came to embrace and represent homosexuality, I posit that the film bears witness to Wood’s internalised homophobia, as he struggles with his own gender and sexuality at the time. Internalised homophobia occurs when homosexual individuals internalise negative social attitudes towards gay people. In severe cases, this can be expressed by a “rejection of one’s own sexual orientation” (Frost and Meyer 97), which provides a possible explanation for the homophobia of Glen or Glenda.
- 6 More recently, two compendiums of Wood’s short stories have been collected and published as the ant (...)
14As he failed to find conventional success through critical attention and box-office profits, Wood’s career subsided, and he left filmmaking following The Sinister Urge (1960). At this point, Ed Wood had directed six features, none of which had received any critical acclaim. To supplement a measly income, Wood subsequently wrote pulp fiction in a broad range of genres, ranging from spy stories, westerns, horror and thrillers to soft-core erotica, hard-core pornography, and even sex manuals. Besides the novels, he also wrote short stories that were published in a diverse range of magazines, his identity often obscured by pseudonyms like Shirlee Lane, Dick Trent, and Ann Gora. While there may have been limits to what facets of queer representation Wood could present in moving images, and how he could portray them, he was freer to explore such themes, narratives, and experiences in the pages of his written texts. Many of these use cross-dressing, transgender identity, and homosexuality as a decisive narrative, and act as valuable materials when investigating representations of gender fluidity and queer experiences in Wood’s work. Studying queerness in pulp paperbacks of the mid-twentieth-century, Susan Stryker observes that 1940s and 1950s paperbacks, much like exploitation films, acted as a “venue of choice for exploring and exploiting certain taboo topics disallowed in movies and radio and the pages of reputable hardcover books” (Queer Pulp 8). Rebellious sexuality was a profitable commodity for the mid-century paperbacks (Queer Pulp 8), and this is of importance when approaching cross-dressing and transgender identity in Ed Wood’s queer texts. Among Wood’s many novels, there are titles such as Killer in Drag (1963), which tells the tale of hitman Glen Marker, who goes about his assassinations in drag as Glenda Satin, or Death of a Transvestite (1967), a sequel recounting the further exploits of cross-dressing assassin Glen/Glenda. There are gay narratives in Young, Black and Gay (1968) where Wood writes about a young African-American male prostitute, and in To Make a Homo (1971), a young student is blackmailed into a gay relationship by an older student who gets him addicted to drugs, and keeps him as a sex slave.6 In his written work, there appears to be no conflict in embracing the homosexual themes he was conflicted by in Glen or Glenda.
- 7 Mrs Stone’s Thing also features a drag queen, a postcoital pillow talk between two men, and a moust (...)
15Wood also started writing scripts for other directors during the 1960s, and occasionally he appeared in these films dressed as a woman. In Love Feast (Joseph F. Robertson, 1969) he portrays a seedy photographer who after objectifying his female models has the tables turned on him and is punished by being made to wear female clothing; and in Mrs. Stone’s Thing (Joseph F. Robertson, 1970) a soft-core sexploitation, he dresses in one of the female guests’ clothes during a swingers’ party, and is also billed as, “transvestite—(Mr.) Ed Woods.”7 Wood co-wrote a series of scripts for Stephen C. Apostolof, including Drop Out Wife (1972), which deals with a young couple’s troubled marriage, the swingers’ parties they attend, and the wife’s realisation that she prefers women. The film challenges heteronormative structures but also introduces an important trope of Wood’s: the young couple with problems in their marital bed. In Snow Bunnies (Stephen C. Apostolof, 1972), a group of liberated female friends use their gender to conquer men on a ski trip, but after one of them is assaulted, she realises that she prefers girls. Fugitive Girls (Stephen C. Apostolof, 1974), is a soft-core sexploitation woman in prison film, containing pro-lesbian narratives, as one inmate reveals: “I killed somebody once. It was a guy. It was my husband. He turned into a pimp… for me. His mistake, though, was he turned me onto chicks. And I dug it.” (00:33:05-00:33:32). Lesbianism is a common trope in sexploitation, but in the hands of Ed Wood as mediator of queer images, the lesbians also represent an image of liberated female sexuality. They depict a queerness where female characters resist the “compulsory heterosexuality” ascribed to them at birth, thus making them political statements on sexual minorities (Konik and Stewart 2004). Finally, Beach Bunnies (Stephen C. Apostolof, 1976), focuses on a journalist investigating whether Rock Sanders has had a sex change operation or not, in a way returning to the gender themes of Glen or Glenda. There are often queer elements in Wood’s stories at that time, be it lesbianism, cross-dressing, or transgender people, as the examples above demonstrate. If it might appear as conflicted and somewhat held back in the scripts for other filmmakers, the existence of queerness becomes even more apparent in his own work following his return to filmmaking. Queerness in the scripts Ed Wood wrote for other filmmakers did gradually decrease. It is possible that the directors identified the queer experiences he was hiding in the heteronormative conventions of sexploitation and therefore also prohibited this.
16Following the Stonewall Riots of 1969 and the rise of trans and gay rights activism, Wood returned to filmmaking, after a ten-year absence, with the feature Take it Out in Trade (1970). This is a comedic sexploitation film including female nudity and soft-core sex, although it is laced with queer representation folded into the otherwise heteronormative narrative. The film’s plot portrays Mac McGregor (Michael Donovan O’Donnell), a sleazy detective tasked with finding young Shirley (Donna Stanley), who has run away from her controlling suburban parents to explore her sexual freedom in the city. (The character gets her name from Wood’s alter-ego Shirlee. He would often write a Shirley/Shirlee into his stories and movies at this time.) Hiding out at a house of ill repute, Shirley lives out her fantasies while McGregor goes about his investigation. Many of the scenes are simple set pieces for McGregor to act out voyeuristic soft-core scenarios while he cracks cheesy jokes, or for unclothed young ladies to skip up and down the plush staircase at Madame Penny’s brothel.
Fig. 2 Ed Wood as Alecia. Still from Take it Out in Trade (1970)
Courtesy of American Genre Film Archive
17The film also sees Wood return as a transgender character, Alecia. (Fig. 2) Alecia remains Alecia throughout the film. Not even McGregor can suppress her. He tries, by forcefully de-wigging her, and although Alicia is offended, she is not devastated as cross-dressing characters in films commonly are when de-wigged. Instead, she takes revenge by hindering McGregor’s investigation, warning the next characters he plans to question. She comments, “Mark my word, I’ll get even with him. He doesn’t fool Alicia” (00:32:09-00:32:17). With or without a wig, Alicia is Alicia, and Wood does not conform to societal expectations.
18Two gender fluid characters, Henry and Paul, feature in Take it Out in Trade. Little is known of the duo; however, they are introduced as two young men, as signified through their masculine names. As their scenes unfold, it becomes apparent that Paul is not a man, but rather a woman performing as a man, and that Henry is a man performing as both man and woman, as noted during a later dinner sequence where Henry wears make-up and a wedding dress. The sexist and chauvinistic detective is oblivious to the gender fluidity, seeing only two men in front of him. The film is free of repressive mainstream gender tropes, as queer characters do not need to change their ways, they are not punished for being queer, nor do they need to be explained. Wood’s depiction of gender fluidity in Take it Out in Trade shows characters simply living queer lives as part of a larger community. The message appears to be that it is OK to be queer; the Other can be happy, and Henry and Paul share an emotional kiss in front of the camera, unconcerned by gender or sexuality. (Fig. 3)
19Wood has a second cross-dressing moment as McGregor spies on a long-haired woman from behind. Wearing only panties and slipping into a negligee, she turns to the camera, to face McGregor’s and the spectators’ gaze, revealing that she is Wood. (00:36:31-00:37:06). He makes a face that may be intended to induce laughter or to suggest that all is not what it seems. Sloan suggests that Wood took pleasure in the idea of a cross-dressing cisgender man being mistaken for a woman, which the moment seems to demonstrate as Wood plays with illusions of gender (32). In Take it Out in Trade Wood seems, through soft-core sexploitation, to celebrate a glimmer of hope, freedom and acceptance for queer communities following Stonewall.
Fig. 3 Henry and Paul. Still from Take it Out in Trade (1970)
Courtesy of American Genre Film Archive
20As mentioned, a recurrent theme for Wood’s later films is the heteronormative couple in distress over their failing sex life. The theme itself acts as a critique of heteronormativity, which is investigated through a variety of intimate interactions, such as swinging, lesbianism, and sexual exploration. There are moments of doubt and fear to be faced by the young couple who need to free themselves from heterosexual paradigms and explore their queerness first, before realising that they were made for each other after all.
21This is the case in ‘Necromania’: A Tale of Weird Love! (Wood 1971) where Danny (Ric Lutze) is failing to pleasure his girlfriend Shirley (Rene Bond) sexually. Rather than the swingers’ parties of other films, this all takes place at a mysterious love camp renowned for Necromancer Madame Heles’ unusual therapeutic and intimate methods. One scene sees Danny watching a group of lesbians intimately engaged. The spectator sees them as kaleidoscopic images, and Danny is told that, “They are lost forever. They can never return to a world that will reject them. They are happy here.” (00:41:57-00:42:12). The comment refers to the lesbians residing in the in-between reality of the Madame Heles’ retreat, but it is also a comment on queer communities and experiences of exclusion. Sloan refers to Necromania as “Wood’s clearest expression of a yearning for an alternate realm where the rules don’t apply…” (95), and this alternative realm may be one where same-sex relations and marriage were accepted by society, but in the meantime, there is sanctuary at Madame Heles’, within their own community. ‘Necromania’: A Tale of Weird Love culminates with Danny saving his heteronormative marriage by being intimate with Madame Heles’ in the coffin she resides in. Danny learns how to “make a woman happy in her sex life” (00:06:00-00:06:05), and, to an extent, there is a queerness to Danny not being able to satisfy Shirley sexually, rendering him emasculated, unlike the dominating masculinity one would expect in soft-core narratives. Characteristically for Wood, a queer discourse has been presented and partially sustained within the narrative, and as the story concludes, the characters have returned to heteronormative positions.
- 8 The Young Marrieds would be Wood’s final feature film. Following this, he directed short pornograph (...)
22This leads me to the final Wood film, the pornographic feature The Young Marrieds (Wood as Richard Trent, 1972),8 which sees Wood return to his persistent theme of troublesome heteronormative marriage without sexual fulfilment once again. Ben (Dick Burns) suffers from sexual insatiability, and he finds his wife, Ginnie (Alice Friedland), unwilling to loosen up in their bedroom. They tumble into a sexual exploration of threesomes, swingers’ parties, and lesbian encounters in their pursuit of carnal satisfaction. The film is a conventional low-budget adult film of the time with graphic intimacy and sexual experimentation that leads to the orgiastic culmination, a scene which can be read as a climax to all of Ed Wood’s queer ventures. At an orgy with three other couples, Ginnie ends up being intimate with a woman on the floor whilst the others, all nude in a postcoital glow, sit around watching them. Ben objects, shouting out, “Hey, wait a minute, that’s my wife!” (00:59:14-00:59:15). But at that moment, Ben also receives a proposition from Greg to partake in a homosexual encounter. One of the men sitting opposite Ben points out that, “Turnabout is fair play. We’ve got a rule around here. After all, Ginnie started on Betty, so Greg’s got a claim on you!” (00:59:26-00:59:34). Ben, not knowing how to react, looks at the man and then at Greg, who asks, “What’s the matter, Ben? Haven’t you ever sucked cock before?” (00:59:34-00:59:37), as he moves over to sit down next to Ben.
Fig. 4 Still from The Young Marrieds (1972)
Courtesy of Alpha Blue Archives
- 9 Wood was his own editor on Take it Out in Trade and Necromania, it is plausible that he also edited (...)
23Following this, the edit shows a succession of three still images depicting male homosexual intimacy (Fig. 4) before cutting back to the orgy participants.9 The narrator relates:
Ben is startled at seeing his wife in the embrace of a lesbian act. His protests lead him into another stratos of sex play. The very head of trouble that Ben feared lifts itself through the gay veil and confronts Ben squarely with its presence. There is no time for Ben to go into his dream fantasy for comfort and guidance. He has to make a decision. (The Young Marrieds, 00:59:59-01:00:25)
- 10 At the time of writing, I have not been able to confirm whether these images of The Young Marrieds (...)
24Despite the narration suggesting homosexuality as a fear of Ben’s, we have already seen the three still images that nonetheless confirm that he has agreed to the homosexual intimacy.10 This is then further supported by an image of Ben and Greg kissing as the film ends. (Fig. 5) The climactic rendition becomes an essential moment of Ed Wood’s queer representation. A decision has certainly been made, one that finally sees Wood elude the heteronormativity he often returned to. The gay veil that confronts Ben has arguably been the same gay veil that has confronted Wood throughout the discourse of his cinematic output. Decisively, in his final feature, he embraces the previously rejected male homosexuality that he was conflicted by in Glen or Glenda. There is no return to heteronormativity, and now he represents a space where transgender and gender fluid characters exist alongside lesbians and homosexuals.
Fig. 5 Greg and Ben. Still from The Young Marrieds (1972)
Courtesy of Alpha Blue Archives.
25A final note on the queerness of Wood relates to The Autograph, a short story written towards the end of his life. The plot presents Tex, an aged movie veteran who has come out as queer, and the young reporter Harry who is assigned to interview his idol. When asked about his decision to come out of the closet, the veteran replies that he did it to empower other homosexuals and suggests that “it will give them a lot of strength knowing that one of their kind made it big.” (159). More importantly, the veteran ends his speech by claiming that it is his responsibility to “stand up and be counted as a homosexual” (162). The short story concludes with the two men being intimate, and the ‘autograph’ turns out to be a metaphor for oral sex. It appears that Wood, through the story, is suggesting an allegiance; he is standing up as a homosexual, and in a curious way, fantasising about having made it big as a queer role model in the guise of Tex, the aged movie veteran. Four years later, in 1978, Wood, struggling with depression and alcoholism, died of a heart attack. The Autograph resonates with the queer narratives continuously expressed throughout his work in both film and prose, and it seems undeniable that Ed Wood finally did stand up to be counted as queer in the final stages of his career.
26When Jeffery Sconce suggests, in Defining Cult Movies, that exploitation films “seek (and fail) to replicate the dominant codes of Hollywood realism” (21), he restricts such films, and also Ed Wood, to being failures from the perspective of a morally heteronormative Hollywood verisimilitude. This raises the question of whether Wood was trying to make movies that adhered to the realism and dominant codes of Hollywood. What if he was using exploitation cinema as a space to represent the sexualities that concerned him, anachronistically, decades ahead of the time when the concept of queer was developed, or conceived of as a style of cinema? Judith Halberstam embraces failure as something that “allows us to escape the punishing norms” (3); such norms could, for example, include the standards of mainstream cinema at the time of Wood, which restricted what could be depicted in films. By queering failure, Halberstam deconstructs the “logics of success and failure,” thereby embracing failure for the possibilities it presents (2).
27By thwarting the logic of success and failure, and by accepting that exploitation may have been unsuccessful at imitating, or duplicating Hollywood, exploitation films, like Wood’s become a “queer alternative to Hollywood.” This was made possible when queer artists turned to these alternative cinemas with ambitions to make the type of film that they wanted to make rather than those of the dominant Hollywood models (Benshoff and Griffin 108-109).
28From this perspective, Wood’s failure becomes a crucial element of his enduring recognition. “There is something powerful in being wrong, in losing, in failing,” suggests Halberstam (112), and this is part of what drives the legacy of Ed Wood. It has been suggested that “The Golden Turkey was a necessary step that amplified Wood’s profile and gave important focus to his reputation” (Sloan 10). Undeniably, it is the label of failure that acts as an entry point to Wood, continually drawing in the curious.
29Having presented several cases concerning queer experiences and depictions represented within Wood’s films and prose, it seems fitting to reject failure regarding Ed Wood. The subversiveness of exploitation allowed queer representation to exist, and exploitation films’ failure to replicate Hollywood realism provided Wood with an opportunity to depict a realism representing the queer experiences he knew. This, therefore, confirms that it is inaccurate to view Wood as failure. The posthumous label of the “worst director of all time” should be questioned and Wood’s work instead reevaluated as ideological and political advocacy continues to be highlighted. Unceasingly throughout his career, Wood represented queerness by advocating gender and sexuality diversity through his work. Although for too long a veil of presumed failure obscured Ed Wood’s portrayal of queer narratives and experiences, it is their representation, in pulp novels as well as in films (whether cheap exploitation, trashy soft-core sexploitation or pornographic films), that is his true success.
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