Redeeming "Glen or Glenda"
A serious look at Ed Wood's classic grindhouse film
Edward D. Wood Jr. in scene from “Glen or Glenda” (1953)
George Weiss produced it for money. Tim Burton played it for laughs.
But Ed Wood was deadly serious and he thought he made a documentary based off of his life.
“Glen or Glenda” has been called “the worst movie ever made,” and it’s hard to argue that opinion in light of its low production values, horrific script, and poor acting. More than seven decades removed from its production, chances are if you have heard of it at all, it was probably by way of Burton’s film classic, “Ed Wood,” or as a film class example of directorial inadequacy.
This ignominious legacy along with the added weight of the film’s controversial subject matter, has fated it to a camp cult status.
But as time has changed attitudes toward once taboo subjects such as crossdressing and gender affirming surgery, “Glen or Glenda” deserves a serious evaluation. One devoid of societal disgust and elitist smirking.
To begin with, some background is needed.
It invariably starts with Christine Jorgensen. On December 1, 1952, the NEW YORK DAILY NEWS ran a screaming headline across its front page that read, “EX-GI BECOMES BLOND BEAUTY.” It was followed by a multi-page report of how a young Bronx man had just been revealed to have had a “sex change” in Denmark.
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS (Dec. 1, 1952)
Christine Jorgensen, a U. S. Army veteran and a fledging photographer, had gone to Denmark three years previous and underwent a series of operations and received hormone therapy over a two-year period, that resulted in their physical transformation into a woman.
“‘I feel it was worth all the suffering,’ Jorgensen was quoted, ‘I am very happy to be a woman now. I think it is quite natural that persons to whom nature has been unjust should be treated in this way.’”
The world was shocked. First, by the stunning gender reassignment, but seconding, by the scandalous nature of the surgery itself, and the moral questions it raised.
Americans were notoriously reluctant to discuss sex publicly in this era. At virtually the same time they were digesting the Jorgensen story, Lucille Ball would stun the country when she told husband Ricky that she was pregnant. To such a sheltered populace, Jorgensen’s gender reassignment was incomprehensible.
But whereas most Americans were clutching at their pearls, Hollywood producers were chomping at the bit. They knew an opportunity when they saw it and so they pursued Jorgensen in hopes of getting her name on a film contract. Time was of the essence, as getting her onto film before people lost interest in her, was critical.
In little over a week after her unveiling, producer Al Rosen was telling the press that he had signed Jorgensen to a movie contract and that she would be making a comedy title, “Mary Had A Little,” scheduled to start filming the next month.
Rosen tried hard to ingratiate himself with Jorgensen. He paid for her parents to fly to Denmark so they could visit their daughter. And he took upon himself to act as a spokesman for her, giving reporters updates on her activities almost daily. He even hinted that he and Jorgensen were dating.
But there was a problem. One that Jorgensen addressed herself in an autobiographical article that appeared in AMERICAN WEEKLY magazine.
“There is some fancy fabrication flowing out of Hollywood to the effect that I have signed a contract with a producer.”
“Offhand I would say there is a rather big ‘fly in the Christine Jorgensen film deal’ considering that there has never been, is not now, and will never be any film ‘deal’—or should I say contract, with this particular producer.”
That would seem to have put the prospect of committing her story to film to rest, except for the determination of another Jorgensen suitor.
“…before the newsprint dried on the copy about Christine Jorgensen, the ex-GI turned glamour girl, Producer George Weiss of Screen Classics, Inc., and Director Edward Wood were shooting scene 5.”
George G. Weiss produced low-budget exploitation films. Films with titles such as “Too Hot To Handle,” that took place in a burlesque house, and “Racket Girls,” (aka “Blonde Pickup”) a cheesy 1951 potboiler that combined gangsters and women’s wrestling.
“Racket Girls” movie poster (1951)
Weiss had tried to woo Jorgensen to make a movie for him and was also turned away. Unlike Rosen, though, Weiss didn’t give up. He just adjusted his strategy. He realized that even though Jorgensen herself wasn’t available, her story was fair game. His plan was to produce a film that told all the juicy parts of her story and get it into theaters as quickly as possible.
But as it usually was when it came to financing his films, money was also an issue.
“It was my money, not someone else's,” Weiss explained to interviewer Rudolph Grey years later. ‘So I hocked the eleven western states [distribution rights] for enough money to finish the picture.”
With a very limited budget and time being of the essence, Weiss hired someone who was desperate to become a movie directer. Someone who had never directed a full-length movie before. He hired Edward Davis Wood Jr., whose only directing experience was an uncompleted short titled “Streets Of Laredo” in 1948, making 15-minute dramas for local Los Angeles television programming, and making television commercials.
“Streets Of Laredo” Wood photo (1948) [from NIGHTMARE OF ECSTASY]
Like Jorgensen, Wood was also military veteran. He had joined the Marine Corps after dropping out of high school a few months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He was not even eighteen years old at the time.
Pvt. Edward D. Wood Jr. (May 23, 1942)
Wood’s tour of duty took him all over the Pacific Theater during WWII. Along with stops in Samoa and Australia, he saw action in the bloody invasion of Tarawa, and was wounded in his backside and legs at the Battle of Kwajalein.
But the possibility of death was not Wood’s biggest fear heading into these battles.
“He was wearing pink panties and a pink bra underneath his battle fatigues. And [Wood once] said to me. ‘Thank God Joe I got out. because I wanted to be killed, I didn’t want to be wounded, because I could never explain my pink panties and pink bra,’ recalled his friend, Joe Robertson, ‘If I'm wounded, I'm going to be in trouble. if 1 get killed, nobody gives a shit.’”
It is unknown whether Wood’s fear came true after he was wounded.
Upon his return to his hometown of Poughkeepsie, Wood was treated as a local celebrity. He staged a play titled “Casual Company” he had written while convalescing in a U. S. Naval hospital. He also claimed to have written a novel, “The Inconsiderate Corpse,” but it was always in rewrite and never saw print.
Chuck La Berge, an actor who appeared in “Casual Company,” recalled a conversation he had with Wood one evening backstage.
“He did the carnival. He wanted to be in show business, any phase of it. One of his stories was that he played the part the of half-man, half-woman. He had a beard. I said, ‘How in the hell did you get boobs?’ He’d explain that they put a [inflation] needle in the nipple and blew it up. And he played the geek…”
But writing and sideshow acting were not the only vocations Wood pursued at the time.
Ed Wood as “Shirlee,” LETTERS FROM FEMALE IMPERSONATORS (1961)
“Soon after my honorable discharge in 1946, the urge to go 'all the way’ with my dress up desires took over. As a female impersonator, I worked the smaller clubs in upper New York State which, of course, eventually led me to Greenwich Village in New York City. For a time, I was at the old ‘Morrocan [sic] Village,’ since torn down for an apartment building on East [sic] 8th Street.”
Moroccan Village gay nightclub postcard (c. 1950s)
Wood had greater ambitions which led him to Hollywood, where he bounced around for a few years working at jobs on the outer edge of the movie industry. By the time Weiss found him, Wood was employed at KTTV Studios directing 15-minute dramas. Tellingly, Wood was also a partner in a production company named Angora Pictures.
Weiss determined that he needed a name star to appear in this film, and so they approached the legendary horror movie actor, Bela Lugosi.
“[At first] Lugosi just turned the thing down flat,” Wood claimed, “He didn't want to have anything to do with it. He didn't want to play in any B-picture. He didn't want to go with the independents. [And] He knew it was going to be about the Jorgensen thing.”
Lugosi was still well-known, thanks to continual re-releases of his classic films of the 1930s and 1940s, such as "White Zombie” and of course, “Dracula.” But the his star had long lost its shine and he was reduced to taking such roles as the recently made “Bela Lugosi Meets A Brooklyn Gorilla.” It was known that he needed the work, thanks to his ongoing heroin addiction. So he agreed to take $1,000 to act in Wood’s film.
“Bela Lugosi Meets A Brooklyn Gorilla” movie still (1952)
Weiss’s next problem was lining up someone to replace Jorgensen.
“‘I tried to get others that had sex changes,’ he told interviewer Grey, ‘Especially one from North Carolina. And I went up to Washington to meet with her.”
That, too, fell through. But Lugosi’s casting posed a problem for the North Carolina trans women.
‘She said she wouldn't want to go out on personal appearances because Lugosi signified 'horror' and any sex change, therefore, was horror.
Wood decided to take on the dual eponymous roles of “Glen” and “Glenda” himself, under the pseudonym of “Daniel Davis.” Since he was a crossdresser (the term used in those days was “transvestite”) he was the logical, and of course cheapest, choice.
Under the working title of “Transvestite,” filming began in a small, rented studio located at 210 N. Larchmont Blvd. in Los Angeles. Reporter Aline Mosby got wind of the production and reported on it her syndicated column that ran in newspapers on February 19, 1953.
“Hollywood never misses a bet on the headlines, so a movie company has rushed out with the inevitable—a picture about a man who’s changed into a woman.”
“Thus, before the newsprint had dried on the copy about Christine Jorgensen, the ex-GI turned glamour girl, producer George Weiss of Screen Classics, Inc., and director Edward Wood were shooting scene 5.”
“There is no comparison to the Christine Jorgensen case,” Wood insincerely told Mosby. “Nothing censorable whatsoever,” added Weiss. Assurances made to ward off any legal entanglements.
‘Tommy’ Haynes as “Anne”
“One plot involves Wood, who plays a man who wants to wear women’s clothes,” Mosby wrote. “The other story involves musician Tommy Haines [sic], who plays a man who by operations such as Miss Jorgensen’s is turned into a woman.”
Kathy O’Hara, Ed’s future wife, had a more detailed recollection of Haynes.
“‘Tommy' Haynes, she-he-it, whatever it was, had a girl friend. We met them once on the beach. I think she was a drummer in an orchestra.”
Most likely, what O’Hara was trying to say was in her transphobic way, was that Haynes was a lesbian crossdresser.
Fuller autographed photo (1954)
The other actors were an eclectic cast of characters. Dolores Fuller, Wood’s girlfriend, played the part of “Glen’s” unwitting betrothed, “Barbara,” veteran character actor Lyle Talbot added a bit of professionalism to his casting as police Inspector Warren, and Weiss’s Austrian crossdresser booking agent, ‘Captain’ DeZita, played the Devil. The rest of the cast was made up of crew members and unnamed crossdressers.
Mosby’s article concludes with an exchange that found Wood and Weiss describing the film in conflicting ways.
“‘It’s a documentary,’ exclaimed Wood. ‘We talked to hundreds of people and psychiatrists. We had doctors supervising the operation scene.’”
Of course, this was hogwash. Naming Dr. Nathan T. Bailey, a physical therapist, in the credits was likely all the medical oversight used by Wood.
Weiss was more honest.
“We do exploitation pictures.”
Wood, Lugosi, Bert Shipman [camera operator], Weiss on set (1952)
Filming of the picture took place at Jack Miles’s tiny Larchmont Studios, where Weiss had already made several of his exploitation movies. “Glen Or Glenda” was completed in four days. Lugosi filmed his scenes in just one day, and most of the cast never even met him.
“[Weiss] didn’t have a hell of a lot of money,” Wood wrote in 1973, “he screamed at me for spending $26,000 [on the film].”
By the time Mosby wrote her story, the film bore the title, “I Changed My Sex.” It was one the three names used throughout its run. According to Weiss, “each [distribution] territory [had] the right, not only to change the title, but to exploit it in a title that's befitting.
Even though the film was completed in December 1952, no newspaper ads for it earlier than April 1954 have been found.
“I Changed My Sex” ad, SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER (April 2, 1954)
“Glen Or Glenda” ad, HOUSTON CHRONICLE (June 9, 1954)
“I Led Two Lives,” ad WASHINGTON [DC] AFRO AMERICAN (June 11, 1955)
Wood made no effort to conceal his penchant for wearing women’s clothes around his friends or the cast and crew members. Fuller, who was dating him at the time, related one instance to Grey.
“Edward would sit there with me. and write his scripts, and bounce ideas off of me. trying to work the scenes out. He'd go over the scenes with me while he was writing. And then pretty soon he'd ask me if he could wear my angora sweater. I went along with it. because it didn’t seem like it was doing any harm. to sit there and do his typing wearing that.”
Wood in angora sweater, from NIGHTMARE OF ECSTASY (1948)
Angora was Wood’s favorite material fetish, and angora sweaters his favorite bit of clothing. The attraction to it went back to his childhood and women wearing such sweaters would show up in many of his films.
Wood’s passion for crossdressing was so great that he wrote several unpublished articles regarding his experiences while dressed en femme: “Pink Panties At Tarawa,” “Caught In A Bombing Raid With Skirts On,” and “Transvestite In A Studio Wardrobe.”
It is no surprise, then, that the crossdressing plot of “Glen Or Glenda” takes up the majority of the film. Although Weiss had originally wanted Wood to make a film regarding “sex change” to cash in on the Jorgensen phenomenon, Wood conceived it as an autobiographical film. The clash of their differing visions, along with financial realities, led to decisions that adversely affected the movie.
Indeed, much of the ridicule leveled at “Glen Or Glenda” resulted from the confluence of limited budget, its outré subject matter, and the inexperience of its creator.
Taken at face value, a synopsis of the initial plot is promising.
It was conceived as the story of a young man who happened to be a crossdresser. The conflict driving the plot was that he was soon to be married and he was panicked on how to reveal that to his fiancée.
In more capable hands, with a larger budget, a talented cast, and enough time to mold it into a cohesive film, there is no reason to believe it would not be a success. And chances are, nowadays it would be hailed for its progressive plot and directorial intent.
However, Wood did not have the luxury of time, nor a sufficient budget. The lack of money necessitated his hiring of a mostly amateur cast and barely enough cash to purchase needed film. Then there was Wood’s limited skills as a storyteller. Even with a good idea for a film, he lacked the ability to write a coherent script. A well-funded director could hire an experienced scriptwriter. But Wood was denied that extravagance.
Generally, whenever student or amateur films of an up-and-coming director are mentioned, usually the reviewer takes into account the limitations of money and resources they had to work with. Wood was only 28 years old when he made “Glen Or Glenda,” and this was his first feature film. But no allowance for his youthful inexperience is considered by most reviewers.
“Glen Or Glenda,” was mostly overlooked in its early runs. It either played burlesque houses or drive-ins and never “respectable” movie houses. It became a classic example of the grindhouse aesthetic—low-budget, exploitation films that reviewers avoided and mainstream theaters never ran.
One of the few, and possibly the only, review of “Glen Or Glenda” published contemporaneously, ran in the December 31, 1952, edition of VARIETY:
Told mainly in semi-documentary fashion, story unfolds as two case histories related by a psychiatrist. main story concerns Glen (Daniel Davis), a man who secretly dresses in women’s clothes, much to the dismay of his fiancee Barbara (Dolores Fuller). Other story briefly deals with Alan (‘Tommy’ Haynes), identified as a ‘pseudohermaphrodite’, who is changed into Ann by a sex-change operation (presented tastefully without the explicit shock visuals common to such case study pics).
Though opening credits warn of film’s stark realism, director Edward Wood’s use of stock footage, cheap sets, perfunctory visuals and recited-lecture dialog gives the picture a phony quality. What distinguishes it from other low-budget efforts are the occasional mad flights of fancy.
Most involve a weird scientist, delightfully played by Bela Lugosi in eye-popping fashion. Also out of the ordinary is a suggestive (but far from pornographic) sequence of women writhing in their sexy undies, laden with bondage overtones, as well as a surrealist nightmare scene.
It’s likely that the unnamed reviewer saw “Glen Or Glenda” in a private screening, as it would be almost a year-and-a-half before it hit the theaters. That may have proved beneficial, as the review is actually fair-minded, given the film’s outré subject matter and often amateurish acting, and low production values.
But neither the film nor its creator yet suffered the damning reputations that they would acquire in future decades.
As time went on, Wood became dubbed “the worst director in history,” which stained his legacy and any serious analysis of “Glen Or Glenda.” And as entertaining as Tim Burton’s film “Ed Wood” was, it only reinforced this perception of Wood and his film work.
That being the case, in my next post, I’ve undertaken a virtually scene-by-scene analysis of this film, providing context where necessary and giving it a transgender person’s perspective.
My analysis of “Glen or Glenda” continues in next post
Note: Special thanks to Rudolph Grey’s excellent book, NIGHTMARE OF ECSTASY: The Life And Art Of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1992)
Many of the quotes from people connected to Wood and the making of “Glen Or Glenda” came from this book. Most have been noted in the text, but if not, please know that uncited quotes come from this book.