Glen or Glenda

The Psychotronic Zone

By Jonathon Saia

Glen Or Glenda (Screen Classics, 1953) – Director: Edward D. Wood, Jr. Writer: Edward D. Wood, Jr. Stars: Bela Lugosi, Lyle Talbot, Timothy Farrell, Dolores Fuller, 'Tommy' Haynes, Edward D. Wood, Jr., Charles Crafts & Conrad Brooks. B&W, 65 minutes.

"The story....MUST...BE TOLD!"

There are bad movies and there are Ed Wood movies: movies so awful, so void of redemption, so lacking in any kind of skill whatsoever that you must assume everyone was stone cold drunk and high when they were being written, shot, edited, and released (which depending whom you believe, was probably true).

Ed Wood was and remains a polarizing figure. There are people like Dolores Fuller, one of his ex-girlfriends and an eventual songwriter for Elvis, who called him "the Orson Welles of Z pictures,” and there are people like Bela Lugosi, Jr. who called him a "user and abuser." His films were derided and discarded in their time, lambasted and lampooned in our own, yet his cult is huge; and thanks to late night television and Tim Burton's sentimental portrait of a misunderstood artist in turmoil, more people have probably seen and laughed at Plan 9 from Outer Space than have seen King Vidor's The Crowd (a criminal injustice).

Choosing just one of his movies for this column was a near impossibility; they are all terrible, practically unwatchable – not even camp worthy. Just horrible miserable wastes of time, energy, money, and passion. I am embarrassed for all of the participants in all of these movies, particularly Bela Lugosi, at that point a sad shell of a man working way beneath what his legend could have afforded him to feed his morphine addiction, and Ed Wood himself who actually believed his stock footage/piecemeal/rush job/bullshit "work" was great and important.

I could have chosen his most infamous work, Plan 9 From Outer Space (1956), a dreadful sci-fi meets zombie film that is often touted as the "worst film ever made" about aliens who revive corpses from the dead to kill the human race before Earth destroys the rest of the universe. I could have chosen its "sequel" Night of the Ghouls (1958), a film so disengaging that you need your eyes pinned open A Clockwork Orange style to even stand a chance. I could have chosen Jail Bait (1954), a gangster film featuring body builder Steve Reeves void of any kind of stakes or suspense that includes a horribly offensive minstrel number about halfway through that has nothing to do with the plot and was presumably added to fill run time. I could have chosen The Sinister Urge (1960), a proselytizing tract about the evils of pornography – or one of the pornos with which he ended his career, Necromania and The Young Marrieds (both 1971). I could have chosen one of his two films that actually doesn't make you want to call Conrad Murray, Bride of the Monster (1955), a film starring Bela Lugosi in full on Dr. Loomis mania as a mad scientist hellbent on creating a master race of atomic supermen.

Instead I have chosen the one film of his I would actually recommend; not because it is good in any traditional sense, but because its novelty and gay sensibility perfectly encapsulates Wood's life and career: Glen or Glenda.

Glen or Glenda, alternately titled He or She?, Transvestite, and I Changed My Sex!, was greenlit to capitalize on the Christine Jorgenson craze; the first widely publicized case of an American getting a sex change (Years ago, I saw a wonderful off-Broadway show called Christine Jorgenson Presents, in which drag performer Bradford Louryk lip-synched her famous hour-long interview with Nipsey Russell from 1958 in its entirety. The album of the interview exists on YouTube; check it out!)

Wood decided to make a more personal tale; the story of a transvestite and his struggle to tell his girlfriend about his proclivities, casting himself (cowardly under a pseudonym) and girlfriend Dolores Fuller in the leads. Wood had always worn women's clothes and had an infamous fetish for angora. According to Fuller, "when he was a little boy, his aunt, or his mother, somebody put him into a snowsuit with rabbit fur in it. Or angora fur. And he said it felt so wonderful against his skin." He would wear her sweater while working at his typewriter and would go on dates with women just to score their angora, harboring a trunk full of them in his apartment. According to Kathy Wood, his last wife, Ed had performed as a female impersonator when he was with Dolores and during his time with her, they would go to Hollywood transvestite parties: "Vincent [Price] was so pretty." Evelyn Wood, co-star on Glen or Glenda? remembers, "We all treated it as if it was the most normal thing in the world. Ed would just smile and say, 'That's the real me.’"

But Ed was no homosexual. Glen or Glenda was his call for sympathy, the cinematic defense of his unorthodox behavior. And one of the most progressive, oddest, worst movies ever made.

Lugosi, as the narrator/scientist/creepy old man intones in his best Christopher Walken: "Man's constant groping of things unknown . . . drawing from the endless ridges of time . . . brings to light . . . MANY STARTLING things. Startling? Because they seem new. SUDDEN. But most are not new . . . in the science of the ages.”

Stock footage of lighting strikes, footage that is subsequently used in the next three Wood films. Lugosi toddles around with a beaker and some chemicals in his make shift laboratory/drawing room/library and cackles ominously. Stock footage of people walking up and down a busy city street is superimposed under Lugosi's scowls. We are reminded of the scene in Ed Wood when Landau as Lugosi tells Johnny Depp as Wood that he has no idea what the hell he is talking about. We see the proof on the screen.

An ambulance rushes to collect the corpse of a transvestite who has recently killed himself via asphyxiation. He has been arrested numerous times for wearing women's clothes and since he cannot stop wearing them knows that it is only a matter of time before he will be arrested again; Patrick/Patricia is a pre-op transsexual, unable to make the transition for one reason or another. Today this may seem passe or even camp, but imagine an audience in 1953 asked to sympathize with a cross-dressing man who longs for sexual reassignment surgery at a time when gay men were being lobotomized. Cross-dressing was illegal and carried a jail term, and homosexuality was still seen as a mental disorder. From the very beginning, we are begged to reconsider the "normalcy" of sexual “deviation."

The detective on the case goes to his psychologist friend to learn the ropes on what it means to be a transvestite, the first time the word is used in a film, pre-dating Psycho by seven years. The film then becomes less of a "film" and more of an apologetic, a PSA for accepting cross-dressing. Through two separate stories, we see two very different versions of nontraditional gender identification.

Glen/Glenda is a heterosexual male who enjoys wearing women's clothing, particularly angora sweaters. He can be seen admiring his fiancé Barbara's outfits and is visually tortured by the beautiful dresses he passes in the store front windows.

The film cuts away to a narrated montage, explaining the different comfort levels in each sex's clothing: 

“At home, what does modern man have to look forward to for his body comfort? A wool or flannel robe. His feet encased in the same tight fitting leather his shoes are made of. And men's hats are so tight they cut off the blood flow to the head, thus cutting off the growth of hair. 7 out of 10 men wear a hat; 7 out of 10 men are bald! But what about the ladies? When modern woman's day of work is done, that which is designed for comfort IS comfortable. Hats that give no obstruction to the blood flow." He goes on to remind us that in aboriginal culture it is the men who are adorned in fancy headdresses and things. Why can this not be brought into the modern world? Why is it illegal for a man to walk the street in comfort? Can a man not really be a man if he enjoys the dainty caress of chiffon? The narrator is very clear to enunciate that Glen is NOT a woman, nor does he want to be a woman, nor is he gay; Glen and Glenda are one in the same, both equally at home in the same body with its male form and gate. “Maybe your milkman is wearing ladies panties, your electrician, your judge. Why, it is just as normal as apple pie.”

But how can Glen tell Barbara that he is also Glenda? They discuss Christine Jorgenson. She seems receptive and understanding. He strokes her angora sweater. He's afraid he'll lose her. She persists. Cut to Lugosi superimposed over a running stampede of buffalo, screaming, "Pull the strings!" Construction workers sympathize with transsexuals. "Maybe society should try and see them as human beings." Glen shares his fears with his friend Johnny. Should he tell Barbara or not? Johnny tells him that lying about his own cross-dressing ended his marriage. He must tell her. And tell her now.

But . . . 

“Bevare . . . Bevare . . . Bevare of the big green dragon dat seets on your doorstep! He eats little boys. Puppy dog tails and big...fat...snails. Bevare! Take care! BEVARE!”

Then there is a . . . dream ballet, I guess you would call it. Barbara is distraught over the news of her fiancé in drag, emoting like Anna Magnani. She becomes pinned down under a large tree in their living room (somehow) and Glen as Glenda is too weak to save his beloved; only as Glen is he mighty enough to lift that oak. A wedding follows that is officiated by a priest, yet witnessed by a grinning devil. Glen, in a shot David Lynch must have stolen for the poster of Eraserhead, tremors in a state of confusion and panic.

A woman is whipped on the couch. Another stripteases. Another is tied to a stake. Another grinds on the couch, seductively, then is hogtied. Bela and Ed are intercut within these shots to try and give them some meaning (in truth, they were not a part of Ed's vision, but were pulled from a different film all together when distributor/producer George Weiss needed to fill the run time; most theatres would only book films that ran over an hour). Barbara and the mob point and laugh at Glen as he transforms into Glenda. The devil cackles in the background. “Bevare . . . Bevare . . . Bevare of the big green dragon that sits on your doorstep . . .” Glen is now more terrified and embarrassed than ever to tell Barbara. But knows he must.

Glen sits Barbara down. She is distraught. But loves Glen more than anything. Glen goes to Bela for...guidance? He waves him away. Barbara speaks:

"Glen. I don't fully understand this. But maybe together we can work it out.”

And then, as in the poster for Ed Wood, Barbara stands and hands her angora sweater to Glen.

Cut back to the psychiatrist and the detective. He tells him that transvestitism can be willed away by therapy and can be explained by some sort of trauma as a child, invented as “a love object, to take the place of the love that he never received in his early youth and the lack of it from his parents. The character was created and dressed and lives the life the author has designed for him to live. And dies only when the author wants him to." Barbara and Glen sit down with the therapist and discuss that in order to "kill" Glenda – who was created when as a child Glen learned in order to earn his mother's love, he needed to be more like his sister because Glen's mother hated her own father; therefore, was reminded of her father by her son – that all he need do is transfer the qualities of Glenda that make him feel whole and loved to Barbara. "It's up to you, Barbara. You must take the place, give the love, and accept the facts that Glenda has always accepted. If you love each other as you now believe you do, it will be a hard job, but one you enjoy doing.” “Supposing Glen never stops wearing women's clothes?” “Would it matter to you much?” “I love Glen. I'll do everything I can to make him happy.” 

Barbara's love conquers all and Glenda disappears forever. (In real life, however, Fuller never married Ed because she couldn't handle his cross-dressing; he wore women's clothes and went by the nickname Shirley until the day he died).

Afterwords

If Ed had had his druthers, this would have been the only story told in Glen or Glenda. But since the film was sold on the promise of being a version of the Christine Jorgenson story, George Weiss demanded that he insert a story of a real transsexual: Anne, a pseudo-hermaphrodite who not only wants to wear women's clothes, but IS a woman trapped in a man's body. Alan becomes Anne and lives happily ever after. This story is also told with compassion, understanding, and love.

Wood's latter years were just as strange and sad as his films. He turned out dozens of pulp erotic novels (most famously Orgy of the Dead) and nudie screenplays, charging 200 bucks a head, acting in anything he could, relishing in the fiction that he was "somebody," showing his films to anyone who would sit long enough. He and his wife Kathy were extremely poor, but refused to go on welfare because of his pride. He would hide his poverty by buying all the neighborhood kids ice cream whenever the Good Humor man came around and always wanted to host when it came time to drink. Ed and Kathy were full-time alcoholics, drinking Imperial whiskey straight with water chasers, sometimes going on benders for weeks at a time. Close friend John Andrews recants, "When they would move to a new house, they would go to the liquor store to establish credit. Kathy would say, 'I wonder if you have any of my husband's books.' She would con her way into credit . . . It was just this constant rip-off. Not paying rent. Not paying tabs."

On at least one occasion, Ed wrote a screenplay for his landlady in exchange for rent. They would hock his typewriter for booze. Frequently, they lived in squalor like the Beales. One apartment they were in, a drag queen was beaten to death in the hall and an upstairs neighbor rented out her five-year-old daughter to pornographers. Ed and Kathy's drunken-fueled fights were common knowledge, friends and onlookers alike wondering who would kill the other first. They were finally evicted and of the few possessions Ed took with him, one was an angora sweater; the other was the screenplay for I Woke Up Early the Day I Died, which was finally produced in 1998 with Christina Ricci, Tippi Hedren, and Billy Zane. He and Kathy moved into a friend's house and he died days later of a heart attack.

To hear Ed's co-workers, friends, and lovers talk about him in Rudolph Grey's Nightmare of Ecstasy or see Depp's brilliant, sympathetic performance, you can't help but feel for the man's passion and drive, however inept. All he ever wanted to do was make movies. Watching Glen or Glenda again, there is a beauty in its heartfelt, very personal nature; a beauty even in its naive skill; a beauty that makes this his best work. It is filled with so much optimism and passion which is why I think Ed Wood lives on. Yes, we "enjoy" Wood's films and life for its schaudenfreude effect, but also because Wood stands in for all of us who dream big. We are all Wood, clawing for fame, reaching for immortality; and like him, most of us will only remain peripheral players in the Hollywood game. Ed may be known for being "the worst director of all time," but at least his films are seen and his name is remembered. I think Ed would like that.

Quotable Dialogue

(Lugosi stares below at the footage of people walking along the street) “People . . . all going somewhere!”