Ed Wood facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Ed Wood
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Wood in Glen or Glenda (1953)
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| Born |
Edward Davis Wood Jr.
October 10, 1924 Poughkeepsie, New York, U.S.
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| Died | December 10, 1978 (aged 54) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
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| Other names | Daniel Davis Ann Gora Edward D. Wood Jr. Akdov Telmig Larry Lee Dr. T.K. Peters Peter LaRoche Don Miller |
| Occupation |
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| Years active | 1947–1978 |
| Spouse(s) |
Norma McCarty
(m. 1956; separated 1956)Kathy O'Hara
(m. 1956–1978) |
| Children | 1 daughter |
Edward Davis Wood Jr. (October 10, 1924 – December 10, 1978) was an American filmmaker, actor, and pulp novel author.
Contents
Early years
Wood's father, Edward Sr., worked for the United States Post Office Department as a custodian, and his family relocated numerous times around the United States. Eventually, they settled in Poughkeepsie, New York, where Ed Wood Jr. was born in 1924. According to Wood's second wife, Kathy O'Hara, Wood's mother Lillian would dress him in girl's clothing when he was a child because she had always wanted a daughter (Ed only had one brother, several years younger than himself).
During his childhood, Wood was interested in the performing arts and pulp fiction. He collected comic books and pulp magazines, and adored movies, especially Westerns, serials, and the occult. Buck Jones and Bela Lugosi were two of his earliest childhood idols. He often skipped school in order to watch motion pictures at the local movie theater, where stills from last week's films would often be thrown into the trash by theater staff, allowing Wood to salvage the images, and to add to his extensive collection.
On his 12th birthday, in 1936, Wood received as a gift his first movie camera, a Kodak "Cine Special". One of his first pieces of footage, and one that imbued him with pride, showed the airship Hindenburg passing over the Hudson River at Poughkeepsie, shortly before its disastrous crash at Lakehurst, New Jersey. One of Wood's first paid jobs was as a cinema usher, and he also sang and played drums in a band. Subsequently, he formed a quartet called "Eddie Wood's Little Splinters" in which he sang and played multiple stringed instruments.
Military service
In 1942, Wood enlisted at age 17 in the United States Marine Corps, just months after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Assigned to the 2nd Defense Battalion, he reached the rank of corporal before he was discharged in 1946 at age 21.
Career
Directing and screenwriting
In 1947, Wood moved to Hollywood, California, where he wrote scripts and directed television pilots, commercials and several forgotten micro-budget westerns, most of which failed to sell. In 1948, Wood wrote, produced, directed, and starred in The Casual Company, a play derived from his own unpublished novel which was based on his service in the United States Marine Corps. It opened at the Village Playhouse to negative reviews on October 25. That same year, he wrote and directed a low-budget western called Crossroads of Laredo with the aid of a young producer he met named Crawford John Thomas. The film was shot silent and was not completed during Wood's lifetime.
In 1949, Wood and Thomas acted together in a play called The Blackguard Returns at the Gateway Theatre (Wood played the Sheriff and Thomas was the villain). Wood joined the Screen Actors Guild in 1951, and worked very briefly as a stuntman among other things. When writing, Wood used a number of different pen names, including Ann Gora and Akdov Telmig (the backwards spelling of his favorite drink, the vodka gimlet).
In the 1950s, Wood directed several low-budget science fiction, crime and horror films that later became cult classics, notably Glen or Glenda (1953), Bride of the Monster (1955), Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957) and Night of the Ghouls (1959).
Books and novels
Beginning in 1963 up until his death, Wood wrote at least 80 novels in addition to hundreds of short stories and non-fiction pieces for magazines and daily newspapers.
In 1965, Wood wrote the quasi-memoir Hollywood Rat Race, which was only published years later in 1998.
Personal life
Wood was in a long term relationship with actress and songwriter Dolores Fuller, whom he met in late 1952. She was in the process of divorcing her first husband Donald Fuller, with whom she had had two sons. Wood and Fuller shared an apartment for three years, and Wood cast her in three of his films. The couple broke up in 1955.
In 1956, soon after his breakup with Fuller, Wood married actress Norma McCarty. The marriage ended approximately one month later.
Later in 1956, Wood met Kathy O'Hara and they fell in love immediately; they were married in Las Vegas a short while later. Wood and O'Hara remained together until Wood's death in December 1978.
Death
Wood and his wife Kathy were evicted from their Hollywood apartment on Yucca Street on Thursday, December 7, 1978, in total poverty by two sheriff's deputies called by their landlord for failure to pay their overdue rent and had to leave behind all of his scrapbooks and unfinished screenplays, which the landlord allegedly threw into a garbage dumpster. The couple moved into the small North Hollywood apartment of their friend, actor Peter Coe, located at 5635 Laurel Canyon Boulevard.
Around noon on Sunday, December 10, Wood died from a heart attack.
Wood was cremated at the Utter-McKinley mortuary, and his ashes were scattered at sea.
Legacy and homages
At the time of his death, Wood's name and career had become so obscure that most local Los Angeles newspapers didn't run an obituary about him.
In 1994, director Tim Burton released the biopic Ed Wood, starring Johnny Depp in the title role and Martin Landau, who won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Bela Lugosi. It also won an Academy Award for Best Makeup for Rick Baker. The film premiered on September 30, 1994, just ten days before what would have been Wood's 70th birthday. Despite receiving mass critical acclaim, the movie did poorly at the box office; however, it has since developed a cult following.
In 1997 the University of Southern California began holding an annual Ed Wood Film Festival, in which student teams are challenged to write, film, and edit an Ed Wood-inspired short film based on a preassigned theme.
See also
In Spanish: Ed Wood para niños
