Digital Transgender Archive

Guide to the Ed Wood, Jr. Collection, 1966-2006

Edward Davis Wood, Jr. (October 10, 1924 to December 10, 1978), better known as Ed Wood, was an American screenwriter, director, producer, actor, author, and editor, who made a number of low-budget genre films and published pulp novels under various names. Ed Wood's fiction is as strange, idiosyncratic and out of step with his times and mores as his infamous movies. His novels inter-splice erotic segments with lengthy philosophical, sociological and psychological discourse. Rudolph Grey's biography "Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr." (1992) and Tim Burton's biopic "Ed Wood," which earned two Academy Awards, brought attention to his life and work. He died in 1978 of an alcohol-induced heart attack and has since achieved cult status.

Pulp novels written anonymously and under various pseudonyms of the legendary psycho-sexual author and film-maker, Ed Wood, Jr., collected by pulp scholar Robert Legault (1950 to 2008). In addition, magazines, reference materials, posters and other ephemera. Also, an original one sheet poster for the 1953 film, "Glen or Glenda?" directed by Ed Wood, Jr. in his feature film debut. Originally titled "I Changed My Sex," the film has maintained a solid cult following over the decades despite its poor reviews due to Wood's decidedly distinctive style and z-budget production values. The aim of the film's producer, George Weiss, was to capitalize on the story Christina Jorgensen, who in 1952 became the first man widely known to undergo sex reassignment surgery. The film's first half guides the viewer down a crooked path that includes multiple narration techniques, BDSM (bondage/discipline/sadomasochist) pornography, and a buffalo stampede in order to convey a story about a man named Glen who wishes to become a transvestite, struggling to gain acceptance from his girlfriend. The second half, added largely at the demand of the distributor to include sex change in the content, is about a pseudohermaphrodite named Alan who fights his way through World War II in women's underwear, finally returning from the conflict to have the surgery he/she has always desired.