Glen or Glenda (1953)

I've never known anyone who's ever struggled with the inner torment of whether or not they should wear women's clothes.

Men, I'm talking about, here. Men wearing women's clothes. Transvestites they're called, as anyone who's read a biography of Edward D. Wood Jr. should already know.

Ed Wood. Ahhh, Ed Wood. The very name conjures up images of hubcaps on strings, Tor Johnson stumbling around and Kelton the Cop. And Bela Lugosi, too; it was thanks to his meeting with Wood that he got the work he did in his later years.

Yet anyone familiar with Ed's work knows that his mind's eye is a dangerous place to tread. Why? Because Wood had this uncanny knack of putting his own diabolical spin on such mundane topics as mad scientists, alien invasions, social deviants and, in this case, confused young men who prefer skirts to slacks.

Like I said, I don't know any men who practice such, but I imagine it's a pretty confusing life to lead. Sexual confusion, acceptance, holding a secret that you dare not share with anyone else, what to tell the lady at the lingerie counter.... Apparently, this is also a life that Ed Wood was intimately familiar with. Very much so.

So much so that he not only wrote and directed a tale about one man's transvestite plight - but starred in it as well. Yes, Ed was the Glen and Glenda in Glen or Glenda, the story of coming to terms with a regular guy's desire to slip into something more comfortable.

You want plot? You got it: This is a film which tells two tales. Upon discovering the suicide of a known transvestite, Inspector Warren (Lyle Talbot) seeks enlightenment about the phenomenon from Doctor Alton (Timothy Farrell), a psychiatrist familiar with such topics. One story concerns a young man named Glen (Wood), who secretly dresses as a woman but is afraid to tell his fiancée, Barbara (Dolores Fuller) of his desire to wear her angora sweater, and his cross-dressing needs in general.

The other story concerns Alan ('Tommy' Haynes), a pseudo-hermaphrodite who suffers various slings and arrows until he decides to go the full nine yards and have a painful operation to become a woman, which bears more than a passing fancy to the story of Christine Jorgensen.

There is another narrator, however, known as The Scientist (Bela), whose commentary on the action contains lots of philosophy, observations, self-important profundity and statements pieced together from fortune cookies and Scattergories but not so much in terms of facts. And Satan (Captain DeZita) also makes a guest appearance

From there, it's a series of vignettes, shorts, blackouts, unrelated shots. flashbacks, flashbacks-to-more-flashbacks, dream sequences that would make Freud's cigar explode, lots of stock footage and female strippers dancing around in all their pasty glory, because Glen is still a guy, after all. He likes seeing naked chicks as much as any other virile, red-blooded American man in high heels does.

Now a straightforward telling of the same story might have led to a more balanced, rational observation of such sordid subject matter, where the scripted pleas for tolerance and understanding would have had a more solid base to be launched from. But then, we wouldn't be talking about an Ed Wood movie, would we?

Look at the dialogue, for instance. It is so stilted and overly dramatic that you'd think Wood would have had some kind of cooperative writing effort with the local loony bin. Comedies have more serious dialogue than this, especially in one scene where Doc Alton is describing the sight of cars speeding past on a freeway:

"The world is a strange place to live in. All those cars. All going someplace. All carrying humans, which are carrying out their lives."

Or another scene (of many) where scientist Bela intones a dramatic diatribe against the stock footage of people passing through a crosswalk:

"People, all going somewhere. All with their own thoughts, their own ideas. All with their own personalities. One is wrong because he does right...one is right because he does wrong. Pull the string! Dance to that which one is created for!"

I guess we should be grateful this isn't a silent film, lest we be denied such sparkling dialogue. You couldn't prove this as a silent by sight, however: the actors all seem to have practiced under the Mack Sennett banner, what with the wide eyes, vivid arm sweeps, overwrought head tilts, hands ferociously clutching at the arms of chairs before rising from them, gargoyle-like scowls and triumphantly-raised eyebrows accompanying every 1/3-turn gaze to the distance with a sneering declamatory speech.

All this movie is missing is little Eva traipsing over the ice floes - with Eva played by Ed Wood.

The direction itself is standard for an Ed Wood joint: blocky, choppy scenes - awkward transitions - lighting rivaled only by that in a stag reel - and the aforementioned stock footage.

You read that right: loads of stock footage permeate this film. Buffalo stampeding, pedestrians, lightning, highway traffic, kids playing on a playground, ambulances racing past, guys working on stuff, judges in court, natives dancing in the jungle, a parking lot, a few strippers and women in hats and sweaters. We're talking almost 14 minutes of stock in a movie not even 70 minutes long. A bowl of chicken soup doesn't have as much stock as Glen or Glenda has in it. So what is all of this stock footage doing in a movie about transvestites? The truth is that it's here for the same reason Mildred Natwick appeared in At Long Last Love: it was available.

See, Ed knew people who knew people on the fringe of Hollywood who had cameras, lights and odd clips of footage from a movie here and a documentary there, and they were happy to let him beg, borrow and/or steal them for his projects. So what if they were for use in projects as odd as this? Hollywood is as Hollywood does.

Then we get to the acting. Ed, being the main character, gets a lot of scene-chewing time and, brother, does he take advantage of it. Especially in a dream sequence where everything can and does happen to our poor, put-upon transvestite hero as everyone - including Satan - gangs up on him and mocks, ridicules and ostracizes him for being a Material Girl. You've never seen such over-emoting in the facial department since last Wrestlemania.

Bela, our poor lost Dracula, seems as if he could pull this one out of the fire, what with the intro of Glen or Glenda looking as if it were the beginning of a horror movie - the lightning, dark shadows, Bela mixing chemicals in a laboratory and a prominently-placed human skull. Unfortunately, thanks to years of drug addiction and hard living, Bela affects nothing so much as the rambling, doddering shell of a man who once was the toast of acting royalty in Hungary, let alone the epitome of horror. Here, his appearance serves not as an anchor to the story but as a linking device that Ed Wood was able to score in order to bring greater recognition to this movie, as well as other later "triumphs" (notice the quotes, there?) Bride of the Monster and, of course, Plan 9 from Outer Space - other reviews for other times.

Dolores Fuller played not only the long-suffering girlfriend of Glen but was also the long-suffering girlfriend of Ed Wood in real life. Word is she had no idea of Ed's proclivities for chiffon and delicates and thought this storyline was just another of his wild and crazy film ideas. After being a good soldier-ette and reading her lines and standing on her mark from first frame to last, she put as much into her role as anyone else involved would have, if there names weren't Ed Wood or Bela Lugosi. Put it another way, the others here basically are in it either because Ed begged them to do so or because they owed him a favor...certainly not for the money, nor for the chance to show their acting chops.

Not even for poor Conrad Brooks, whose sole claim to fame was the fact that he was in movies such as these for pal Ed. Certainly anyone who would go on to direct and star in films like Jan-Gel: The Beast from the East and Blood Slaves of the Vampire Wolf had to start somewhere in the film world. You get out of it what you put in, it seems.

As far as a film goes, does Wood accomplish what he sets out to do? Does he win a plea for sympathy from the world on behalf of anyone who wants to wear an under-wire bra and strappy heels? I can't really say that this is a persuasive film for transvestites to use in order to further their cause. Oh sure, it does (as the intro card to the piece says) display its information for all to see. The problem with Glen or Glenda is the way in which the information they present is displayed. Not that I expected a documentary or true-life drama, but as brought to life here, the story of Glen (let alone Alan) comes across as nothing more than a fever dream of epic proportions. You couldn't get a more disjointed, disconnected story as this if you tried. And judging from Ed Wood's typical product, he didn't even have to try - it came naturally.

Something as earnest and heartfelt as Glen or Glenda can't easily be dismissed as forgettable - it certainly is not that. And it also isn't, because of its topic, a matter of it tackling easy subject matter. A story about the real-life Christine Jorgensen would not come along until 1970 - seventeen years after Wood's opus here. Maybe those film-makers owed it to Ed Wood for laying the groundwork for what was to come. Who knows; Ed probably influenced a lot more directors than we even know about - and I'm sure not all of them wore lacy underthings.

Did Glen or Glenda make money? Probably - such lurid subject matter makes money initially, until the viewer realizes that the thing doesn't make a lick of sense, then warns potential viewers away. But as far as those confused males out there who want some insight on their own disturbed and disturbing reasons they wear Easy Spirit pumps, maybe it is for them that such a film exists. A view from someone else who's been there, done that, knows what it's like to have a secret (or a Victoria's Secret, in this case).

It may give comfort for them, but for the average curiosity seeker who just wants to find out what Glen or Glenda is all about, maybe it's worth it for them to watch it. Once. But just once. Something like this is not meant for repeated viewings, unless you feel the need to look into Bela Lugosi's eyes and try and ascertain why any habit would be worth the humiliation of orating about snails, puppy dogs' tails, string-pulling and dragons sitting on your doorstep and how they all pertain to the life and travails of any given male dress-wearer.

In the end, I guess I enjoyed watching Glen or Glenda just for the fact that I had quite literally never seen anything like this in my life. God knows we'll never see anything or anyone like Ed Wood again in our lifetimes. All Wood purists, if you haven't seen this one yet - get it.

For all the rest of you out there - bevare.