Ed Wood is reknowned for his absolutely diabolical movies, but was an equally awful pulp fiction writer.

In 1953, Wood had filmed the excellent if quirky Glen or Glenda?, a plea for tolerance of heterosexual cross-dressers. Unfortunately, ten years later, Glen Marker, his hero in that movie, seems to have gone off the rails, and went on to star in two, or possibly three novels. In Black Lace Drag/Killer in Drag (1963), Glen Marker is Glenda Satin, a ruthless transvestite assassin for the Syndicate, under cover as a female impersonator in drag clubs across America. He encounters a badly dressed older queen, Dalton van Carter, complete in a pink satin nightgown fringed in moulting foxfur, and black lace undergarments with pink bows.

However, Glenda wasn’t alone. In The Drag Trade (1967), we also meet Sheila Gomez, drag liquor store hold out artiste, and Mary Harmony, drag stolen car vendor, as well as Japanese student Yuhio Mura, drag artiste and deadly political assassin, a proficient samurai swordswoman.

In that same year, Glenda’s wicked ways led to a showdown with the forces of law and order. In return for being able to die in womenswear, Glenda gave a taped confession, supplemented with LA Police records, court records, mobster and bellboy recollections etc. The result was Death of a Transvestite/Let Me Die in Drag/Hollywood Drag. which was published until 1998!

There was one final effort- TV Lust (1977), in which a hit transvestite flashes back to the days of her youth, caught pleasuring herself in female undergarments by her dad, who dies in front of the television. After attending his funeral in drag, she goes to work as an angora-dressed assassin.

Ed Wood- truly a unique writer. We shall never know his like again.

Recommended:

Rudolph Gray: Nightmare of Ecstacy: The Life and Art of Ed Wood Jr: Feral Press: Los Angeles: 1992