#97 Glen or Glenda (1953) (Colin)

And now we come to the first movie from a director called Edward D. Wood Jr.  Or the 2nd film if you read the Plan 9 From Outer Space review first, which means you are reading this out of order.  Naughty you, but you are forgiven as silly bollocks here wrote them out of order.  Anyway, Ed Wood gained a bit of an unwanted reputation in Hollywood as the worst director of all time.  It certainly is true that he never made an Oscar winning blockbuster, his scripts are hilariously badly written and he would often hire actors that would make the cast of TOWIE seem like seasoned thespians.  But his films have a quirky charm and today, ironically, his work is probably more famous and 'liked', (mainly for the wrong reasons), than they were back in his day.  His name reached mainstream in 1994 in Tim Burton's film of his life 'Ed Wood', played by Johnny Depp.  In a final twist of irony, the film about his life won 2 oscars!

And so film #1 from Ed Wood and #97 on our list, Glen or Glenda (1953).

Glen or Glenda is a semi-autobiographical story about transvestism, starring Ed Wood himself, (under the name Daniel Davis) as Glen / Glenda.  In the 1950's US this would have been a taboo subject and one which would have been met with much prejudice and ridicule.  For this Wood must be applauded, it was a brave decision to make a film tackling this subject.  His aim to explain transvestism and to try to get society to accept it must also be admired.  The thought was well meaning and ahead of it's time, the execution, however was not so well done and unfortunately this film probably led to more ridicule!

Glen or Glenda contains 2 stories, that of Glen who is a transvestite and his inner conflict on whether or not to confess all to his soon to be wife, Barbara, (Dolores Fuller, although a lump of wood would have given a more all round performance) and the shorter story of Alan, ('Tommy' Haynes, who went on to become a best selling author of car manuals), a pseudohermaphrodite who has to undergo a sex change and must resolve whether to become a man or a woman.  Basic good clean fun for all the family.

The film starts with legendary 'Dracula' actor Bela Lugosi playing some sort of God or something.  It really is hard to tell what exactly he is meant to be, (on iMDb he is credited as 'scientist', but I do not think that is correct), but he does play scary rather well.  For those who have read the Plan 9 blog, you will be aware that Lugosi is somewhat of a regular in Ed Wood movies.  In this movie his acting is far superior to that in Plan 9, helped, in no small part, by the fact that he wasn't dead during the filming of this film.  By this stage of his life Lugosi had fallen on hard times and was addicted to drugs such as Morphine.  Whether or not this eased the pain of working with Ed Wood we may never know, but it is generally agreed by critics that dying so as to avoid acting in Plan 9, was a tad extreme.

For the purpose of the blog, I will suggest he is playing the role of God or Creator or such like.  In actual fact the opening bit of this movie, Lugosi reminds me of the neighbours in The Young Ones who were getting warm by a light bulb.  You know, Vivian crashes through the wall and a man and woman are warming their hands by a lamp?  The man then does some weird speech, (that would not go a miss in an Ed Wood film)?  OK, it's a bit obscure, but the picture below might help, (yes our blogs are getting technical these days, we'll be doing links next!).

The speeches in this film are truly awful.  They try to be insightful, cleverly worded and full of imagery and suggestion, but they are just downright bad.  One issue I have is the constant incorrect use of tenses, for example 'A new day is begin', surely this should be 'has begun'?  Or 'The story is begun', which is getting closer but surely it should be 'has begun' or 'is beginning?'.  By now I is frustrating with the lacking of basic grammar stuff.  Shocking.

We are then taken to the scene of an apparent suicide of a man dressed in women's clothing.  Whilst we are not told which constituency this Conservative MP represented we all agree that by dying within the first 5 minutes of the film, he probably maintained a bit of dignity.  The Inspector of this case, (Lyle Talbot), then goes to see Psychologist, Dr Alton, (Timothy Farrell), who then proceeds to tell us the story first of Glen and later of Alan.  Dr Alton acts as the narrator for the film and at least this does work and keeps the film flowing.  Or it would if Lugosi didn't keep 'interupting' at various points in the movie with another monologue.  Often these monologue's are intended to create an atmosphere or image but end up feeling like someone who will insist on talking to you when you are quite clearly trying to watch something or read something.  I hate it when people do that as you become distracted yes OK in a minute 2 sugars please and you lose track of what you are doing.

One such monologue talks of how people scoffed at certain things when they were first suggested.  The aeroplane and Autimobile, (or Automobile for those outside of southern USA) are given as examples.  I can see where Wood was going here, where a suggestion which at first seemed absurd, eventually can become integrated into society and become 'normal'.  What actually happens is it seems to suggest Transvestism was invented fairly recently although the movie does not explain who owns the patent.  Unfortunately the message comes over a bit confused and almost irrelevant, which is a shame as he was making a good point.

Another example of trying to make a good point but delivering a confused message is a comment he makes about the modern woman.  The narrator explains that modern woman is hard working this then cuts to 2 women in an office.  The issue here is that one woman is sitting on the desk clearly just chatting away to the other woman and both are doing not a lot of work.  The narrator might as well as said 'modern woman is skiving in the workplace', (yep, there's that confused grammar thing again).

We are getting a bit serious here, so I will take a quick break to relay a little story about the version of the film I watched.  The version I watched is on YouTube and is in English but with Spanish subtitles.  At one point in the movie Barbara and her work colleague are talking about 'medical science'.  The translation on the Spanish subtitles said 'la medicina llama', which amused me a little.  A llama with a stethoscope, imagine.... suit yourselves.

(Dr Llama yesterday)

Back to the movie and Glen has to decide whether or not to admit all to his fiancee, Barbara.  To illustrate this point and his inner turmoil, Wood treats us to 15 minutes of complete and utter nonsense.  It's hard to explain but it involves whipping, lots of over acting and the devil, (appearing as himself).  Wood probably did this to give us an opportunity to understand the morale dilemma Glen faces, however, I took this as an opportunity to empty my bladder.

Glen does the right thing and admits to Barbara that he is a transvestite and has the alter ego Glenda.  Barbara is very understanding and rushes him to see the Psychologist Dr Alton, (how clever, it all becomes interlinked!).  Dr Alton then takes this opportunity to take a break from Glen's story and to tell the inspector about another of his patients called Alan / Anne.  The story is short, but does take a few minutes and basically involves Alan / Anne, who has both male and female, you know, thingys, (high-brow or what!), and must decide which one to lop off or fill in.  Whilst a semi interesting story, the reason it is told is a bit confusing other than Dr Alton tells the inspector that he relayed the same story to Glen and Barbara.  The next shot is then of Dr Alton telling the story to Glen and Barbara.  I mean literally, he tells the whole blinking story more or less word for word again!

Anyway, Alan decided to become Anne, Barbara accepted who Glen was and everyone has a happy ending.  I was even happier because it was the end.

But I am being a little cruel.  I actually liked the movie and, like Plan 9, it's little quirks, errors and overly elaborate use of language gives it a certain charm that you just can not help smiling at and warming to.  Also, let's not forget the message, which simply is don't judge others, don't be scared of people who lead different lives, try to understand, be tolerant and basically let's all get along.  A fine message, if only Wood could have managed to put this across more clearly and in a structured coherent way, then maybe the movie Ed Wood would not have been the only Ed Wood to get awards and recognition......