Glen or Glenda

Glen or Glenda
Film poster for Glen or Glenda
Directed by	Ed Wood
Produced by	George Weiss
Written by	Ed Wood
Starring	Daniel Davis Dolores Fuller Bela Lugosi Lyle Talbot Conrad Brooks
Music by	William Lava (uncredited)
Cinematography	William C. Thompson
Editing by	Bud Schelling
Distributed by	Columbia Classics
Release date(s)	1953
Running time	65 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$61,000

Glen or Glenda is a 1953 exploitation film written, directed by, and starring Ed Wood, and featuring Bela Lugosi and Wood's then-girlfriend Dolores Fuller. The title was originally I Changed My Sex! and is often given as Glen or Glenda? but the question mark is not present in the film itself. A new musical score for the film was composed in 2010 by Michael Penny.

The film is a docudrama about cross-dressing and transsexuality, and is semi-autobiographical in nature. Wood himself was a crossdresser, and the film is a plea for tolerance. It is widely considered one of the worst films ever. However, it has become a cult film due to its low-budget production values and idiosyncratic style.

Plot

Glen or Glenda

Wood as Glen, dressed in female clothing.

The first part of the film begins with a narrator called The Scientist (Bela Lugosi) making cryptic comments about humanity. The film properly opens with Inspector Warren finding the corpse of a male transvestite named Patrick/Patricia, who has committed suicide. Wanting to know more about cross-dressing, Warren seeks out Dr. Alton, who narrates for him the story of Glen/Glenda. However, at several points Alton appears to address the viewer rather than Inspector Warren, and the unclear role of the Scientist as narrator makes things even more confusing. Glen is shown studying women's clothes in a shop window. Dr. Alton points out that men's clothes are dull and restrictive, whereas women can adorn themselves with attractive clothing. He also makes some bizarre statements, such as that baldness is caused by hats. Glen reads about sex change operations in a newspaper, then meets with Barbara, his girlfriend, who asks if Glen's secret problem is another woman.

The film then cuts to the infamous shot of the Scientist shouting "Pull the string!" as bison stampede onscreen. It is not clear what this is meant to mean; perhaps that Glen should act as puppeteer, controlling his own life instead of letting others dictate it. Another transvestite friend of his, John, tells Glen how cross-dressing ended his marriage. A bizarre dream sequence, containing some BDSM pornography, follows. Glen then decides to tell Barbara the truth. She offers her an angora sweater as a sign of acceptance.

Alan or Anne

The second part is much shorter, and was made to meet the distributor's demand for a sex change film. Alan is a pseudohermaphrodite who fights in the Second World War wearing women's underwear. After her return, Alan becomes the woman she always was through surgery.

Origin

The sex reassignment surgery of Christine Jorgensen made national headlines in the U.S. in 1952, and this was the inspiration for George Weiss, a Hollywood producer of low-budget films, to commission a movie to exploit it. Originally Weiss made Jorgensen several offers to appear in the film, but these were turned down. Wood convinced Weiss that his own transvestism made him the perfect director despite his modest resume. Wood was given the job and took the money, but instead made a movie about transvestism. Working titles during the film's production included Behind Locked Doors and Transvestite. When the finished movie was deemed too short and too divergent from what was requested, Wood tacked on a few extra scenes about sexual reassignment. The producer spliced in two unrelated soft-core sequences, one with some mild bondage, cutting in reaction shots of Wood and Lugosi.

Lugosi's scenes were shot at the Jack Miles Studios in Los Angeles. He was reportedly paid $5000 for the role, although some stories state the actual amount was only $1000.

The film received a release only because it had been pre-sold to a number of theatres before it was made. The film had a number of alternative titles during its sporadic release, including I Led Two Lives, He or She? and I Changed My Sex. The film also had a limited international release. In France and Belgium, the title was translated as Louis ou Louise and in Argentina as Yo Cambié Mi Sexo. The film had a brief screening in the Republic of China.

Behind the scenes

Wood in Glen or Glenda

This was the only movie Wood directed but did not also produce. He persuaded Lugosi, at the time poor and drug-addicted, to appear in the movie. Wood himself played the eponymous character, but under the pseudonym "Daniel Davis". His girlfriend, Dolores Fuller, played Glen's girlfriend. Fuller was not aware of Wood's transvestism at the time: the nature of the film was not fully explained to her, and Wood rarely wore women's clothing when she was on set. Only at a screening of the finished product was the truth revealed, and Fuller claims to have been humiliated by the experience.^{[citation needed]}

In the theatrical trailer, included in laserdisc and DVD editions, the concluding scene of the film, in which Fuller hands over her angora sweater, is a different take than the one in the release version — in the trailer, she tosses it to Wood in a huff, while the release version shows her handing it over more acceptingly. There is also a shot of Wood in drag, mouthing the word "Cut!"

Idiosyncrasies

Leonard Maltin's Movie and Video Guide names this film as "possibly the worst movie ever made," a dubious honor previously held by another Wood film, Plan 9 from Outer Space.

Lugosi is credited as "The Scientist", a character whose purpose is unclear. He acts as a sort of narrator but gives no narration relevant to the plot; that job is reserved for the film's primary narrator, Timothy Farrell. The Scientist is surrounded by horror movie trappings such as skulls and test tubes as he exhorts the audience to "beware of the big green dragon that sits on your doorstep". Stock footage of rampaging bison are superimposed over The Scientist's face at one point for no obvious reason. There are also various long, surreal dream sequences during which Glen is haunted by a devil-like character.

Legacy and references in popular culture

Due to its many flaws, Glen or Glenda has become a touchstone for bad filmmaking.

In his film A King in New York (1957), Charlie Chaplin included scenes from a fictitious movie entitled Man or Woman? in a series of three theatrical trailers his character watches in a Manhattan cinema. Along with gender-bending roles, the director Chaplin was poking fun at the genres seen to be coming out of Hollywood at the time. While film history would soon distinguish Wood as clearly being outside the mainstream, Chaplin's film is one evidence that suggests opinion that Wood's topics might soon become a popular genre.

An intensely personal film for its director, Wood later returned to Glen or Glenda in his pulp novel Killer in Drag (1963). The plot features a transvestite called Glen whose alter-ego is called Glenda. He is executed in the sequel Death of a Transvestite (1967) after a struggle for the right to go to the electric chair dressed as Glenda.

Several elements of Glen or Glenda, such as Lugosi's character and the inexplicable shot of the radiator, served as inspirations for scenes in David Lynch's Eraserhead.

After Wood was posthumously given the accolade of 'Worst Director of All Time' at the Golden Turkey Awards, a revival of interest in his work followed. This led to Glen or Glenda being reissued in 1982. This cut of the movie included six minutes of additional footage. One of the restored scenes features Glen rejecting a pass made to him by a gay man.

In 1994, Tim Burton chronicled the troubled production of Glen or Glenda in Ed Wood. The film includes recreations of several key scenes; most notably Lugosi's ponderous narration and Glen's plea for his girlfriend's understanding at the end of the movie. A pornographic remake of the film, entitled Glen & Glenda, was released the same year as Ed Wood and featured much the same script as the original film, as well as explicit sex scenes.

In Seed of Chucky (2004), Chucky and his bride Tiffany decide to call their child "Glen or Glenda" as it lacks genitalia.

Glenda, the Plan 9 Bunny, the mascot of the distributed operating system Plan 9 from Bell Labs, is named after Glen or Glenda. Plan 9 from Bell Labs is a reference to Plan 9 from Outer Space, another film by Ed Wood.

In Marvel Comics's Runaways, Chase says to the team after Xavin calls them children "Did 'Glen or Glenda' just call us children?", which is a nod to Xavin's shapeshifting between boy and girl.

See also

• Transgender in film and television
• Cross-dressing in film and television
• List of films considered the worst
• Edward D. Wood, Jr. filmography

References

• The Haunted World of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1996), documentary film directed by Brett Thompson
• Rudolph Grey, Nightmare of Ecstacy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1992) ISBN 978-0922915248

External links

• Glen or Glenda at the Internet Movie Database
• Glen or Glenda at AllRovi