Glen or Glenda?

Glen or Glenda? is a movie made in 1953, starring its director Ed Wood, Bela Lugosi, and Wood's then-girlfriend Dolores Fuller. The movie is a docudrama about transvestism and transsexuality, and is semi-autobiographical in nature; Wood himself was a transvestite, and the movie is a plea for tolerance. However, it has become a cult film due to its low-budget production values and idiosyncratic style.

Origin

The sex reassignment surgery of Christine Jorgensen made national headlines in the US in 1952, and this was the inspiration for George Weiss, a Hollywood producer of low-budget films, to commission a movie to exploit it. Ed Wood persuaded 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. 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. The film received a release only because it had been pre-sold to a number of theatres before it was made.

Behind the scenes

Idiosyncracies

Leonard Maltin's best-selling 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.

Bela 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 unnecessarily long, surreal dream sequences during which Glen is haunted by a devil-like character.

Legacy

The lead character turns lethal in Wood's novel Killer in Drag and is executed in Death of a Transvestite. In the book Death of a Transvestite, Glen struggles for the right to go to the electric chair dressed as Glenda.

Tim Burton's movie Ed Wood depicts the making of the film and includes reconstructions of several scenes with Johnny Depp in the role of Ed Wood.

Co-star Dolores Fuller eventually went on to a songwriting career, authoring hits song for Elvis Presley such as "Rock-A-Hula Baby".

Glen or Glenda was reissued with six minutes of additional footage in 1982. Restored scenes include Glen's rejection of a pass made by a gay man.

The film was remade as pornographic Glen & Glenda in 1994 -- not spoofed, actually remade from the original script but with sex added.

In the movie Seed of Chucky, the gender-confused offspring of the evil puppets goes by two names, Glen and Glenda, after this movie.

Alternate titles

He or She?
I Changed My Sex
I Led 2 Lives
The Transvestite

References

The Haunted World of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (documentary, dir. Brett Thompson, 1996).

External links

Glen or Glenda at Movie Tome
Theatrical trailer for the film (Windows and Real Media formats)

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