The daring gender nonconformity of Ed Wood’s Glen… | Little White Lies

In Praise Of

The dar­ing gen­der non­con­for­mi­ty of Ed Wood’s Glen or Glenda

14 Apr 2023

Words by Sarah Cleary

Four figures in a black and white film still: a woman in a glamorous dress, two men in suits, and an older man with long hair.
Four figures in a black and white film still: a woman in a glamorous dress, two men in suits, and an older man with long hair.
As Ed Wood’s exploita­tion film part­ly based on his own expe­ri­ence cel­e­brates its 70th anniver­sary, its pro­gres­sive take on per­form­ing gen­der is ripe for rediscovery.

Edward D. Wood Jr (19241978) has achieved the kind of immor­tal­i­ty that most film­mak­ers will pri­vate­ly dream of, but very few can ever expect to attain. He’s a cin­e­mat­ic yard­stick, a ref­er­ence point that is near uni­ver­sal with­in film cir­cles. But at what cost? Ever since the pub­li­ca­tion of The Gold­en Turkey Awards in 1980, Ed Wood” has been syn­ony­mous with worst”. This sem­i­nal com­pendi­um of junk cin­e­ma all but cement­ed Wood’s posthu­mous lega­cy when it award­ed him the twin hon­ours of Worst Movie of All Time (for his 1959 sci­ence fic­tion-hor­ror film Plan 9 from Out­er Space) and Worst Direc­tor. But is he real­ly? No, of course not.

Wood may have made films quick­ly and cheap­ly on the very low­est rung of 1950s Hol­ly­wood film pro­duc­tion, but his films har­bour no mali­cious intent (if there were to be a plau­si­ble met­ric with which we could estab­lish an all-time worst film­mak­er, sure­ly it would be moral rather than aes­thet­ic). But one needn’t damn Wood with such faint praise, nor defer to the sub­jec­tive nature of art appre­ci­a­tion in order to mount his defence. His films pos­sess demon­stra­bly good qual­i­ties. They’re snap­pi­ly paced, imag­i­na­tive, the­mat­i­cal­ly ambi­tious, and filled with potent pop images. While Plan 9 from Out­er Space remains his most remem­bered (if not best remem­bered) film, the Wood pro­duc­tion that per­haps makes the best case for his reap­praisal is his 1953 exploita­tion quick­ie Glen or Glen­da, a land­mark film for on-screen gen­der nonconformity.

Orig­i­nal­ly moot­ed by grind­house pro­duc­er George Weiss as a cash-in on the media cir­cus sur­round­ing Chris­tine Jorgensen’s high­ly pub­li­cised sex change”, Wood re-con­ceived the project as a semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal film incor­po­rat­ing his own expe­ri­ences as a cross­dress­er. Out­ward­ly, Glen (por­trayed by Wood him­self) is the pic­ture of clean-cut, all-Amer­i­can mas­culin­i­ty. He’s about to mar­ry his beau­ti­ful and lov­ing fiancée Bar­bara (Dolores Fuller, Wood’s real-life girl­friend), but there’s anoth­er woman in Glen’s life – his oth­er self”, Glen­da. He’s been hap­pi­ly cross-dress­ing in pri­vate for years but now, with the wed­ding loom­ing, the pres­ence of Glen­da has become a real threat to Glen’s future hap­pi­ness with Bar­bara. Dare he reveal his shock­ing secret to her? Could love con­quer all?

Glen or Glen­da is deeply uncon­ven­tion­al for a com­mer­cial release of its day, both in terms of its sub­ject mat­ter and its form. Across a brisk 61 min­utes it strad­dles a mul­ti­tude of gen­res and styles: melo­dra­ma, hor­ror, qua­si-doc­u­men­tary, ram­bling lec­ture, and free-asso­cia­tive film poem. Though he occu­pies a slim por­tion of the run­time, fad­ed hor­ror star (and close per­son­al friend of Wood) Bela Lugosi gets top billing.

His role, that of an omni­scient god-like sci­en­tist, serves as one of the film’s two nar­ra­tors, occu­py­ing two entire­ly dis­tinct fram­ing devices. Sur­round­ed by test tubes and leather­bound vol­umes, Lugosi mus­es on the action in a series of labyrinthine Twi­light Zone-ish mono­logues, cryp­ti­cal­ly opin­ing on man’s con­stant prob­ing of things unknown” and so on. The sec­ond nar­ra­tor is Dr Arden (Tim­o­thy Far­rell), a psy­chi­a­trist being con­sult­ed by a bewil­dered inspec­tor (Lyle Tal­bot) after the sui­cide of a transvestite.

A woman in a long, black dress stands next to a seated man wearing a suit, in a room decorated with framed pictures.

Both of the par­al­lel nar­ra­tions dis­play Wood’s char­ac­ter­is­tic pen­chant for pur­ple prose, but they are clear­ly intend­ed to serve two sep­a­rate func­tions. Farrell’s voiceover is dry and mat­ter of fact, its faux-aca­d­e­m­ic ver­biage as uncon­vinc­ing as its sup­pos­ed­ly sci­en­tif­ic insights (at one point he claims that male bald­ness is caused by tight hats). This nar­ra­tion explic­it­ly med­icalis­es gen­der non-con­for­mi­ty, osten­si­bly jus­ti­fy­ing the film’s exis­tence as an edu­ca­tion­al object and there­fore help­ing it to evade cen­sor­ship (a com­mon tac­tic in ear­ly exploita­tion cin­e­ma). It is per­haps left for Lugosi, then, to artic­u­late Wood’s more com­plex and per­son­al feel­ings on the sub­ject. His witchy pas­sages evoke a sense of cos­mic mys­tery, and there’s a sense that Wood may be using him to describe exis­ten­tial dread brought on by liv­ing a mar­gin­alised life.

While Lugosi may or may not serve as Wood’s mouth­piece in Glen or Glen­da, both Glen and Glen­da are cer­tain­ly his on-screen avatars. There are so many ten­der details that betray lived expe­ri­ence – Bar­bara notic­ing that Glen is grow­ing out his fin­ger­nails and teas­ing­ly sug­gest­ing they paint them just for the fun of it.” The rev­e­la­tion that Glen first cross­dressed for a Hal­loween par­ty, which remains a com­mon for­ma­tive expe­ri­ence for trans and gen­der non-con­form­ing peo­ple. The impos­si­bly vul­ner­a­ble image of Glen as Glen­da star­ing long­ing­ly at the man­nequins in a depart­ment store win­dow – a plas­tic stan­dard of fem­i­nine beau­ty she feels sure she’ll nev­er meet.

But the film real­ly takes flight when these down-to-earth moments col­lide with Wood’s expres­sion­ist ten­den­cies. At one point, Glen is out shop­ping for a nég­ligée – he takes a moment or two too long feel­ing the fab­ric in front of a quizzi­cal shop assis­tant when, sud­den­ly, Wood cuts to stock footage of light­ning with an accom­pa­ny­ing thun­der­crack. How might we inter­pret this strange choice? Could it stand for sex­u­al arousal? God’s judge­ment? Glen’s fear?

The received wis­dom is that Glen or Glen­da is a bad­ly made film, and that its ambi­gu­i­ties are the prod­uct of incom­pe­tence. But Wood was endeav­our­ing to describe emo­tions and expe­ri­ences for which there was lit­tle-to-no avail­able lan­guage, let alone cin­e­mat­ic lan­guage. His attempts to fill this lin­guis­tic and aes­thet­ic deficit are scat­ter­shot, yes, but the ten­sion between a pal­pa­ble desire to bare his soul and his inabil­i­ty to express him­self clear­ly is ulti­mate­ly what makes the film so compelling.

As such, Glen or Glenda’s most deeply con­fes­sion­al feel­ing pas­sage is also its most exper­i­men­tal: an elon­gat­ed, hel­la­cious night­mare sequence. It’s here that any tidy divi­sion between Glen and Glen­da evap­o­rates as we watch Wood move flu­id­ly between per­sonas across cuts and dis­solves. We see Bar­bara trapped beneath a tree – Glen­da can­not lift it, Glen can. Lugosi grim­ly intones that there is a big green drag­on” that eats lit­tle boys”, and we hear the mock­ing voice of a lit­tle girl, brag­ging that she is sug­ar, spice and every­thing nice.” The Dev­il him­self com­mands a mob of ghost­ly big­ots to back Glen into a cor­ner, but Wood re-emerges defi­ant­ly as Glen­da, leav­ing the throng seem­ing­ly blind­ed by her sheer effer­ves­cence. This sequence is a filmmaker’s id unmoored. It’s corny, dis­turb­ing, and heart­break­ing­ly beautiful.

In what feels dis­tinct­ly like an end­ing, Glen final­ly tells Bar­bara his secret. While con­ced­ing that she may not ful­ly under­stand” the sit­u­a­tion, she wants to do right by her beloved. Then, in the film’s most endur­ing image, she first removes and then hands over the ango­ra sweater Glen had long cov­et­ed in secret. It’s a grace­ful­ly com­posed melo­dra­mat­ic tableau, one wor­thy of Dou­glas Sirk. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, while Wood’s imagery speaks loud­er than his clunky dia­logue and duelling nar­ra­tions, nei­ther Glen nor Glen­da are allowed the last word. Dr Arden (who is revealed to have been treat­ing” Glen after his com­ing out to Bar­bara) blunt­ly explains that Glen­da was sim­ply the man­i­fes­ta­tion of a lack of motherlove.

He informs Glen that he must trans­fer” Glen­da to Bar­bara, and then all will be right. Wood can­not out­run the cen­sors indef­i­nite­ly: the deviant must either be pun­ished or reformed. Of the avail­able options, it’s no won­der that he chose the lat­ter. But this self-evi­dent com­pro­mise does not dimin­ish the scale of Wood’s achieve­ment. Glen or Glen­da is a mir­a­cle, one ready and wait­ing for rediscovery.

You might like