Death of a Transvestite

What a wonderful trash wallow!!! This represents the best (or worst, I guess) of pulp fiction. It's all here-- the mob, a redhead who gets thrown into the East River in a weighted bag, lots of kinky sex, plenty of murder, and a truckload of hookers with and without hearts of gold. But Ed Wood gives the whole package a new twist with his genuinely fascinating and complex portrayals of transvestites(something not easy to find when this book was written, nor when the movie (Glen or Glenda, and it is essentially the same character) was made.) Ed Wood comes across as a potentially brilliant writer who, unfortunately, never had the chance to develop his craft in a disciplined way. READ THIS BOOK!

Death of a Transvestite is Ed Wood's sequel to his previous pulp novel, Killer in Drag. As in Killer, the main character is angora-loving, cross-dressing, professional killer Glen Marker who is now sitting on death row. Mere hours before his execution, Glen agrees to provide the sympathetic the Warden with a confession to his crimes in return for one thing. What is Glen's price? He wants to be allowed to meet his fate not as Glen but as Glenda. As Charlie, another sympathetic guard, goes off to ransack his daughter's bedroom for a proper outfit (yes, the entire book is like this and God bless it), Glen gives the details of his sordid final days of freedom in Hollywood. And from there, Wood spins a tale of two cross-dressing killers, a young actress with sadomasochistic tendencies, and hippies (though Wood, unknowingly proving just how endearingly unhip he really was, insists on referring to them as not Beatniks but just simply 'niks). The hippie subplot (essentially having to do with outside agitators slipping LSD to Hollywood teenagers in order to turn them into cop-hating zombies) is perhaps indicative of the style of the book as a whole -- it comes out of nowhere, is obviously the product of an out-of-touch mind desperately trying to make a socially relavent statement, and it somehow works within the demented world that Wood creates in this book. No, this is not an undiscovered masterpiece of a book. In fact, its pretty sordid and at times, one can see signs of the alcoholic dementia that would destroy Wood in his later years. But, if you're an Ed Wood fan, its a must-read. And, unlike Killer in Drag, Death actually does (in its own twisted way) work even if separated from the campy reputation of the man who wrote it.Death of a Transvestite picks up directly where Killer in Drag ends and features most of the same character but in style, it is a very different book. Written two years after Killer, Death of a Transvestite has a streak of fear and paranoia running through it as well as several caustic and bitter comments on the state of the Hollywood film industry. Whereas Killer featured a bizarre sincerity to its plea for tolerance, Death is almost a work of nihilism. As such, in tone and style, it is far different from the work that proceeded it. In that way, it resembles the first two Frankenstien films directed by another bitter casualty of Hollywood, James Whale. Whereas the first Frankenstien was almost somber, Whale's Bride of Frankenstien, while obviously continuing the story of the first film, was a deliberately insane, middle finger to the Hollywood establishment. The same analogy can be applied to Wood's two Glen Marker books (though he'd, undoubtly, perfer an analogy involving Bela Lugosi's Dracula as opposed to the classic Karloff films). If Killer was one of Wood's last attempts to turn pulp into art, Death of a Transvestite was his final admission that sometimes, pure trash is preferable to both.

Wow, If you're into the Ed Wood stuff, this is really something for you. Just the idea of mixing cross-dressing with a killer story... Anyway, I had fun while reading it.