Christine Jorgenston (1926-1989 died at 82 from bladder and lung caner) news of operation broke in 1952

Ed Wood, a part of whose life is depicted in the Tim Burton film Ed Wood was born in New York State, served in the Marine Corps in WWII, lost his teeth in one of the battles in the Pacific

An odd ball in many ways he was a transvestite who was heterosexual. His attempts to make films were largely disastrous. His first film feature film was Glen or Glenda, although he had directed one TV program and one short film before.

An avid fan of old movies he befriended the then drug addicted and poverty struck Bela Lugosi whose performance of Dracula seems to have sealed his fate into horror movies. Wood’s friendship with Lugosi led to him using him regularly in film just to help him financially. As a result, Lugosi’s appearance in Glen or Glenda is largely one which was caused by Wood’s desire to help his friend financially and also on the grounds that a name star would help the picture.

Glen or Glenda was the result of a sex change operation in which George William Jorgensen Jr. became Christine Jorgenson after discovering that in Europe such operations were possible. The case got enormous publicity in the papers (possibly due to Christine herself leaking the story)

As a result, George Weiss, a produce of exploitation films wanted to exploit this story. Wood got the job of writing and directing and starring in his film. Weiss was jolted when he saw the film which had transformed itself into a film about transvestites – one of whom has a sex change operation. Weiss may have added some of the sequences in the “dream sequence” in the film The film is very short, running anywhere from 61 to 74 minutes depending on the editing.

Woods’ own transvestism and the problems he had with it (especially relative to his girl friend. Dolores Fuller) are clearly at the root of the films plea for tolerance

The film vacillates wildly between a kind of narrative film and a documentary. The double narration – that of Lugosi with his infamous “Pull the strings” line and that of Timothy Farrell (playing Dr. Allen) although in a strange sense they deal with the idea of some external societal control operating on people (Lugosi) and the more technical medical narrative done by the doctor.

Wood confronts the problems of an extremely low budget film by making extensive use of stock footage of WWII (mirroring both Jorgensen’s and Wood’s own personal backgrounds)

The film’s structure – that of two narrative stories (disguised versions of Wood’s and Jorgensen’s) narrated to a police detective who is interested in the recent suicide of a transvestite – causes the film to slip between narrative and documentary forms. Lugosi’s strange performance as the doctor who comments and partially narrates the story is as strange and most of the others in the film (Lyle Talbot is a well known character actor). Wood himself appears in the film as Glen/Glenda acting under the pseudonym of Daniel Davis and even George Weiss appears briefly in the seen in which the transvestite is found having committed suicide. To some degree the use of friends and associates was in part motivated by financial considerations. Conrad Brooks who was to become a staple in Ed Wood films makes his film debut in Glen or Glenda.

The "dream sequence" which clearly is meant to show Glen/Glenda's relationship with his girlfriend and how she reacts to him veers off in a strange direction which may actually question something about how far tolerence can go (with SM sequences involved) or whether it implies that even there, there is a question about what people enjoy and is it a private thing and therefore outside the scope of the law. Even here in this wild dream sequence one wonders whether or not there is a recognition that even SM may not be what it seems on the surface to outsiders. Other films like Cruising and Night Porter deal with SM relationships in far more complex ways. It is this confused aspect of the film that has given it its reputation as a truly awful film, but the sincerity and the heartfeltness of its plea for tolerance of people who are different seems, for many, to raise the film above being just a "bad film"