Edward Wood Jr. was born in Poughkeepsie, New York, to a US Postal Service employee by the same name. The year was 1924 and Wood would grow up during the heyday of pulp fiction, early comic books and dwindling performing arts like Vaudeville.
Ed Wood's Childhood
As he grew, he found himself more and more interested in movies, most notably westerns and early horror pictures. Many times throughout his childhood, Wood was caught skipping school and watching films at the local theater. He even salvaged old prints from garbage cans behind the movie houses, eventually building an extensive collection of odds and ends.
According to many historians, it is believed that Ed was dressed up like a girl by his mother, Lillian. Having always wanted a girl, she put skirts and dresses on the boy until he was 12 years old. This led to a life-long obsession with dressing as a transvestite.
The same year his mother stopped dressing him up, he received a Kodak motion picture camera. Famously, Wood filmed the Hindenburg crossing the Hudson River mere moments before it exploded.
With his interest in the motion picture industry, Ed Wood got a job as a movie usher in his early teen years. He also started a group of singers called “Eddie Wood's Little Splinters.” The group was notable for playing a number of stringed instruments, but failed to garner much success beyond a high school fan base.
Life in the Marines
When none of his plans at a career in entertainment seemed to take root, Wood decided to enlist in the Marines in mid-1941, although he was just 17. Months later, the Japanese attacked the US naval base on Pearl Harbor and the country and young Ed Wood was thrust into World War II.
During his tenure with the Marines, Wood was sent to the Pacific Theater. On November 20, 1943, he joined 35,000 other Marines in amphibious landings on the Tarawa Atoll. This was the second offensive battle fought by the Americans and the force was met by stiff resistance of 4,500 Japanese defenders. The Marines and Navy suffered nearly 5,000 casualties in the three-day battle. Only 17 Japanese were captured, the rest fought to the death. On many occasions, Edward was noted as stating that he wore a brassiere and panties beneath his uniform.
Freak Show and Addiction
Following his honorable discharge from the Corps in 1946, Wood joined a carnival. Utilizing the fact that he was missing a number of teeth and had suffered grotesque wounds to his leg in combat, he took up a position with the freak show. He leveraged his advanced knowledge of the bizarre and exotic past of the carnivals and decided to portray traditional freak characters. His two most famous were the geek, in which he ate the heads off of fake animals, and the bearded lady. With the latter, he played into his transvestitism with women's clothing and prosthetic breasts. Wood would later base a number of his works on his experience with the carnival, most notable was the novel Killer in Drag.
During this period, Wood also developed his obsession for a number of vices. He developed the personality of a womanizer, falling prey to an addiction to sex. Wood also dabbled in number of soft drugs such as marijuana and mescaline. Many believe he also developed his life-long addiction to alcohol during this period. Wood notoriously drank large quantities of hard liquor. Those close to him say it was a combination of memories from the war and a fear of failure that led to his alcoholism.
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