I Watched Football Early the Day I Died: The Lost Ed Wood Frank Leahy Screenplay

By W. Paul Apel

What does Frank Leahy, the legendary win-at-all-costs hall of fame Notre Dame football coach have in common with infamous cross-dressing, counterculture B-movie filmmaker Ed Wood, once voted "worst director of all time"?

Ed Wood wrote a screenplay about him. And it's possibly the most confounding entry on the cult director's otherwise sci-fi, horror and pornography-filled resumé.

For years, there have only been two known connections between Ed Wood and football: the fact that he hated it, and the fact that he was watching it on the last day of his life. So how did an underdog who wore his quirks on his (angora) sleeve end up writing about Knute Rockne's macho protégé? And does Wood's irrepressible personality and unique style make it into Leahy's life story?

Find out the answers to these questions and more as Ed Wood expert W. Paul Apel takes you on a personally guided tour of the never-produced, lost-and-now-found screenplay by Edward D. Wood, Jr.: The Frank Leahy Legend.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: BearManor Media
• Release date: Jul 9, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223394365

Book preview

I Watched Football

Early the Day I Died:

The Lost Ed Wood

Frank Leahy Screenplay

by

W. Paul Apel

with

Greg Javer and Bob Blackburn

The Frank Leahy Legend

screenplay by Edward D. Wood, Jr. based on the book of the

same name by Bernie J. Williams, edited and reissued by

K. Raven Rozier as

Iron Desire: The Legacy of Notre Dame

Football Coach Frank Leahy

I Watched Football Early the Day I Died: The Lost Ed Wood Frank Leahy Screenplay

Copyright ©2023 W. Paul Apel. All Rights Reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, digital, photocopying, or recording, except for in the inclusion in a review, without permission in writing from the publisher.

This book is an independent work of research and commentary and is not sponsored, authorized or endorsed by, or otherwise affiliated with, any motion picture studio or production company affiliated with the films discussed herein. All uses of the name, image, and likeness of any individuals, and all copyrights and trademarks referenced in this book, are for editorial purposes and are pursuant of the Fair Use Doctrine.

Reproduction in whole or in part without the author’s permission is strictly forbidden. Permission is granted to other publications or media to excerpt the contents contained herein for review purposes provided that the correct credit and copyright information is included for any materials reproduced.

Typesetting and layout by PKJ Passion Global

Cover art by Patrick Truby

Published in the USA by

BearManor Media

1317 Edgewater Dr #110

Orlando FL 32804

www.BearManorMedia.com

Softcover Edition

ISBN-10:

ISBN-13: 979-8-88771-211-6

Published in the USA by Bear Manor Media

For Jessica, with love.

Foreword

Poor Eddie... my darling Eddie.

This was how Ed Wood Jr.’s widow and my friend Kathleen O’Hara Wood would occasionally start our regular afternoon chats when I got home to our apartment building in the heart of Hollywood. I had moved there from Seattle in March of 1989 to work in radio. I picked the five-story building near the corner of Franklin and Cahuenga because it was only six blocks or so from where I was going to be working as a board operator at KIIS-FM. It was an old funky building with a mix of young folks trying to break into the film and TV business, older retired folks living on their Social Security pensions, a few drug dealers and, believe it or not, a transvestite hooker or two. The surrounding neighborhood, a few blocks from the heart of the area’s famed Hollywood Blvd., was controlled by the 18th Street Gang. There were gunshots on weekend nights and graffiti was all over the place, but it was cheap and close to work.

I used to run into an elderly lady walking her very old dog now and then and knew she lived in the building. I’m a friendly guy, so I would always say hello and how are you. Once in a while I would walk with her down to the bus stop, she on her way to go shopping and I on the way to my second radio job.

Through a weird set of circumstances I attended an Ed-Wood-A-Thon film festival in 1992, my first immersion into the world of cult film director Edward D. Wood, Jr. While watching a documentary about Ed that had been made a few years earlier I saw a lady interviewed talking about her late husband. The film identified her as Kathy Wood – Ed Wood’s widow. She looked very familiar so when I got home from the film festival I checked the mailbox in the lobby for the lady I saw walking her dog all the time, and it said K. Wood. Thus began my still continuing journey in the wild and wacky world of Edward D. Wood, Jr.

I became friends with Kathy when I helped her get an entertainment lawyer to help her deal with Disney film studios when the 1994 Johnny Depp/Tim Burton film Ed Wood was in production. She was in her early 70s. I would take her grocery shopping and we’d even go see a movie from time to time. Her love of movies was one of the things that had originally attracted her to Ed Wood. Since I have no immediate family in L.A. and no romantic entanglements, I would usually go down and visit with her for an hour or two in the late afternoon, early evening after I got home from my radio job. It was then that Kathy would start talking, sometimes about herself, but mainly about her beloved Eddie.

She talked about their life together from mid 1956 when they first met and Ed was on the rebound after his failed marriage to Norma McCarty, which ended abruptly when she discovered that Ed was a cross dresser, to Ed’s tragic passing from a heart attack only three days after their eviction from their Yucca St. apartment which was just over the back fence from where our building was. She knew the neighborhood, and still had a few friends in it, which was why she chose to move back nearby after his death. She talked about their life together, how they met, fell in love, got married, about Ed’s work in films, his dreams, their hopes, their ups but mainly their downs, the drinking, the arguments and the trying to stay one step ahead of the bill collectors and landlords until December 7th 1978 when time ran out and they were evicted from their hovel of an apartment where they were six months overdue on their rent.

The sheriffs came in and threw Ed, Kathy and their scant possessions out on the sidewalk. All they had left was a small suitcase, filled with some papers including a manuscript for a book Ed had been working on since 1965 called Hollywood Rat Race and the script for a film near and dear to his heart titled I Woke Up Early the Day I Died.

In all of our many conversations, Kathy never mentioned the projects that Ed was working on in his later days, in the early 1970s up until their eviction. She knew about some of what he did, like his writing for Bernie Bloom at Pendulum Publishing where Ed cranked out short stories, articles and copy for pictorials, and Ed’s work on some of the adult films that Bernie and his associates were starting to distribute. Ed was an early pioneer in the pornography business, but he kept much of this hidden from Kathy.

During those years they didn’t go out much, mainly watching old movies on TV with some of their friends. Ed would also show a copy of Plan 9 From Outer Space on a projector he had kept. But Kathy never said anything about Ed and sports, like baseball, tennis, golf, or football. I don’t think Ed was much into sports as from what I can tell he didn’t play them when he was young. During his teenage high school years he much preferred watching movies at the local Poughkeepsie, N.Y. Bardovan Theater where, much to his delight, he eventually got a job as an usher, getting to see all his favorite films and actors not only for free, but getting paid. He also collected lobby cards and posters. He was into radio back in the 1930s, then at its height, as well as comic books and adventure stories. There was no time for or interest in sports as far as can be discerned. Plus, who knows if he was already wearing girls’ undergarments by then, which he certainly did for most of his adult life. If so, he wouldn’t have been able to undress in an all male locker room. It was much better to wear such things under an usher’s uniform.

Which is why the discovery of the script The Frank Leahy Legend comes as a shock. I wonder if Kathy ever knew about it? I would think she would have as it was a job for hire separate from Ed’s other work at Pendulum or the occasional scripts he’d sell to Stephen Apostolof which were more in the R rated category of films. A job to create a script from a book already written and published based on a legendary Notre Dame football player and coach just sounds too wild on the surface, but during those dire times I am sure whatever work Ed could get he and Kathy were grateful for, even though in the long run time ran out. I will let Greg and Paul delve into the writing, the style and the things that make this such a Woodian endeavor. I just wanted to give a little background into the lives of Ed and Kathy Wood.

In the early 2000s,