Strange Bedfellows (OW and Ed Wood)

[mido505]

Needing some mindless entertainment this afternoon, I sat down to watch Bride of the Monster, my favorite production by the notorious Ed D. Wood, Jr. For some reason, I decided to actually read the credits. Imagine my surprise when I saw that Maurice Seiderman, the brilliant make up artist responsible for Welles' astonishing transformation in Citizen Kane (Welles always joked that Seiderman did his best work not by making him look credibly old, but by making him look like a matinee idol when young), was (along with Louis Haszillo) the make up artist on Bride! Since Bride was released in 1955, and Seiderman did uncredited make up work on Touch of Evil in 1958, I wonder if he ever discussed Ed Wood with Welles? That would make the fictional meeting of the cross-dressing auteur and Orson in Tim Burton's delightful Ed Wood all that more resonant! As a side note, Seiderman also worked with Welles on The Fountain of Youth, and on another classic guilty pleasure, They Saved Hitler's Brain!

[ToddBaesen]

So Maurice Seiderman worked for both the "best" and the "worst" writer-director-actor-producers in the biz!

What's even more interesting is Rick Baker who did the Orson Welles and Bela Lugosi make-up's for ED WOOD is a big fan of Maurice Seiderman's work, especially the work he did making up Welles for Quinlan in TOUCH OF EVIL and has apparently studied it very closely.

[JMcBride]

I think Ed Wood's GLEN OR GLENDA is the epitome of
a personal film, his cri de coeur. So anyone who calls
him the world's worst director is off-beam. Gary Graver
objected to the scene between Ed and Orson in ED WOOD because he said
"Orson hated Musso's." That I consider acceptable
poetic license! I find the scene somewhat charming
-- the meeting of two mavericks who often worked on shoestring
budgets and have been despised by Hollywood for different reasons --
but the part about Heston is, of course, all wrong. It
was Welles's idea to make Heston's character a Mexican.