Edward D. Wood Jr.

Hacks are nothing new in Hollywood. Had Edward D. Wood been born a decade or so earlier it's easy to imagine him working out of some Poverty Row outfit in Gower Gulch, competing with the likes of Victor Adamson, Robert J. Horner and Dwain Esper for the title of all-time hack. He would've fit in nicely at Educational Pictures in the early '30s or PRC in the following decade. This post-mortem fame has made him infinitely more famous today than he ever was when alive. On a personal level, Wood was exceedingly complex. He was born on October 10, 1924 in Poughkeepsie, New York, where he lived most of his childhood. He joined the US Marine Corps in 1943 World War II and was, by all accounts, an exemplary soldier, wounded in ferocious combat in the Pacific theater in WW II. Conversely, he claimed to have been wearing a bra and panties under his uniform during a military landing.