Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Ed Wood Wednesdays: The Wood Pseudonym Odyssey, Part Two by Greg Dziawer

Another piece of the Pete La Roche puzzle has surrfaced.
  
Recently, we shared an article by the mysterious Pete La Roche, a man whose name is often touted as a pseudonym for Edward D. Wood, Jr., from a late 1960s adult mag, and this week we're sharing another La Roche-credited article. Like the piece about William S. Hart, the following article is also about a Western film star and also first appeared in True West magazine in 1971:



Curiously, both articles were soon reprinted in sister Western mags, and both credited to Glenn Shirley. This article about Tim McCoy was reprinted in Golden West in 1974.


The real question here is: did Ed write this? He is credibly connected to the PLR pseudonym, especially for work with a Western aspect. And this McCoy article mentions Ed's childhood hero, Buck Jones. Glenn Shirley - the impossible irony of the appellation has not gone unnoticed - overviewed Buck Jones for True West in the mid '80s, by then decades into a prolific career writing Western historical fact and fiction. A lawman by day, writing was his avocation. The strains come together here. 
Glenn Shirley is not, by the way, Ed. Ed may or may not be Pete La Roche, some of the time, and Glenn Shirley is Pete La Roche some of the time.


There remains another PLR article to consider, as this plot thickens, its existence found by Douglas North, the true pioneer of PLR's connection to Ed Wood. The article "Flickers that Fanned the Flames" appeared in Late Date,  vol. 4 , no. 4, a Parliament News adult mag from 1967. 
We'll take a look at that, and our gut tells us there's more PLR credits out there, in future editions of Ed Wood Wednesdays.