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Economies of scale

In microeconomics, economies of scale are the cost advantages that enterprises obtain due to their scale of operation, and are typically measured by the amount of output produced per unit of time. A decrease in cost per unit of output enables an increase in scale that is, increased production with lowered cost. At the basis of economies of scale, there may be technical, statistical, organizational or related factors to the degree of market control.

Economies of scale arise in a variety of organizational and business situations and at various levels, such as a production, plant or an entire enterprise. When average costs start falling as output increases, then economies of scale occur. Some economies of scale, such as capital cost of manufacturing facilities and friction loss of transportation and industrial equipment, have a physical or engineering basis. The economic concept dates back to Adam Smith and the idea of obtaining larger production returns through the use of division of labor. Diseconomies of scale are the opposite.

Economies of scale often have limits, such as passing the optimum design point where costs per additional unit begin to increase. Common limits include exceeding the nearby raw material supply, such as wood in the lumber, pulp and paper industry. A common limit for a low cost per unit weight commodities is saturating the regional market, thus having to ship products uneconomic distances. Other limits include using energy less efficiently or having a higher defect rate.

Large producers are usually efficient at long runs of a product grade (a commodity) and find it costly to switch grades frequently. They will, therefore, avoid specialty grades even though they have higher margins. Often smaller (usually older) manufacturing facilities remain viable by changing from commodity-grade production to specialty products. Economies of scale must be distinguished from economies stemming from an increase in the production of a given plant. When a plant is used below its optimal production capacity, increases in its degree of utilization bring about decreases in the total average cost of production. Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen (1966) and Nicholas Kaldor (1972) both argue that these economies should not be treated as economies of scale.

Overview
The simple meaning of economies of scale is doing things more efficiently with increasing size. Common sources of economies of scale are purchasing (bulk buying of materials through long-term contracts), managerial (increasing the specialization of managers), financial (obtaining lower-interest charges when borrowing from banks and having access to a greater range of financial instruments), marketing (spreading the cost of advertising over a greater range of output in media markets), and technological (taking advantage of returns to scale in the production function). Each of these factors reduces the long run average costs (LRAC) of production by shifting the short-run average total cost (SRATC) curve down and to the right.

Economies of scale is a concept that may explain patterns in international trade or in the number of firms in a given market. The exploitation of economies of scale helps explain why companies grow large in some industries. It is also a justification for free trade policies, since some economies of scale may require a larger market than is possible within a particular country—for example, it would not be efficient for Liechtenstein to have its own carmaker if they only sold to their local market. A lone carmaker may be profitable, but even more so if they exported cars to global markets in addition to selling to the local market. Economies of scale also play a role in a "natural monopoly". There is a distinction between two types of economies of scale: internal and external. An industry that exhibits an internal economy of scale is one where the costs of production fall when the number of firms in the industry drops, but the remaining firms increase their production to match previous levels. Conversely, an industry exhibits an external economy of scale when costs drop due to the introduction of more firms, thus allowing for more efficient use of specialized services and machinery.

Economies of scale exist whenever the total cost of producing two quantities of a product X is lower when a single firm instead of two separate firms produce it. See Economies of scope.

 * $$ TC((Q_1 + Q_2)X) < TC(Q_1X) + TC(Q_2X)$$

Physical and engineering basis: economies of increased dimension
Some of the economies of scale recognized in engineering have a physical basis, such as the square–cube law, by which the surface of a vessel increases by the square of the dimensions while the volume increases by the cube. This law has a direct effect on the capital cost of such things as buildings, factories, pipelines, ships and airplanes.

In structural engineering, the strength of beams increases with the cube of the thickness.

Drag loss of vehicles like aircraft or ships generally increases less than proportional with increasing cargo volume, although the physical details can be quite complicated. Therefore, making them larger usually results in less fuel consumption per ton of cargo at a given speed.

Heat loss from industrial processes vary per unit of volume for pipes, tanks and other vessels in a relationship somewhat similar to the square–cube law. In some productions, an increase in the size of the plant reduces the average variable cost, thanks to the energy savings resulting from the lower dispersion of heat.

Economies of increased dimension are often misinterpreted because of the confusion between indivisibility and three-dimensionality of space. This confusion arises from the fact that three-dimensional production elements, such as pipes and ovens, once installed and operating, are always technically indivisible. However, the economies of scale due to the increase in size do not depend on indivisibility but exclusively on the three-dimensionality of space. Indeed, indivisibility only entails the existence of economies of scale produced by the balancing of productive capacities, considered above; or of increasing returns in the utilisation of a single plant, due to its more efficient use as the quantity produced increases. However, this latter phenomenon has nothing to do with the economies of scale which, by definition, are linked to the use of a larger plant.

Economies in holding stocks and reserves
At the base of economies of scale there are also returns to scale linked to statistical factors. In fact, the greater of the number of resources involved, the smaller, in proportion, is the quantity of reserves necessary to cope with unforeseen contingencies (for instance, machine spare parts, inventories, circulating capital, etc.).

Transaction economies
One of the reasons firms appear is to reduce transaction costs. A larger scale generally determines greater bargaining power over input prices and therefore benefits from pecuniary economies in terms of purchasing raw materials and intermediate goods compared to companies that make orders for smaller amounts. In this case, we speak of pecuniary economies, to highlight the fact that nothing changes from the "physical" point of view of the returns to scale. Furthermore, supply contracts entail fixed costs which lead to decreasing average costs if the scale of production increases. This is of important utility in the study of corporate finance.

Economies deriving from the balancing of production capacity
Economies of productive capacity balancing derives from the possibility that a larger scale of production involves a more efficient use of the production capacities of the individual phases of the production process. If the inputs are indivisible and complementary, a small scale may be subject to idle times or to the underutilization of the productive capacity of some sub-processes. A higher production scale can make the different production capacities compatible. The reduction in machinery idle times is crucial in the case of a high cost of machinery.

Economies resulting from the division of labour and the use of superior techniques
A larger scale allows for a more efficient division of labour. The economies of division of labour derive from the increase in production speed, from the possibility of using specialized personnel and adopting more efficient techniques. An increase in the division of labour inevitably leads to changes in the quality of inputs and outputs.

Managerial economics
Many administrative and organizational activities are mostly cognitive and, therefore, largely independent of the scale of production. When the size of the company and the division of labour increase, there are a number of advantages due to the possibility of making organizational management more effective and perfecting accounting and control techniques. Furthermore, the procedures and routines that turned out to be the best can be reproduced by managers at different times and places.

Learning and growth economies
Learning and growth economies are at the base of dynamic economies of scale, associated with the process of growth of the scale dimension and not to the dimension of scale per se. Learning by doing implies improvements in the ability to perform and promotes the introduction of incremental innovations with a progressive lowering of average costs. Learning economies are directly proportional to the cumulative production (experience curve). Growth economies emerge if a company gains an added benefit by expanding its size. These economies are due to the presence of some resource or competence that is not fully utilized, or to the existence of specific market positions that create a differential advantage in expanding the size of the firms. That growth economies disappear once the scale size expansion process is completed. For example, a company that owns a supermarket chain benefits from an economy of growth if, opening a new supermarket, it gets an increase in the price of the land it owns around the new supermarket. The sale of these lands to economic operators, who wish to open shops near the supermarket, allows the company in question to make a profit, making a profit on the revaluation of the value of building land.

Capital and operating cost
Overall costs of capital projects are known to be subject to economies of scale. A crude estimate is that if the capital cost for a given sized piece of equipment is known, changing the size will change the capital cost by the 0.6 power of the capacity ratio (the point six to the power rule).

In estimating capital cost, it typically requires an insignificant amount of labor, and possibly not much more in materials, to install a larger capacity electrical wire or pipe having significantly greater capacity.

The cost of a unit of capacity of many types of equipment, such as electric motors, centrifugal pumps, diesel and gasoline engines, decreases as size increases. Also, the efficiency increases with size.

Crew size and other operating costs for ships, trains and airplanes
Operating crew size for ships, airplanes, trains, etc., does not increase in direct proportion to capacity. (Operating crew consists of pilots, co-pilots, navigators, etc. and does not include passenger service personnel.) Many aircraft models were significantly lengthened or "stretched" to increase payload.

Many manufacturing facilities, especially those making bulk materials like chemicals, refined petroleum products, cement and paper, have labor requirements that are not greatly influenced by changes in plant capacity. This is because labor requirements of automated processes tend to be based on the complexity of the operation rather than production rate, and many manufacturing facilities have nearly the same basic number of processing steps and pieces of equipment, regardless of production capacity.

Economical use of byproducts
Karl Marx noted that large scale manufacturing allowed economical use of products that would otherwise be waste. Marx cited the chemical industry as an example, which today along with petrochemicals, remains highly dependent on turning various residual reactant streams into salable products. In the pulp and paper industry, it is economical to burn bark and fine wood particles to produce process steam and to recover the spent pulping chemicals for conversion back to a usable form.

Economies of scale and the size of exporter
Large and more productive firms typically generate enough net revenues abroad to cover the fixed costs associated with exporting. However, in the event of trade liberalization, resources will have to be reallocated toward the more productive firm, which raises the average productivity within the industry.

Firms differ in their labor productivity and the quality of their products, so more efficient firms are more likely to generate more net income abroad and thus become exporters of their goods or services. There is a correlating relationship between a firm's total sales and underlying efficiency. Firms with higher productivity will always outperform a firm with lower productivity which will lead to lower sales. Through trade liberalization, organizations are able to drop their trade costs due to export growth. However, trade liberalization does not account for any tariff reduction or shipping logistics improvement. However, total economies of scale is based on the exporters individual frequency and size. So large-scale companies are more likely to have a lower cost per unit as opposed to small-scale companies. Likewise, high trade frequency companies are able to reduce their overall cost attributed per unit when compared to those of low-trade frequency companies.

Economies of scale and returns to scale
Economies of scale is related to and can easily be confused with the theoretical economic notion of returns to scale. Where economies of scale refer to a firm's costs, returns to scale describe the relationship between inputs and outputs in a long-run (all inputs variable) production function. A production function has constant returns to scale if increasing all inputs by some proportion results in output increasing by that same proportion. Returns are decreasing if, say, doubling inputs results in less than double the output, and increasing if more than double the output. If a mathematical function is used to represent the production function, and if that production function is homogeneous, returns to scale are represented by the degree of homogeneity of the function. Homogeneous production functions with constant returns to scale are first degree homogeneous, increasing returns to scale are represented by degrees of homogeneity greater than one, and decreasing returns to scale by degrees of homogeneity less than one.

If the firm is a perfect competitor in all input markets, and thus the per-unit prices of all its inputs are unaffected by how much of the inputs the firm purchases, then it can be shown that at a particular level of output, the firm has economies of scale if and only if it has increasing returns to scale, has diseconomies of scale if and only if it has decreasing returns to scale, and has neither economies nor diseconomies of scale if it has constant returns to scale. In this case, with perfect competition in the output market the long-run equilibrium will involve all firms operating at the minimum point of their long-run average cost curves (i.e., at the borderline between economies and diseconomies of scale).

If, however, the firm is not a perfect competitor in the input markets, then the above conclusions are modified. For example, if there are increasing returns to scale in some range of output levels, but the firm is so big in one or more input markets that increasing its purchases of an input drives up the input's per-unit cost, then the firm could have diseconomies of scale in that range of output levels. Conversely, if the firm is able to get bulk discounts of an input, then it could have economies of scale in some range of output levels even if it has decreasing returns in production in that output range.

In essence, returns to scale refer to the variation in the relationship between inputs and output. This relationship is therefore expressed in "physical" terms. But when talking about economies of scale, the relation taken into consideration is that between the average production cost and the dimension of scale. Economies of scale therefore are affected by variations in input prices. If input prices remain the same as their quantities purchased by the firm increase, the notions of increasing returns to scale and economies of scale can be considered equivalent. However, if input prices vary in relation to their quantities purchased by the company, it is necessary to distinguish between returns to scale and economies of scale. The concept of economies of scale is more general than that of returns to scale since it includes the possibility of changes in the price of inputs when the quantity purchased of inputs varies with changes in the scale of production.

The literature assumed that due to the competitive nature of reverse auctions, and in order to compensate for lower prices and lower margins, suppliers seek higher volumes to maintain or increase the total revenue. Buyers, in turn, benefit from the lower transaction costs and economies of scale that result from larger volumes. In part as a result, numerous studies have indicated that the procurement volume must be sufficiently high to provide sufficient profits to attract enough suppliers, and provide buyers with enough savings to cover their additional costs.

However, Shalev and Asbjornse found, in their research based on 139 reverse auctions conducted in the public sector by public sector buyers, that the higher auction volume, or economies of scale, did not lead to better success of the auction. They found that auction volume did not correlate with competition, nor with the number of bidders, suggesting that auction volume does not promote additional competition. They noted, however, that their data included a wide range of products, and the degree of competition in each market varied significantly, and offer that further research on this issue should be conducted to determine whether these findings remain the same when purchasing the same product for both small and high volumes. Keeping competitive factors constant, increasing auction volume may further increase competition.

Economies of scale in classical economists
The first systematic analysis of the advantages of the division of labour capable of generating economies of scale, both in a static and dynamic sense, was that contained in the famous First Book of Wealth of Nations (1776) by Adam Smith, generally considered the founder of political economy as an autonomous discipline.

John Stuart Mill, in Chapter IX of the First Book of his Principles, referring to the work of Charles Babbage (On the economics of machines and manufactories), widely analyses the relationships between increasing returns and scale of production all inside the production unit.

Economies of scale in Marx and distributional consequences
In Das Kapital (1867), Karl Marx, referring to Charles Babbage, extensively analyzed economies of scale and concludes that they are one of the factors underlying the ever-increasing concentration of capital. Marx observes that in the capitalist system the technical conditions of the work process are continuously revolutionized in order to increase the surplus by improving the productive force of work. According to Marx, with the cooperation of many workers brings about an economy in the use of the means of production and an increase in productivity due to the increase in the division of labour. Furthermore, the increase in the size of the machinery allows significant savings in construction, installation and operation costs. The tendency to exploit economies of scale entails a continuous increase in the volume of production which, in turn, requires a constant expansion of the size of the market. However, if the market does not expand at the same rate as production increases, overproduction crises can occur. According to Marx the capitalist system is therefore characterized by two tendencies, connected to economies of scale: towards a growing concentration and towards economic crises due to overproduction.

In his 1844 Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, Karl Marx observes that economies of scale have historically been associated with an increasing concentration of private wealth and have been used to justify such concentration. Marx points out that concentrated private ownership of large-scale economic enterprises is a historically contingent fact, and not essential to the nature of such enterprises. In the case of agriculture, for example, Marx calls attention to the sophistical nature of the arguments used to justify the system of concentrated ownership of land:

 * As for large landed property, its defenders have always sophistically identified the economic advantages offered by large-scale agriculture with large-scale landed property, as if it were not precisely as a result of the abolition of property that this advantage, for one thing, received its greatest possible extension, and, for another, only then would be of social benefit.

Instead of concentrated private ownership of land, Marx recommends that economies of scale should instead be realized by associations:

 * Association, applied to land, shares the economic advantage of large-scale landed property, and first brings to realization the original tendency inherent in land-division, namely, equality. In the same way association re-establishes, now on a rational basis, no longer mediated by serfdom, overlordship and the silly mysticism of property, the intimate ties of man with the earth, for the earth ceases to be an object of huckstering, and through free labor and free enjoyment becomes once more a true personal property of man.

Economies of scale in Marshall
Alfred Marshall notes that Antoine Augustin Cournot and others have considered "the internal economies [...] apparently without noticing that their premises lead inevitably to the conclusion that, whatever firm first gets a good start will obtain a  monopoly of the whole business of its trade … ". Marshall believes that there are factors that limit this trend toward monopoly, and in particular:
 * the death of the founder of the firm and the difficulty that the successors may have inherited his/her entrepreneurial skills;
 * the difficulty of reaching new markets for one's goods;
 * the growing difficulty of being able to adapt to changes in demand and to new techniques of production;
 * The effects of external economies, that is the particular type of economies of scale connected not to the production scale of an individual production unit, but to that of an entire sector.

Sraffa's critique
Piero Sraffa observes that Marshall, in order to justify the operation of the law of increasing returns without it coming into conflict with the hypothesis of free competition, tended to highlight the advantages of external economies linked to an increase in the production of an entire sector of activity. However, "those economies which are external from the point of view of the individual firm, but internal as regards the industry in its aggregate, constitute precisely the class which is most seldom to be met with." "In any case - Sraffa notes – in so far as external economies of the kind in question exist, they are not linked to be called forth by small increases in production," as required by the marginalist theory of price. Sraffa points out that, in the equilibrium theory of the individual industries, the presence of external economies cannot play an important role because this theory is based on marginal changes in the quantities produced.

Sraffa concludes that, if the hypothesis of perfect competition is maintained, economies of scale should be excluded. He then suggests the possibility of abandoning the assumption of free competition to address the study of firms that have their own particular market. This stimulated a whole series of studies on the cases of imperfect competition in Cambridge. However, in the succeeding years Sraffa followed a different path of research that brought him to write and publish his main work Production of commodities by means of commodities. In this book, Sraffa determines relative prices assuming no changes in output, so that no question arises as to the variation or constancy of returns.

Economies of scale and the tendency towards monopoly: "Cournot's dilemma"
It has been noted that in many industrial sectors there are numerous companies with different sizes and organizational structures, despite the presence of significant economies of scale. This contradiction, between the empirical evidence and the logical incompatibility between economies of scale and competition, has been called the 'Cournot dilemma'. As Mario Morroni observes, Cournot's dilemma appears to be unsolvable if we only consider the effects of economies of scale on the dimension of scale. If, on the other hand, the analysis is expanded, including the aspects concerning the development of knowledge and the organization of transactions, it is possible to conclude that economies of scale do not always lead to monopoly. In fact, the competitive advantages deriving from the development of the firm's capabilities and from the management of transactions with suppliers and customers can counterbalance those provided by the scale, thus counteracting the tendency towards a monopoly inherent in economies of scale. In other words, the heterogeneity of the organizational forms and of the size of the companies operating in a sector of activity can be determined by factors regarding the quality of the products, the production flexibility, the contractual methods, the learning opportunities, the heterogeneity of preferences of customers who express a differentiated demand with respect to the quality of the product, and assistance before and after the sale. Very different organizational forms can therefore co-exist in the same sector of activity, even in the presence of economies of scale, such as, for example, flexible production on a large scale, small-scale flexible production, mass production, industrial production based on rigid technologies associated with flexible organizational systems and traditional artisan production. The considerations regarding economies of scale are therefore important, but not sufficient to explain the size of the company and the market structure. It is also necessary to take into account the factors linked to the development of capabilities and the management of transaction costs.

External economies of scale
External economies of scale tend to be more prevalent than internal economies of scale. Through the external economies of scale, the entry of new firms benefits all existing competitors as it creates greater competition and also reduces the average cost for all firms as opposed to internal economies of scale which only allows benefits to the individual firm. Advantages that arise from external economies of scale include;
 * Expansion of the industry.
 * Benefits most or all of the firms within the industry.
 * Can lead to rapid growth of local governments.

Purchasing
Firms are able to lower their average costs by buying their inputs required for the production process in bulk or from special wholesalers.

Managerial
Firms might be able to lower their average costs by improving their management structure within the firm. This can range from hiring better skilled or more experienced managers from the industry.

Technological
Technological advancements change production processes and subsequently reduce the overall cost per unit. Tim Hindle argues that the rollout of the internet "has completely reshaped the assumptions underlying economies of scale".

General and cited references

 * New ed. with Appendices by Léon Walras, Joseph Bertrand and Vilfredo Pareto, Introduction and notes by Georges Lutfalla, Paris: Librairie des Sciences Politiques et Sociales Marcel Rivière, 1938. English translation: Repr. New York: A.M. Kelley, 1971.
 * Repr. 1997.
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title: Economies of scale


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Elie Wiesel

Eliezer "Elie" Wiesel ( or  ;   אליעזר "אלי" װיזל; September 30, 1928 – July 2, 2016) was a Romanian-born American writer, professor, political activist, Nobel laureate, and Holocaust survivor. He authored 57 books, written mostly in French and English, including Night, a work based on his experiences as a Jewish prisoner in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps.

In his political activities Wiesel became a regular speaker on the subject of the Holocaust and remained a strong defender of human rights during his lifetime. He also advocated for many other causes like the state of Israel and against Hamas and victims of oppression including Soviet and Ethiopian Jews, the apartheid in South Africa, the Bosnian genocide, Sudan, the Kurds and the Armenian genocide, Argentina's Desaparecidos or Nicaragua's Miskito people.

He was a professor of the humanities at Boston University, which created the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies in his honor. He was involved with Jewish causes and human rights causes and helped establish the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

Wiesel was awarded various prestigious awards including the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. He was a founding board member of the New York Human Rights Foundation and remained active in it throughout his life.

Early life
Eliezer Wiesel was born in Sighet (now Sighetu Marmației), Maramureș, in the Carpathian Mountains of Romania. His parents were Sarah Feig and Shlomo Wiesel. At home, Wiesel's family spoke Yiddish most of the time, but also German, Hungarian, and Romanian. Wiesel's mother, Sarah, was the daughter of Dodye Feig, a Vizhnitz Hasid and farmer from the nearby village of Bocskó. Dodye was active and trusted within the community.

Wiesel's father, Shlomo, instilled a strong sense of humanism in his son, encouraging him to learn Hebrew and to read literature, whereas his mother encouraged him to study the Torah. Wiesel said his father represented reason, while his mother Sarah promoted faith. Wiesel was instructed that his genealogy traced back to Rabbi Schlomo Yitzhaki (Rashi), and was a descendant of Rabbi Yeshayahu ben Abraham Horovitz ha-Levi.

Wiesel had three siblings—older sisters Beatrice and Hilda, and younger sister Tzipora. Beatrice and Hilda survived the war, and were reunited with Wiesel at a French orphanage. They eventually emigrated to North America, with Beatrice moving to Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Tzipora, Shlomo, and Sarah did not survive the Holocaust.

Imprisonment and orphaning during the Holocaust

In March 1944, Germany occupied Hungary, thus extending the Holocaust into Northern Transylvania as well. Wiesel was 15, and he, with his family, along with the rest of the town's Jewish population, was placed in one of the two confinement ghettos set up in Máramarossziget (Sighet), the town where he had been born and raised. In May 1944, the Hungarian authorities, under German pressure, began to deport the Jewish community to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where up to 90 percent of the people were murdered on arrival.

Immediately after they were sent to Auschwitz, his mother and his younger sister were murdered. Wiesel and his father were selected to perform labor so long as they remained able-bodied, after which they were to be murdered in the gas chambers. Wiesel and his father were later deported to the concentration camp at Buchenwald. Until that transfer, he admitted to Oprah Winfrey, his primary motivation for trying to survive Auschwitz was knowing that his father was still alive: "I knew that if I died, he would die." After they were taken to Buchenwald, his father died before the camp was liberated. In Night, Wiesel recalled the shame he felt when he heard his father being beaten and was unable to help.

Wiesel was tattooed with inmate number "A-7713" on his left arm. The camp was liberated by the U.S. Third Army on April 11, 1945, when they were just prepared to be evacuated from Buchenwald.

France
After World War II ended and Wiesel was freed, he joined a transport of 1,000 child survivors of Buchenwald to Ecouis, France, where the Œuvre de secours aux enfants (OSE) had established a rehabilitation center. Wiesel joined a smaller group of 90 to 100 boys from Orthodox homes who wanted kosher facilities and a higher level of religious observance; they were cared for in a home in Ambloy under the directorship of Judith Hemmendinger. This home was later moved to Taverny and operated until 1947.

Afterwards, Wiesel traveled to Paris where he learned French and studied literature, philosophy and psychology at the Sorbonne. He heard lectures by philosopher Martin Buber and existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre and he spent his evenings reading works by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Franz Kafka, and Thomas Mann.

By the time he was 19, he had begun working as a journalist, writing in French, while also teaching Hebrew and working as a choirmaster. He wrote for Israeli and French newspapers, including Tsien in Kamf (in Yiddish).

In 1946, after learning of the Irgun's bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, Wiesel made an unsuccessful attempt to join the underground Zionist movement. In 1948, he translated articles from Hebrew into Yiddish for Irgun periodicals, but never became a member of the organization. In 1949, he traveled to Israel as a correspondent for the French newspaper L'arche. He then was hired as Paris correspondent for the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, subsequently becoming its roaming international correspondent.

For ten years after the war, Wiesel refused to write about or discuss his experiences during the Holocaust. He began to reconsider his decision after a meeting with the French author François Mauriac, the 1952 Nobel Laureate in Literature who eventually became Wiesel's close friend. Mauriac was a devout Christian who had fought in the French Resistance during the war. He compared Wiesel to "Lazarus rising from the dead", and saw from Wiesel's tormented eyes, "the death of God in the soul of a child". Mauriac persuaded him to begin writing about his harrowing experiences.

Wiesel first wrote the 900-page memoir Un di velt hot geshvign (And the World Remained Silent) in Yiddish, which was published in abridged form in Buenos Aires. Wiesel rewrote a shortened version of the manuscript in French, La Nuit, in 1955. It was translated into English as Night in 1960. The book sold few copies after its initial publication, but still attracted interest from reviewers, leading to television interviews with Wiesel and meetings with writers such as Saul Bellow.

As its profile rose, Night was eventually translated into 30 languages with ten million copies sold in the United States. At one point film director Orson Welles wanted to make it into a feature film, but Wiesel refused, feeling that his memoir would lose its meaning if it were told without the silences in between his words. Oprah Winfrey made it a spotlight selection for her book club in 2006.

United States
In 1955, Wiesel moved to New York as foreign correspondent for the Israel daily, Yediot Ahronot. In 1969, he married Austrian Marion Erster Rose, who also translated many of his books. They had one son, Shlomo Elisha Wiesel, named after Wiesel's father.

In the U.S., he eventually wrote over 40 books, most of them non-fiction Holocaust literature, and novels. As an author, he was awarded a number of literary prizes and is considered among the most important in describing the Holocaust from a highly personal perspective. As a result, some historians credited Wiesel with giving the term Holocaust its present meaning, although he did not feel that the word adequately described that historical event. In 1975, he co-founded the magazine Moment with writer Leonard Fein.

The 1979 book and play The Trial of God are said to have been based on his real-life Auschwitz experience of witnessing three Jews who, close to death, conduct a trial against God, under the accusation that He has been oppressive towards the Jewish people.

Wiesel also played a role in the initial success of The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski by endorsing it before it became known the book was fiction and, in the sense that it was presented as all Kosinski's true experience, a hoax.

Wiesel published two volumes of memoirs. The first, All Rivers Run to the Sea, was published in 1994 and covered his life up to the year 1969. The second, titled And the Sea is Never Full and published in 1999, covered the years from 1969 to 1999.

Political activism
Wiesel and his wife, Marion, started the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity in 1986. He served as chairman of the President's Commission on the Holocaust (later renamed the US Holocaust Memorial Council) from 1978 to 1986, spearheading the building of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Sigmund Strochlitz was his close friend and confidant during these years.

The Holocaust Memorial Museum gives the Elie Wiesel Award to "internationally prominent individuals whose actions have advanced the Museum's vision of a world where people confront hatred, prevent genocide, and promote human dignity". The Foundation had invested its endowment in money manager Bernard L. Madoff's investment Ponzi scheme, costing the Foundation $15 million and Wiesel and his wife much of their own personal savings.

Support for Israeli government policy
In 1982, at the request of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, Wiesel agreed to resign from his position as chairman of a planned international conference on the Holocaust and the Armenian genocide. Wiesel then worked with the Foreign Ministry in its attempts to get the conference either canceled or to remove all discussion of the Armenian genocide from it, and to those ends he provided the Foreign Ministry with internal documents on the conference's planning and lobbied fellow academics to not attend the conference.

During his lifetime, Wiesel had deflected questions on the topic of the Israeli settlements, claiming to abstain from commenting on Israel's internal debates. According to Hussein Ibish, despite this position, Wiesel had gone on record as supporting the idea of expanding Jewish settlements into the Palestinian territories conquered by Israel during the 6 Day War; such settlements are considered illegal by the international community.

Awards and activism
Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 for speaking out against violence, repression, and racism. The Norwegian Nobel Committee described Wiesel as "one of the most important spiritual leaders and guides in an age when violence, repression, and racism continue to characterize the world" and called him a "messenger to mankind". It also stressed that Wiesel's commitment originated in the sufferings of the Jewish people but that he expanded it to embrace all repressed peoples and races.

In his acceptance speech he delivered a message "of peace, atonement, and human dignity". He explained his feelings: "Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant."

He received many other prizes and honors for his work, including the Congressional Gold Medal in 1985, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and The International Center in New York's Award of Excellence. He was also elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1996.

Wiesel co-founded Moment magazine with Leonard Fein in 1975. They founded the magazine to provide a voice for American Jews. He was also a member of the International Advisory Board of NGO Monitor.

A staunch opponent of the death penalty, Wiesel stated that he thought that even Adolf Eichmann should not have been executed.

In April 1999, Wiesel delivered the speech "The Perils of Indifference" in Washington D.C., criticizing the people and countries who chose to be indifferent while the Holocaust was happening. He defined indifference as being neutral between two sides, which, in this case, amounts to overlooking the victims of the Holocaust. Throughout the speech, he expressed the view that a little bit of attention, either positive or negative, is better than no attention at all.

In 2003, he discovered and publicized the fact that at least 280,000 Romanian and Ukrainian Jews, along with other groups, were massacred in Romanian-run death camps.

In 2005, he gave a speech at the opening ceremony of the new building of Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust History Museum: "I know what people say – it is so easy. Those that were there won't agree with that statement. The statement is: it was man's inhumanity to man. NO! It was man's inhumanity to Jews! Jews were not killed because they were human beings. In the eyes of the killers they were not human beings! They were Jews!"

In early 2006, Wiesel accompanied Oprah Winfrey as she visited Auschwitz, a visit which was broadcast as part of The Oprah Winfrey Show. On November 30, 2006, Wiesel received a knighthood in London in recognition of his work toward raising Holocaust education in the United Kingdom.

In September 2006, he appeared before the UN Security Council with actor George Clooney to call attention to the humanitarian crisis in Darfur. When Wiesel died, Clooney wrote, "We had a champion who carried our pain, our guilt, and our responsibility on his shoulders for generations."

In 2007, Wiesel was awarded the Dayton Literary Peace Prize's Lifetime Achievement Award. That same year, the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity issued a letter condemning Armenian genocide denial, a letter that was signed by 53 Nobel laureates including Wiesel. Wiesel repeatedly called Turkey's 90-year-old campaign to downplay its actions during the Armenian genocide a double killing.

In 2009, Wiesel criticized the Vatican for lifting the excommunication of controversial bishop Richard Williamson, a member of the Society of Saint Pius X. The excommunication was later reimposed.

In June 2009, Wiesel accompanied US President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel as they toured the Buchenwald concentration camp. Wiesel was an adviser at the Gatestone Institute. In 2010, Wiesel accepted a five-year appointment as a Distinguished Presidential Fellow at Chapman University in Orange County, California. In that role, he made a one-week visit to Chapman annually to meet with students and offer his perspective on subjects ranging from Holocaust history to religion, languages, literature, law and music.

In July 2009, Wiesel announced his support to the minority Tamils in Sri Lanka. He said that, "Wherever minorities are being persecuted, we must raise our voices to protest ... The Tamil people are being disenfranchised and victimized by the Sri Lanka authorities. This injustice must stop. The Tamil people must be allowed to live in peace and flourish in their homeland."

In 2009, Wiesel returned to Hungary for his first visit since the Holocaust. During this visit, Wiesel participated in a conference at the Upper House Chamber of the Hungarian Parliament, met Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai and President László Sólyom, and made a speech to the approximately 10,000 participants of an anti-racist gathering held in Faith Hall. However, in 2012, he protested against "the whitewashing" of Hungary's involvement in the Holocaust, and he gave up the Great Cross award he had received from the Hungarian government.

Wiesel was active in trying to prevent Iran from making nuclear weapons, stating that, "The words and actions of the leadership of Iran leave no doubt as to their intentions". He also condemned Hamas for the "use of children as human shields" during the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict by running an ad in several large newspapers. The Times refused to run the advertisement, saying, "The opinion being expressed is too strong, and too forcefully made, and will cause concern amongst a significant number of Times readers."

Wiesel often emphasized the Jewish connection to Jerusalem, and criticized the Obama administration for pressuring Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to halt East Jerusalem Israeli settlement construction. He stated that "Jerusalem is above politics. It is mentioned more than six hundred times in Scripture—and not a single time in the Koran ... It belongs to the Jewish people and is much more than a city".

Teaching
Wiesel held the position of Andrew Mellon Professor of the Humanities at Boston University from 1976, teaching in both its religion and philosophy departments. He became a close friend of the president and chancellor John Silber. The university created the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies in his honor. From 1972 to 1976 Wiesel was a Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York and member of the American Federation of Teachers.

In 1982 he served as the first Henry Luce Visiting Scholar in Humanities and Social Thought at Yale University. He also co-instructed Winter Term (January) courses at Eckerd College, St. Petersburg, Florida. From 1997 to 1999 he was Ingeborg Rennert Visiting Professor of Judaic Studies at Barnard College of Columbia University.

Personal life
In 1969 he married Marion Erster Rose, who originally was from Austria and also translated many of his books. They had one son, Shlomo Elisha Wiesel, named after Wiesel's father. The family lived in Greenwich, Connecticut.

Wiesel was attacked in a San Francisco hotel by 22-year-old Holocaust denier Eric Hunt in February 2007, but was not injured. Hunt was arrested the following month and charged with multiple offenses.

In May 2011, Wiesel served as the Washington University in St. Louis commencement speaker.

In February 2012, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints performed a posthumous baptism for Simon Wiesenthal's parents without proper authorization. After his own name was submitted for proxy baptism, Wiesel spoke out against the unauthorized practice of posthumously baptizing Jews and asked presidential candidate and Latter-day Saint Mitt Romney to denounce it. Romney's campaign declined to comment, directing such questions to church officials.

Death and aftermath
Wiesel died on the morning of July 2, 2016, at his home in Manhattan, aged 87. After a private funeral service was conducted in honor of him at the Fifth Avenue Synagogue, he was buried at the Sharon Gardens Cemetery in Valhalla, New York, on July 3.

Utah senator Orrin Hatch paid tribute to Wiesel in a speech on the Senate floor the following week, in which he said that "With Elie's passing, we have lost a beacon of humanity and hope. We have lost a hero of human rights and a luminary of Holocaust literature."

In 2018, antisemitic graffiti was found on the house where Wiesel was born.

Awards and honors

 * Prix de l'Université de la Langue Française (Prix Rivarol) for The Town Beyond the Wall, 1963.
 * National Jewish Book Award for The Town Beyond the Wall, 1965.
 * Ingram Merrill award, 1964.
 * Prix Médicis for A Beggar in Jerusalem, 1968.
 * National Jewish Book Award for Souls on Fire: Portraits and Legends of Hasidic Masters, 1973.
 * Jewish Heritage Award, Haifa University, 1975.
 * Holocaust Memorial Award, New York Society of Clinical Psychologists, 1975.
 * S.Y. Agnon Medal, 1980.
 * Jabotinsky Medal, State of Israel, 1980.
 * Prix Livre Inter, France, for The Testament, 1980.
 * Grand Prize in Literature from the City of Paris for The Fifth Son, 1983.
 * Commander in the French Legion of Honor, 1984.
 * U.S. Congressional Gold Medal, 1984.
 * Four Freedoms Award for the Freedom of Worship, 1985.
 * Medal of Liberty, 1986.
 * Nobel Peace Prize, 1986.
 * Grand Officer in the French Legion of Honor, 1990.
 * Presidential Medal of Freedom, 1992
 * Niebuhr Medal, Elmhurst College, Illinois, 1995.
 * Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement, 1996, presented by Awards Council member Rosa Parks at the Academy's 35th annual Summit in Sun Valley, Idaho.
 * Grand Cross in the French Legion of Honor, 2000.
 * Order of the Star of Romania, 2002.
 * Man of the Year award, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 2005.
 * Light of Truth award, International Campaign for Tibet, 2005.
 * Honorary Knighthood, United Kingdom, 2006.
 * Honorary Visiting Professor of Humanities, Rochester College, 2008.
 * National Humanities Medal, 2009.
 * Norman Mailer Prize, Lifetime Achievement, 2011.
 * Loebenberg Humanitarian Award, Florida Holocaust Museum, 2012.
 * Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement, 2012
 * Nadav Award, 2012.
 * S. Roger Horchow Award for Greatest Public Service by a Private Citizen, an award given out annually by Jefferson Awards, 2013.
 * John Jay Medal for Justice John Jay College, 2014.
 * Bust of Wiesel was carved on the Human Rights Porch of the Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., 2021.

Honorary degrees
Wiesel had received more than 90 honorary degrees from colleges worldwide.
 * Doctor of Humane Letters, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 1985.
 * Doctor of Humane Letters, DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois, 1997.
 * Doctorate, Seton Hall University, New Jersey, 1998.
 * Doctor of Humanities, Michigan State University, 1999.
 * Doctorate, McDaniel College, Westminster, Maryland, 2005.
 * Doctor of Humane Letters, Chapman University, 2005.
 * Doctor of Humane Letters, Dartmouth College, 2006.
 * Doctor of Humane Letters, Cabrini College, Radnor, Pennsylvania, 2007.
 * Doctor of Humane Letters, University of Vermont, 2007.
 * Doctor of Humanities, Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan, 2007.
 * Doctor of Letters, City College of New York, 2008.
 * Doctorate, Tel Aviv University, 2008.
 * Doctorate, Weizmann Institute, Rehovot, Israel, 2008.
 * Doctor of Humane Letters, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, 2009.
 * Doctor of Letters, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 2010.
 * Doctor of Humane Letters, Washington University in St. Louis, 2011.
 * Doctor of Humane Letters, College of Charleston, 2011.
 * Doctorate, University of Warsaw, June 25, 2012.
 * Doctorate, The University of British Columbia, September 10, 2012.
 * Doctorate, Pontifical University of John Paul II, June 30, 2015
 * Doctorate of Humane Letters, Fairfield University, May 22, 1983

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Elie Wiesel


text:
Ed Wood

Edward Davis Wood Jr. (October 10, 1924 – December 10, 1978) was an American filmmaker, actor, and pulp novelist.

In the 1950s, Wood directed several low-budget science fiction, crime and horror films that later became cult classics, notably Glen or Glenda (1953), Jail Bait (1954), Bride of the Monster (1955), Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957) and Night of the Ghouls (1959). In the 1960s and 1970s, he moved towards sexploitation and pornographic films such as The Sinister Urge (1960), Orgy of the Dead (1965) and Necromania (1971), and wrote over 80 lurid pulp crime and sex novels.

Notable for their campy aesthetics, technical errors, unsophisticated special effects, use of poorly-matched stock footage, eccentric casts, idiosyncratic stories and non sequitur dialogue, Wood's films remained largely obscure until he was posthumously awarded a Golden Turkey Award for Worst Director of All Time in 1980, renewing public interest in his life and work.

Following the publication of Rudolph Grey's 1992 oral biography Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood Jr., a biopic of his life, Ed Wood (1994), was directed by Tim Burton. Starring Johnny Depp as Wood and Martin Landau as Bela Lugosi, the film received critical acclaim and various awards, including two Academy Awards.

Early years
Wood's father worked for the United States Post Office as a custodian, and his family relocated numerous times around the United States. Eventually, they settled in Poughkeepsie, New York, where Wood was born in 1924. According to his second wife, Kathy O'Hara, Wood's mother Lillian would dress him in girl's clothing when he was a child because she had always wanted a daughter (Wood had one brother, several years younger than himself). For the rest of his life, Wood crossdressed, infatuated with the feel of angora on his skin.

During his childhood, Wood was interested in the performing arts and pulp fiction. He collected comic books and pulp magazines, and adored movies, especially Westerns, serials, and the occult. Buck Jones and Bela Lugosi were two of his earliest childhood idols. He often skipped school in order to watch motion pictures at the local movie theater, where stills from last week's films would often be thrown into the trash by theater staff, allowing Wood to salvage the images, and to add to his extensive collection.

On his 12th birthday, in 1936, Wood received as a gift his first movie camera, a Kodak "Cine Special". One of his first pieces of footage showed the airship Hindenburg passing over the Hudson River at Poughkeepsie, shortly before its disastrous crash at Lakehurst, New Jersey. One of Wood's first paid jobs was as a cinema usher, and he also sang and played drums in a band. Subsequently, he formed a quartet called "Eddie Wood's Little Splinters" in which he sang and played multiple stringed instruments.

Military service
In 1942, Wood enlisted at age 17 in the United States Marine Corps, just months after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Assigned to the 2nd Defense Battalion, he reached the rank of corporal before he was discharged in 1946 at age 21. Although Wood reportedly claimed to have faced strenuous combat, including having his front teeth knocked out by a Japanese soldier, his military records reveal that to be false, apart from recovering bodies on Betio following the Battle of Tarawa, and experiencing minor Japanese bombing raids on Betio and the Ellice Islands. A recurring filariasis infection left him performing clerical work for the remainder of his enlistment. His dental extractions were carried out over several months by Navy dentists, unconnected to any combat. Wood had false teeth that he would slip out from his mouth when he wanted to make his wife Kathy laugh, showing her a big toothless grin. Wood later claimed that he feared being wounded in battle more than he feared being killed, mainly because he was afraid a combat medic would discover him wearing a pink bra and panties under his uniform during the Battle of Tarawa.

Directing and screenwriting
In 1947, Wood moved to Hollywood, California, where he wrote scripts and directed television pilots, commercials and several forgotten micro-budget westerns, most of which failed to sell. Wood biographer Rudolph Grey states that Ed Wood made approximately 125 commercials for Story-Ad films and approximately 30 commercials for Play-Ad Films, in addition to a few commercials for "Pie-Quick".

In 1948, Wood wrote, produced, directed, and starred in The Casual Company, a play derived from his own unpublished novel which was based on his service in the United States Marine Corps. It opened at the Village Playhouse to negative reviews on October 25. That same year, he wrote and directed a low-budget western called Crossroads of Laredo with the aid of a young producer he met named Crawford John Thomas. The film was shot silent and was not completed during Wood's lifetime.

In 1949, Wood and Thomas acted together in a play called The Blackguard Returns at the Gateway Theatre (Wood played the Sheriff and Thomas was the villain). Wood joined the Screen Actors Guild in 1951, and worked very briefly as a stuntman among other things. When writing, Wood used a number of different pen names, including Ann Gora (in reference to Angora, his favorite textile) and Akdov Telmig (the backwards spelling of his favorite drink, the vodka gimlet).

In 1952, Wood was introduced to actor Bela Lugosi by friend and fellow writer-producer Alex Gordon (Wood's roommate at the time who was later involved in creating American International Pictures). Lugosi's son, Bela Lugosi Jr., has been among those who felt Wood exploited the senior Lugosi's stardom, taking advantage of the fading actor when he could not afford to refuse any work. However, most documents and interviews with other Wood associates in Nightmare of Ecstasy suggest that Wood and Lugosi were genuine friends and that Wood helped Lugosi through the worst days of his clinical depression and drug addiction. Lugosi had become dependent on morphine as a way of controlling his debilitating sciatica over the years, and was in a poor mental state caused by his recent divorce.

Glen or Glenda
In 1953, Wood wrote and directed the semi-documentary film Glen or Glenda (originally titled I Changed My Sex!) with producer George Weiss. The film starred Wood (under the alias "Daniel Davis") as a transvestite, his girlfriend Dolores Fuller, Timothy Farrell, Lyle Talbot, Conrad Brooks and Bela Lugosi as the narrator/scientist. Fuller was shocked when she learned soon afterward that Wood actually was a transvestite.

In 1953, Wood wrote and directed a stage show for Lugosi called The Bela Lugosi Review (a take-off on Dracula) that was put on at the Silver Slipper in Las Vegas. When Lugosi appeared on the TV show You Asked For It that same year, he announced that Ed Wood was producing a Dr. Acula TV show for him, but it never materialized. Wood acted as Lugosi's dialogue coach when he guest-starred on The Red Skelton Show in 1954, alongside Lon Chaney Jr. and Vampira (aka Maila Nurmi).

Jail Bait
Wood co-produced and directed a crime film, Jail Bait (1954, originally titled The Hidden Face), along with his co-writer/roommate Alex Gordon, which starred Herbert Rawlinson (as the plastic surgeon), Lyle Talbot, Dolores Fuller, Timothy Farrell, Theodora Thurman and Steve Reeves (in one of his first acting jobs). Bela Lugosi was supposed to play the lead role of the plastic surgeon, but was busy with another project when filming started and had to bow out. His replacement, Herbert Rawlinson, died the day after he filmed his scenes. Distributor Ron Ormond changed the title from The Hidden Face to Jail Bait just before releasing it.

Bride of the Monster
Wood produced and directed the horror film Bride of the Monster (1955, originally titled Bride of the Atom or The Monster of the Marshes), based on an original story idea by Alex Gordon which he had originally called The Atomic Monster. It starred Bela Lugosi as the mad scientist, Swedish wrestler Tor Johnson as mute manservant "Lobo", Paul Marco, Billy Benedict ("Whitey" of The Bowery Boys), Harvey B. Dunn and Loretta King. Soon after the film was completed, Bela Lugosi committed himself to the Norwalk State Hospital for three months, to be treated for drug addiction. The film premiered on May 11, 1955, at the Paramount theater in Hollywood while Lugosi was institutionalized, but a special screening was arranged for him upon his release, pleasing him greatly.

The Violent Years
In 1956, Wood wrote the screenplay (uncredited) for the film The Violent Years (originally titled Teenage Girl Gang), which was directed by William M. Morgan, starring Playboy model Jean Moorhead, Timothy Farrell, and serial star I. Stanford Jolley (as a judge).

Wood began filming a juvenile delinquency film called Rock and Roll Hell (a.k.a. Hellborn) in 1956, but producer George Weiss pulled the plug on the project after only ten minutes of footage had been completed. Wood's friend Conrad Brooks purchased the footage from Weiss, and some scenes were later incorporated as stock footage into Wood's later Night of the Ghouls (1959). (The entire ten minutes of footage was later released complete on VHS in 1993, as Hellborn.)

Plan 9 from Outer Space
In late 1956, Wood co-produced, wrote, and directed his science fiction opus Plan 9 from Outer Space (his screenplay was originally titled Grave Robbers from Outer Space), which featured Bela Lugosi in a small role. (Although Lugosi died in August 1956 before production began, Wood used footage he had shot of Lugosi in 1955–1956). The film also starred Tor Johnson, Vampira (Maila Nurmi), Tom Mason (who doubled for Lugosi in some scenes), and the Amazing Criswell as the film's narrator. Plan 9 premiered on March 15, 1957, at the Carlton Theatre in Hollywood, and later went into general release in July 1958 (retitled Plan Nine from Outer Space) in Texas and a number of other Southern states. It was finally sold to late night television in 1961, thereby finding its audience over the years. It became Wood's best-known film and found a cult following in 1980 when Michael Medved declared this film "the worst film ever made" in his book The Golden Turkey Awards.

Final Curtain
In 1957, Wood wrote and directed a pilot for a suspense-horror TV series called Portraits in Terror that ultimately failed to sell. The pilot, entitled Final Curtain, sees an old and world-weary actor wandering in an empty theatre, imagining ghosts and a living mannequin haunting the backstage area, until he realizes that he himself is dead. The episode has no dialogue, and Dudley Manlove narrates the thoughts of Duke Moore as the actor. Lugosi would have starred in this short film had he lived. Parts of the unsold pilot were later recycled for use in Wood's Night of the Ghouls (1959). The episode was thought to be lost until a complete print was located c. 2010. It was remastered and given its first ever cinema showing in a theater in February 2012. Today it is widely available online and on DVD.

Night of the Ghouls
In 1958, Wood wrote, produced, and directed Night of the Ghouls (originally titled Revenge of the Dead), starring Kenne Duncan, Tor Johnson (reprising his role as "Lobo" from Bride of the Monster), Criswell, Duke Moore, and Valda Hansen. The film premiered at the Vista Theatre in Hollywood on a double bill with the Lana Turner movie "Imitation of Life" on March 17, 1959, and then promptly vanished from circulation. For many years, it was thought to be a lost film, but distribution of the film was held up for 25 years because Wood hadn't paid the lab bill. Video producer Wade Williams paid the bill and released the film on videocassette in 1984, copyrighting the film in his own name.

In 1958, Wood also wrote the screenplay for The Bride and the Beast (1958), which was directed by Adrian Weiss. Wood's screenplay was based on Weiss' plot.

Wood also wrote the screenplay (as "Peter LaRoche") for a 1959 "nudie cutie" film called Revenge of the Virgins, which was directed by Peter Perry Jr.

The Sinister Urge
Wood wrote and directed the exploitation film The Sinister Urge (1960), starring Kenne Duncan, Duke Moore, Dino Fantini, Harvey B. Dunn and Carl Anthony. Filmed in just five days, this is the last mainstream film Wood directed, although it has exploitation elements. The film contains an "eerily prescient" scene, in which Carl Anthony's character states, "I look at this slush, and I try to remember, at one time, I made good movies". The scenes of the teenagers at the pizzeria had been previously shot in 1956 for Wood's unfinished juvenile delinquency film, Rock and Roll Hell (a.k.a. Hellborn).

Also in 1960, Wood wrote the screenplay for The Peeper, which he intended as a direct sequel to his 1960 film The Sinister Urge, but it was never produced.

Wood also contributed to the plot of Jane Mann's 1961 screenplay Anatomy of a Psycho. The film was directed by Mann's husband Boris Petroff.

In 1963, Wood wrote the screenplay for Shotgun Wedding (an exploitation film directed by Boris Petroff about hillbillies marrying child brides in the Ozarks). Wood wrote the screenplay from a story idea by Jane Mann. Wood's friend, cameraman William C. Thompson, died around this time.

Orgy of the Dead
Wood's 1965 transitional film Orgy of the Dead (originally titled Nudie Ghoulies) combined the horror and sexploitation genres. Wood handled various production details while Stephen C. Apostolof directed under the pseudonym A. C. Stephen. The film begins with a recreation of the opening scene from Night of the Ghouls. Criswell, wearing one of Lugosi's old capes, rises from his coffin to deliver an introduction taken almost word-for-word from the previous film. Set in a misty graveyard, the Lord of the Dead (Criswell) and his sexy consort, the Black Ghoul (a Vampira look-alike), preside over a series of macabre performances by topless dancers from beyond the grave (recruited by Wood from local strip clubs). Together, Wood and Apostolof went on to make a string of sexploitation films up to 1977. Wood co-wrote the screenplays with Apostolof and occasionally even acted in some of the films.

In 1969, Wood appeared in The Photographer (a.k.a. Love Feast or Pretty Models All in a Row), the first of two films produced by a Marine buddy, Joseph F. Robertson, with Wood portraying a photographer using his position to engage in sexual antics with his models.

Wood had a smaller role in Robertson's second film, Mrs. Stone's Thing (1970), as a transvestite who spends his time at a party trying on lingerie in a bedroom.

In 1969, Wood adapted his own novel Mama's Diary written under the pseudonym Dick Trent into Operation Red Light for Jacques Descent Production. Over half the footage was destroyed in a film-processing accident and the film is considered lost.

Venus Flytrap (1970) aka The Revenge of Dr. X, a US/Japanese co-production, was based on an unproduced Ed Wood screenplay from the 1950s. The film was produced and directed by Sci-Fi pulp writer Norman Earl Thomson. The film involves a mad scientist who uses lightning to transform plants into man-eating monsters. Wood did not participate in the actual making of the movie.

Take It Out in Trade
In 1970, Wood wrote and directed his own pornographic film, Take It Out in Trade, starring Duke Moore and Nona Carver. Wood played a transvestite named Alecia in the film.

In 1970, Wood produced a 45 rpm record which featured Tor Johnson on one side, reading The Day The Mummy Returned, and Criswell reading The Final Curtain on the other. It has never been determined whether or not the record was actually released, but many of them were definitely produced.

Necromania
In 1971, Wood produced, wrote and directed Necromania (subtitled A Tale of Weird Love) under the pseudonym "Don Miller". The film was an early entry to the new subgenre of hardcore pornographic films. Thought lost for years, it resurfaced in edited form on Mike Vraney's Something Weird imprint in the late 1980s and was re-released later on DVD by Fleshbot Films in 2005. In the Rudolph Grey biography Nightmare of Ecstasy, Maila Nurmi ("Vampira") said she declined Wood's offer to do a nude scene sitting in a coffin for Necromania, claiming she was recovering from a stroke at the time.

From 1971 to 1972, Wood directed an unknown number of short X-rated films produced by the Swedish Erotica film company. These were short 12-minute loops that were silent films with subtitles. Wood was paid $100 for every ten loops he subtitled.

Wood's friends Kenne Duncan and Tor Johnson both passed away during this period. (Wood was named executor of Kenne Duncan's estate, and following Duncan's death, Wood held a small memorial funeral for him with his wife and some friends in his backyard around the swimming pool where they eulogized the departed Western film star.) Wood's friend Duke Moore died in 1976. Throughout the 1970s, Wood worked with his friend Stephen C. Apostolof, usually co-writing scripts with him, but also serving as an assistant director and an associate producer. (Together they had made Wood's Orgy of the Dead back in 1965.) Wood's last known on-screen appearance (a dual role) was in Apostolof's 1974 film Fugitive Girls (a.k.a. Five Loose Women), in which he played both a gas station attendant called "Pops" and a sheriff on the fugitive women's trail. In 1974, Wood was allegedly on the set of an ultra-low budget film called Meatcleaver Massacre (1977) and is said to have co-directed at least one scene in the film (uncredited), but his involvement is dubious.

At the time of his death, Wood was working on a biographical screenplay based on the last years of actor Bela Lugosi to be called Lugosi Post Mortem, which was supposed to star actor Peter Coe as Lugosi and Karl Johnson as his father Tor Johnson. The nearly completed script was left behind the last time Wood was evicted and is presumed to have been discarded in the trash. Wood was also working on a screenplay for a film called Venus De Milo, a mystery that would explain the famous statue's missing arms.

Technically, Wood's last acting job was in the 1978 Stephen Apostolof film Hot Ice. Ed Wood played a janitor in the film, but his scene was cut out at the last minute due to his drunkenness on the set. Wood died soon after this film was made in 1978, at age 54. Apostolof himself stopped making films as well at this time.

Books and novels
Beginning in 1963 up until his death, Wood wrote at least 80 lurid crime and sex novels in addition to hundreds of short stories and non-fiction pieces for magazines and daily newspapers.

His novels include Black Lace Drag (1963) (reissued in 1965 as Killer in Drag), Orgy of the Dead (1965), Parisian Passions (1966), Watts the Difference (1966), Side-Show Siren (1966), Drag Trade (1967), Watts After (1967), Devil Girls (1967), It Takes One to Know One (1967), Death of a Transvestite (1967), Suburbia Confidential (1967), Night Time Lez (1968), The Perverts (1968), Bye Bye Broadie (1968), Raped in the Grass (1968), Sex, Shrouds and Caskets (1968), Love of the Dead (1968), The Sexecutives (1968), Young, Black and Gay (1968), Hell Chicks (1968), The Gay Underworld (1968), Carnival Piece (1969), Toni, Black Tigress (1969), Mama's Diary (1969), To Make a Homo (1969), Mary-Go-Round (1969), The Sexual Woman (1971), The Only House (1972), A Study of Fetishes and Fantasies (1973), Tales for a Sexy Night Part 1 and 2 (1973), Sex Star (1973), Death of a Transvestite Hooker (1974). Forced Entry (1974), and TV Lust (1977).

In 1965, Wood wrote the quasi-memoir Hollywood Rat Race, which was only published years later in 1998. In it, Wood advises new writers to "just keep on writing. Even if your story gets worse, you'll get better", and also recounts tales of dubious authenticity, such as how he and Bela Lugosi entered the world of nightclub cabaret.

Thirty-two short stories known to be written by Wood (he sometimes wrote under pseudonyms such as "Ann Gora" and "Dr. T.K. Peters") are collected in an anthology Blood Splatters Quickly, published by OR Books in 2014.

Unrealized projects

 * Dr. Acula - Wood was supposed to write and direct this proposed 1953 TV series in which Bela Lugosi was supposed to play a mysterious investigator of the supernatural, to be produced by Ted Allan. (Lugosi mentioned it when he appeared that year on You Asked for It.)
 * Sequel to Mother Riley Meets the Vampire - Lugosi was offered the lead role in a proposed 1953 sequel to the Mother Riley comedy film he made in England in 1951, provided he travel back to England to appear in it. This sequel was never made however as Lugosi was too ill at the time to travel. In 1953, Ed Wood's friend producer Alex Gordon proposed creating an extended version of the 1951 film to be called King Robot which would incorporate newly filmed footage of Lugosi. The project was abandoned since by that time, Lugosi appeared too ill to match the earlier footage.
 * The Six Arms of Siva - This was a 1953 adventure novel written by Walter C. Brown which Wood and Lugosi were considering buying the film rights to, but the deal fell through.
 * 3-D Remake of Dracula (1931) - Ed Wood and teenage Lugosi fan Richard Sheffield petitioned Universal Studios in 1953 to make a Color/ 3-D remake of the 1931 classic Dracula, starring Lugosi in the lead. Although they gathered hundreds of signatures, nothing came of their efforts.
 * The Vampire's Tomb - This was a planned July, 1954 horror film starring Bela Lugosi as the "Dr. Acula" character again. The cast would also have included Loretta King, Bobby Jordan (of The Bowery Boys), Dolores Fuller, Lyle Talbot, Duke Moore, Tom Keene and a Vampira-lookalike named "Devila". Wood's plot was very similar to that of Tod Browning's London After Midnight, only with a female vampire. Wood shelved this project and filmed Bride of the Monster instead. Wood however did film some test footage of Lugosi wearing his Dracula cape in a local graveyard for this project which became part of the stock footage which was later incorporated into Wood's 1957 Plan 9 From Outer Space film.
 * The Bowery Boys Meet The Monsters - Lugosi was initially considered for the role of the mad scientist in this 1954 horror-comedy, but he was replaced in the cast by John Dehner at the last minute.
 * Bela Lugosi Comics - In March 1954, Wood tried to interest a number of comic book publishers in a monthly Bela Lugosi title, to no avail. Among the companies he contacted were DC Comics, Dell, Fiction House, Ziff-Davis, Quality and Toby Press.
 * Doctor Voodoo (a.k.a. Voodoo Doctor) - A projected 1954 horror film (similar in plot to the 1934 Universal film The Black Cat) that was supposed to have starred both Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, but Allied Artists rejected the script. It is said Karloff really wanted no part of the project anyway.
 * The Terror Radio Program - Wood wrote a list of story ideas for this proposed 1954 15-minute radio program which was supposed to star Bela Lugosi, but it never materialized.
 * The Ghoul Goes West (or The Phantom Ghoul) - Wood worked on this script for two years, and had planned to produce it in Color/ Widescreen (and possibly 3-D). It was a proposed 1955 Western/Horror film that would have starred Gene Autry, Bela Lugosi, Tor Johnson, Lon Chaney Jr. and John Carradine, with Harold Daniels slated to direct. The plot was very similar to that of Bride of the Monster, only in a Western setting. Gene Autry dropped out, and Wood tried to replace him with either Bob Steele or Ken Maynard, to no avail. Lugosi was reading the script the whole time he was confined to the Norwalk State Hospital in 1955, where he was being treated for drug addiction. Coincidentally, Lugosi, Chaney, Tor Johnson and Carradine all appeared together the following year in The Black Sleep (a project that did not involve Ed Wood).
 * Repeat Performance - This was a 1956 movie script that was written by Richard Sheffield, a Hollywood teenager who was a close personal friend of Bela Lugosi. He sold the script to Ed Wood for $1.00, but the film was never made since Wood was unable to interest financiers. The plot involved a "poor, retired actor of horror films" who is cast aside and rejected by the four film producers he once worked for, and he winds up murdering all four of them "in a gruesome manner similar to the way he was killed in many of his horror films". This may have been Wood's inspiration for his 1958 proposal to Sam Arkoff, which Wood claimed was stolen from him and later became AIP's How To Make A Monster. (see below under 1958).
 * Rock and Rock Hell (or Hellborn) - Wood's version of Rebel Without a Cause, it was supposed to have starred Conrad Brooks, Duke Moore, Tom Mason and Wood himself, to be produced by George Weiss. It began shooting in June 1956, but Weiss decided to abandon the project and sold the ten minutes of footage they shot to Conrad Brooks. Footage from this film was later incorporated into Wood's 1959 Night of the Ghouls.
 * The Dead Never Die - Criswell and Paul Marco came up with the story for this 1957 project, which Wood was slated to direct. It would've starred Criswell, Paul Marco, Bunny Breckinridge and Vampira (Maila Nurmi), but it never got off the ground.
 * How To Make a Monster - Wood's widow Kathy claimed in a 1992 interview that her husband always felt that the idea for How to Make a Monster (1958 film) was stolen from him by AIP producer Sam Arkoff. She said, "Eddie condemned Arkoff, he really hated him. Eddie gave them a script for approval, and they changed the characters a little bit around. Eddie had written it for Lugosi (circa 1956). It was about this old horror actor who couldn't get work anymore, so he took his vengeance out on the studio. They changed it to a make-up man who takes revenge on a studio." Arkoff always denied Wood's claim was true, stating Herman Cohen originated the entire project.
 * Ghouls of the Moon - Another attempt to build a horror film around a reel of unused silent footage that had been taken of Lugosi before he died in 1956, but nothing came of it since by 1958, Wood discovered the film in the can had degraded into an unusable sludge due to bad storage conditions.
 * Masquerade into Eternity - A 1959 Cold War political drama that Wood was supposed to write and direct, about a troupe of actors who get stranded in post-Revolution Cuba; it was to be produced by Ben Frommer, who was slated to play a Communist Colonel, but the project fell through.
 * The Peeper (1960) Wood wrote the screenplay for The Peeper, intending it to be a direct sequel to his 1960 film The Sinister Urge (film), but it was never produced.
 * House of Horrors - Kenne Duncan and Tor Johnson were supposed to star in this 1960 film, which never materialized. Kenne Duncan was to play a mad artist who paints pictures of kidnapped women he confines in a dungeon, while Tor played a Lobo-like henchman.
 * Portraits in Terror - A 1960 made-for-TV trilogy consisting of three episodes; it was to include The Final Curtain, The Night the Banshee Cried and Into My Grave (all written and directed by Wood), but the project fell through.
 * Attack of the Giant Salami - A proposed 1964 horror film spoof that would've starred Boris Karloff, Joe E. Brown and Valda Hansen. Wood was inspired by the 1963 Brown/Karloff collaboration The Comedy of Terrors. The film was never made, probably due to Karloff's disinterest.
 * Tangier - A 1966 proposed action-adventure TV series that was supposed to be produced by Wood's friend Stephen Apostoloff. Wood wrote a sample screenplay for the series which was never produced.
 * 69 Rue Pigalle - In 1966, Stephen Apostoloff was set to produce and direct a film called 69 Rue Pigalle, based on Ed Wood's novel Parisian Passions, but the financing never materialized. The plot was supposed to be about a transvestite who solves a series of murders in Paris, and Lon Chaney Jr. was supposed to have been in the cast.
 * The Enchanted Isle - An unfilmed 1966 Ed Wood screenplay for a film that was supposed to feature Lon Chaney Jr., Dana Andrews and John Ireland, about a Mafia princess stranded on a South Sea island and a mystery involving black pearls. (Wood originally wrote the screenplay back in 1954 and had tried at that time to interest producer Ron Ormond in the project, unsuccessfully.)
 * Devil Girls - An unrealized 1967 Crime Drama about a drug-smuggling teenage girl gang who hang out at a seedy hamburger joint. Tor Johnson was to have played the brutish "Chief", a goon who works for a retired race car driver named "Jockey". It was based on Wood's eponymous novel.
 * The Life of Mickey Cohen - A 1967 proposed Crime Drama Wood was working on, in which Paul Marco was supposed to play the infamous gangster (a full decade after Marco appeared in Plan 9 From Outer Space). (At this point, Wood's career became primarily focused on the pornographic industry.)
 * The Day the Mummies Danced - A 1976 unproduced Ed Wood script that was supposed to be Wood's long-awaited return to directing horror films; it was set to star John Agar (a long-time drinking buddy of Wood's), Aldo Ray and Dudley Manlove (who was also supposed to produce the film). The filming was set to take place in Guanajuato, Mexico at the famous Mexican mummies exhibit there, but it never happened.

Wood's list of unrealized film projects also included scripts called Piranhas (1957), Trial by Terror (1958), The Peeper (a proposed 1960 sequel to The Sinister Urge), Silent Night (1961), Joaquin Murieta (a 1965 biopic about the infamous bandit of the Old West), Mice on a Cold Cellar Floor (1973), Epitaph for the Town Drunk (1973), To Kill a Saturday Night (1973, which was set to star John Carradine), The Teachers (1973), The Basketballers (1973), The Airline Hostesses (1973), I Awoke Early the Day I Died (1974, a rewrite of Wood's 1961 Silent Night), Heads, No Tails (1974, a take-off on Sweeney Todd), and Shoot Seven (1977, Wood's proposed musical based on the St. Valentine's Day Massacre).

Relationships and marriages
Wood was in a long-term relationship with actress and songwriter Dolores Fuller, whom he met in late 1952. She was in the process of divorcing her first husband Donald Fuller, with whom she had had two sons. Wood and Fuller shared an apartment for three years, and Wood cast her in three of his films: Glen or Glenda, Jail Bait and, in a very brief cameo, in Bride of the Monster. Fuller later said she initially had no idea that Wood was a crossdresser and was mortified when she saw Wood dressed as a woman for the first time in Glen or Glenda. The couple broke up in 1955 after Wood cast another actress for the lead role in Bride of the Monster (Wood originally wrote the part for Fuller but later reduced her part to a brief cameo appearance) and because of Wood's excessive drinking. Fuller relocated to New York City where she embarked on a successful songwriting career, writing for famous singers like Elvis Presley and Nat King Cole. Fuller died on May 9, 2011, at age 88.

In 1956, soon after his breakup with Fuller, Wood married actress Norma McCarty. McCarty appeared as Edie, the airplane stewardess, in Plan 9 from Outer Space, and was recently divorced with two sons, Mike and John McCarty, from her earlier marriage. The marriage took Wood's friends by surprise; one night, Wood called everyone to the sound stage for what they thought was a cast party, but when everyone was present, Wood brought out a huge wedding cake and a preacher, and announced he was getting married. The marriage ended approximately one month later after McCarty discovered that Wood was a crossdresser, and while it has been reported that their marriage was annulled, according to film archivist Wade Williams, they neither annulled the marriage nor legally divorced. McCarty died on June 27, 2014, at age 93.

Wood moved in with Paul Marco for a short while after McCarty left him. Later in 1956, Wood met Kathy O'Hara in a bar one night where he was drinking with Bela Lugosi. O'Hara fell in love with Wood immediately; they were married in Las Vegas a short while later, and Wood always considered O'Hara his legal wife despite the fact that his first marriage had not been legally annulled. Wood and O'Hara remained together until Wood's death in December 1978. O'Hara never got along with his mother Lillian, calling her "a strict disciplinarian" who damaged Wood psychologically from early childhood. Wood occasionally sent money to his mom in the mail without O'Hara's knowledge.

Alleged daughter
Wood was shocked to learn he had fathered a child out of wedlock after World War II with a young woman he had dated while he was in the Marines. According to Conrad Brooks, Wood and his wife Kathy only met the woman (also named Kathy) in 1967 when she was already 21 years old. Born on May 23, 1946, she had been living in Lancaster, California, and had managed to trace her father's whereabouts. Wood's mother Lillian said she had been contacted by the girl back in 1963 when she sent his mother a photo and introduced herself to Lillian as her granddaughter. Lillian said she sent the girl a watch for her graduation in 1964, but never heard back from her.

There is a photo of the young woman in Rudolph Grey's biography on Wood. She visited the Woods and stayed over at their house for a couple of days, but apparently the two women did not get along well. In fact, Wood's wife physically threw her out of the house on the second day when she found her sleeping on their sofa.

Wood's wife Kathy never believed that the girl was Wood's daughter, saying in an interview, "There was never any proof, only the woman's statement on a birth certificate." Wood told Kathy that the woman he had sex with in 1946 used to sleep around regularly "with 10 or 20 other Marines at the base", so he probably wasn't the girl's father. She said, "She's not your daughter, that bitch lied to you! The father could have been anyone. There's only her accusation."

Actress Valda Hansen said, "I met Ed's daughter at his house in the Valley. She looked just like him. Beautiful, delicate. Green eyes, dark chocolate brown hair. She was very sweet." Art director Bob Derteno, who worked with Wood on Orgy of the Dead, said that Wood later travelled to attend his daughter's wedding in New York and was later told that he had become a grandfather.

Cross-dressing
In Rudolph Grey's 1992 biography Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood Jr., Wood's wife Kathy O'Hara recalls that Wood told her that his mother dressed him in girls' clothing as a child. O'Hara stated that Wood's transvestitism was not a sexual inclination, but rather a neomaternal comfort derived mainly from angora fabric (angora is featured in many of Wood's films). Even in his later years, Wood was not shy about going out in public dressed in drag as "Shirley", his female alter ego (a name that appeared in many of his screenplays and stories). In his partly autobiographical film Glen or Glenda, the heterosexual Wood takes pains to emphasize that a male transvestite is not automatically also a homosexual. Wood directed many of his pornographic films in drag, but usually would not take the time to shave, which made for a bizarre sight, according to his friends. Wood always swore that he had never had a single homosexual relationship in his life, and was even considered quite a womanizer by many of his acquaintances. He once said that if he could have anything in life, it would be reincarnation as a blonde woman.

Later years
During the last 15 years of his life, Wood depended almost entirely on writing pornography novels to earn a living, receiving between $700 to $1,000 per novel which he spent almost immediately on alcohol at the local liquor store. Friends have stated how, in his final years, he eventually stopped bathing, and that his apartment became so filthy that he eventually would not allow friends to come over and visit because he knew they would be horrified to see how unkempt it had become. Paul Marco said Wood was constantly moaning, "My God, I've given everything away. I should be a millionaire. I should have a million bucks right now!"

Actor John Agar, an alcoholic himself, was drinking at Wood's apartment one day in the late 1960s when the afternoon news program erroneously announced Agar's obituary. Wood called the studio and told them that Agar was not dead. He told them "He's alive... he's sitting right here with me now!". The story was corrected shortly thereafter.

Ed Wood and his wife were routinely evicted from their apartments for non-payment of rent. Each time they moved, Wood would immediately establish credit with the liquor store nearest his new address. Their last apartment was in a high-crime ghetto area "at the corner of Yucca and Cahuenga" in Hollywood inhabited by drug addicts, gamblers and prostitutes. Wood, who regularly pawned his typewriters for cash, was mugged regularly when he would stumble down the street to the liquor store. Eventually he had his publisher send his paychecks directly to the various liquor store owners so that he would not have to carry cash when he went there.

The Woods' apartment was always in danger of being burglarized. One night, a transvestite was beaten to death in the hallway just outside Wood's apartment door and the sound of gunshots outside the building was a nightly occurrence.

According to friends, Wood and his wife often became violent when they drank. Stories abound of the two beating each other; Wood sometimes knocked Kathy unconscious. Criswell commented once, "I always had the feeling that one would kill the other. And if you were there, the killer would say you did it!" Nonetheless, years after Wood's death, his wife always professed to love him dearly.

Bela Lugosi biographer Robert Cremer interviewed Wood once in his Yucca apartment for his 1976 book Lugosi: The Man Behind the Cape two years before Wood died. Cremer said Wood began the interview sober, but quickly became intoxicated over the next hour as the interview proceeded. Cremer said, "He started getting really angry at me because he felt he was the person who should be writing (the book)... He went out in the kitchen, grabbed a bottle of Wild Turkey... He smashed the bottle on the kitchen counter and then came after me with it. He lunged at me, but he was so drunk, I just pushed him against the wall, and he collapsed. I just walked out the door and said 'Okay Ed, I guess that was our last interview. I'll see you.'"

Death
By 1978, Wood's depression had worsened as he and his wife Kathy O'Hara had both succumbed to alcoholism. They were evicted from their Hollywood apartment on Yucca Street on December 7, 1978, in total poverty by two sheriff's deputies called by their landlord for failure to pay their overdue rent and had to leave behind all of his scrapbooks and unfinished screenplays, which the landlord allegedly threw into a garbage dumpster. Wood's large film collection of his early commercials were also thrown out following his eviction. The couple moved into the small North Hollywood apartment of their friend, actor Peter Coe, located at 5635 Laurel Canyon Boulevard. Wood spent the weekend drinking vodka and desperately calling old friends for money, but to no avail.

Around noon on Sunday, December 10, Wood felt ill and went to lie down in Coe's bedroom while Coe, O'Hara and a few friends were watching a football game on TV. From the bedroom, he asked O'Hara to bring him a drink, which she refused to do. A few minutes later, he yelled out, "Kathy, I can't breathe!", a plea O'Hara ignored as she later said she was tired of Wood bossing her around. After hearing no movement in the bedroom for twenty minutes, O'Hara sent a female friend to check on Wood, who discovered him dead on the bed from a heart attack. O'Hara later said, "I still remember when I went into that room that afternoon and he was dead, his eyes and mouth were wide open. I'll never forget the look in his eyes. He clutched at the sheets. It looked like he'd seen Hell."

Wood was cremated at the Utter-McKinley mortuary, and his ashes were scattered at sea. Paul Marco, O'Hara, David DeMering and Criswell attended Wood's makeshift memorial service which was held at Peter Coe's apartment following the cremation. Marco recalled how devastated O'Hara was at the time.

Legacy and homages
At the time of his death, Wood's name and career had become so obscure that most local Los Angeles newspapers, including the entertainment magazine Variety, did not run an obituary about him.

The 1982 film It Came from Hollywood featured a "Tribute to Ed Wood" segment.

In 1986 in an essay paying homage to Wood in Incredibly Strange Films, Jim Morton wrote: "Eccentric and individualistic, Edward D. Wood Jr. was a man born to film. [...] Lesser men, if forced to make movies under the conditions Wood faced, would have thrown up their hands in defeat".

In 1994, director Tim Burton released the biopic Ed Wood, starring Johnny Depp in the title role and Martin Landau, who won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Bela Lugosi. It also won an Academy Award for Best Makeup for Rick Baker. Conrad Brooks appeared in the movie in a cameo role as "Barman", along with Gregory Walcott in the role of a potential backer. The film premiered on September 30, 1994, just ten days before what would have been Wood's 70th birthday. Despite receiving critical acclaim, the movie did poorly at the box office; however, it has since developed a cult following.

In 1996, Reverend Steve Galindo of Seminole, Oklahoma, created a legally recognized religion with Wood as its official savior. Founded as a joke, the Church of Ed Wood now boasts more than 3,500 baptized followers. Woodites, as Galindo's followers are called, celebrate "Woodmas" on October 10, which was Wood's birthday. Numerous parties and concerts are held worldwide to celebrate Woodmas. On October 4 –5, 2003, horror host Mr. Lobo was canonized as the "Patron Saint of late night movie hosts and insomniacs" in the Church of Ed Wood.

In 1997 the University of Southern California began holding an annual Ed Wood Film Festival, in which student teams are challenged to write, film, and edit an Ed Wood-inspired short film based on a preassigned theme. Past themes have included Rebel Without a Bra (2004), What's That in Your Pocket? (2005), and Slippery When Wet (2006).

Documentaries

 * The Incredibly Strange Film Show (Season 2, Episode 4), presented by Jonathan Ross. It was first broadcast Oct. 13, 1989. Guests interviewed included actors Vampira (aka Maila Nurmi), Norma McCarty, Paul Marco, Dolores Fuller, biographer Rudolph Grey and critic Harry Medved.
 * Flying Saucers Over Hollywood: The Plan 9 Companion, was released in 1992. This exhaustive two-hour documentary by Mark Patrick Carducci chronicles the making of Plan 9 from Outer Space and features interviews with Vampira, Paul Marco, Conrad Brooks, Joe Dante, Valda Hansen, artist Drew Friedman, Forrest J. Ackerman, Gary Gerani, Sam Raimi, Kathy Wood, Carl Anthony, Harry Thomas, Gregory Walcott, Stephen Apostolof, Martha Mason, Norma McCarty, Dolores Fuller, et al. In 2000, Image Entertainment included the documentary on the DVD reissue of Plan 9 from Outer Space (in a two-disc set with Robot Monster).
 * The Haunted World of Edward D. Wood Jr., written and directed by Brett Thompson, came out in 1995. This 90-minute documentary—about the life and films of Ed Wood—features interviews with Wood's friends and co-workers, and closely resembles Wood's own style albeit with slightly better miniatures. People interviewed included Maila Nurmi, Bela Lugosi Jr., Dolores Fuller, Paul Marco, Conrad Brooks, Loretta King, Lyn Lemon, Norma McCarty and her son Mike, Mona McKinnon, Lyle Talbot, Gregory Walcott, Crawford John Thomas, makeup man Harry Thomas and Ed Wood himself.
 * Dad Made Dirty Movies (2011) Wood biographer Rudolph Grey produced this one-hour documentary about the life and career of 1960s porn film producer Stephen Apostolof, detailing his x-rated co-productions with Wood.

Lost films
Wood's 1972 film The Undergraduate was a lost film, as was his 1970 film Take It Out in Trade, but they both eventually turned up years later. (Both films in their entirety are now available on DVD.)

An 80-minute print of Take It Out in Trade was discovered and publicly exhibited at Anthology Film Archives in New York City in September 2014. Silent outtakes from the film were released by Something Weird Video.

Wood's 1971 film Necromania was also believed lost for years, until an edited version resurfaced at a yard sale in 1992, followed in 2001 by a complete, unedited print.

A complete print of Wood's lost 1972 pornographic film The Young Marrieds was discovered in 2004. It was released by Alpha Blue Archives in July 2014 as a part of the four-DVD set The Lost Sex Films of Ed Wood Jr..

Wood is said to have filmed some scenes of Lon Chaney Jr. in a werewolf costume in Hollywood in 1964 that were said to have been incorporated into Jerry Warren's film Face of the Screaming Werewolf (1965). Chaney biographer Don G. Smith however has stated that this story was never substantiated.

title: Ed Wood