The Amazing Criswell

            At the beginning of Ed Wood’s gloriously bonkers Plan 9 from Outer Space, a man is seen sitting at a desk wearing a tuxedo and with a ludicrous spit curl in his hair. He speaks in a stentorian deep voice: “We are all interested in the future because that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives…” Well, duh.

            That man is the amazing Criswell, who was a celebrity psychic in the 1950s, and whose ludicrous predictions were printed in newspapers and on the radio, and later repeated on Johnny Carson‘s Tonight Show to a very bemused host. But other than Jeffrey Jones’ hilarious interpretation of him in Tim Burton’s Ed Wood, what do we really know about the man? Fortunately, there is a new book Criswell (Facts, Fictions and the Forbidden Predictions) by Edwin Lee Canfield to fill in some of the blanks. Do I wish the book was better? And gave out more juicy details of his fascinating life? Sure. But in the author’s defense, when Rudolph Grey wrote Nightmare of Ecstasy about Edward D. Wood Jr., many of the pack that Criswell ran with were still alive and able to speak for themselves. By now, most of those colorful bohemians like Vampira (Maila Nurmi), the horror host modeled after a Charles Addams character, Tor Johnson, the 300 lb. Swedish wrestler, and Paul Marco, who was Patrolman Kelton in many of Wood’s films- all had passed on. So, Canfield does the best he can with digging through Criswell’s past by using his many books of crackpot predictions.

            According to legend, Jeron Charles Criswell King was born August 18, 1907 in the back of the family-owned mortuary. The author admits “which is possible since the Criswells were one of the oldest funeral families in America, but not probable.” According to Criswell, “I was a freckle-faced, red headed boy looking at life through a picket fence in Indiana, and I thought I was something special. In fact, the entire family thought so too. They classified me as a ‘freak!’ And perhaps a freak I have remained!” 

            He moved to New York in 1935 and got work writing for radio soap operas. But he also penned a play Dorian Gray, based on the Oscar Wilde classic, and played the lead role. This opened off-Broadway to withering reviews. But Criswell kept revamping the play. It became The Life and Loves of Dorian Gray when it premiered on Broadway and that is when he met the future Mrs. Criswell and his guiding force and collaborator for the rest of his life- Myrtle Louise Stonesifer. It’s clear the book’s author assumes Criswell was gay and Myrtle was his beard, but they were wildly devoted to one another. Later, when they moved to Hollywood she changed her name to Halo Meadows. The first name she got from a popular shampoo at the time. She and Criswell wrote a series of self-help books How to Crash Broadway, How to Crash on Tin-Pan Alley and How Your Play Can Crash Broadway, despite The Love Life of Dorian Gray (which is how it was named when it played in L.A.) never was a hit anywhere. From all account, Halo Meadows was a real character. 

            Halo colorfully appeared on Groucho Marx’s You Bet Your Life and told him she was a composer, regaling him with her new song: Chop Your Head Off. “Chop your head off, kick it around, hang it up, lay it down. Look at it, dear. Really, take a good look. It’s me, It’s me, it’s me…” Even Groucho Marx looks thrown by her.

            Criswell began his predictions of the future in newspapers and on the radio and made personal appearances. He referred to himself as the 20^th Century Nostradamus and even Mae West became a huge fan of his and good friend. West even gave Criswell her old cars when she was through with them and wrote a song called “Criswell Predicts,” glorifying him.

            It’s possible Ed Wood was directing some early TV shows which introduced him to Criswell. But they became fast friends, and Criswell agreed to appear in several films for Wood. In Night of the Ghouls he rises up out of a coffin at the beginning of the film in a sequined tuxedo. “I am Criswell. For many years I have told the almost unbelievable, related the unreal, and showed it to be more than a fact….Now I tell you a tale of the threshold people, so astounding that some of you may faint. This is a story of those in the twilight time..once human, now monsters…in a world between the living and the dead. Monsters to be pitied…Monsters to be despised!” Supposedly Criswell actually slept in a coffin in his own home. But I love the stories of Ed Wood, Criswell, Vampira and Tor Johnson making their weekly visits to the famed Brown Derby restaurant in Hollywood. (Criswell would always have two Beefeater gin martinis). Brother, that’s the kind of “in crowd” I would have killed to have been a part of.

            Criswell wrote several books of his loony predictions and they got more outlandish as the years went on. Not surprisingly a handful came to pass like Ronald Reagan becoming Governor of California and that something momentous was going to happen to President Kennedy in November 1963. But for the most part his visions were preposterous. “I predict that perversion will flood the land beginning in 1970. I predict a series of homosexual cities, small, compact, carefully planned areas will soon be blatantly advertised and exist coast to coast.”  “A peculiar madness will take place in the brain of each and every one of the animal kingdom and they will overpower every human in sight!” “When the earth is destroyed on August 18, 1999…this planet will not support human life for more than 400 years after the holocaust of 1999.” In today’s QAnon conspiracy theory universe Criswell would be hailed as a prophet.

            In Nightmare of Ecstasy, actor John Andrews (Orgy of the Dead) said it best. “I’m sitting up at Criswell’s and we’re drinking, and he says, ‘Do you know, these idiots are actually buying my book. They actually believe I can predict the future. Shit, I couldn’t look out the window and tell you what the weather’s like.’”

            To find out more about Criswell’s life and death you really should pick up the new book about this wildly eccentric man. For me, I think it’s time to play my recording of Criswell singing Someone Walked Over My Grave.