Dolores Fuller

Biography

Dolores Fuller first got the idea that she wanted to get into the picture business at the age of ten, when she was an extra in the motel sequence of It Happened One Night (1934). She acted in school plays, modeled and landed a few jobs on TV. In the early 1950s, she and her actress-friend, Mona McKinnon, went to a casting call where they met producer-director Edward D. Wood Jr., who became Fuller's boyfriend. Wood's real-life passion for wearing women's clothes was focused upon in the filmmaker's semi-autobiographical Glen or Glenda (1953), in which Wood starred as a cross-dresser and Fuller played his girlfriend. Fuller also appeared in Wood's Jail Bait (1954) and Bride of the Monster (1955) before his drinking caused a split. Fuller turned songwriter, wrote tunes for a number of movies (including Elvis Presley's Blue Hawaii (1961) and Kid Galahad (1962)), founded her own record company (Dee Dee Records) and helped to launch the careers of Johnny Rivers and Tanya Tucker. Fuller is vocal in her dislike of the way she was depicted by Sarah Jessica Parker in director Tim Burton's Ed Wood (1994).