Infamous America - TEXAS CHAINSAW Ep. 2 | “Killing Time”

Episode Date: October 28, 2020

After Ed Gein experiences personal tragedy, he becomes a true eccentric. His house fills with junk and squalor. He begins visiting cemeteries in the dark of night. He reads about grave robbing and murder, and then a woman goes missing in Plainfield. In Texas, Tobe Hooper raises the money to produce his film, finds his cast, and receives a brilliant piece of advice about a new title for the movie. Join Black Barrel+ for bingeable seasons with no commercials : blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join For more details, please visit www.blackbarrelmedia.com. Our social media pages are: @blackbarrelmedia on Facebook and Instagram, and @bbarrelmedia on Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This series contains violence and sexual references that some might find disturbing. It is intended for mature audiences only. Listener discretion is advised. Gunner Hansen was 6'4 and weighed nearly 300 pounds. He was born in Iceland, but he grew up in the state of Maine. He liked theater and poetry. In 1973, he was living in Austin, Texas. By day, he worked as a carpenter and a bartender.

By night, he co-starred in a small, local production of of mice and men. One day in July, he sat at a diner eating a hamburger. A friend mentioned that a horror movie was about to start filming in the Austin area. The friend said that Hansen would be great for the part of the killer, but the filmmakers had already cast the role. Hansen finished his burger and thought nothing more about it. Two weeks later, everything changed. The same guy who told Hansen about the movie called him up and said he had a second chance. Apparently, the actor who'd been hired to play the killer was no longer available.

If Hansen was interested, he should quickly contact the director. Hansen decided to audition, and no other decision would have as big an impact on his life as that one. From BlackBarrel Media, this is Infamous America. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer, and this is a four-part series about one of the strangest killers in American history, Ed Gein, and how he inspired one of the iconic cult films in the film. American Cinema, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. This is Chapter 2, Killing Time. Plainfield, Wisconsin, 1946. When Ed Gein's mother died from a stroke at age 67, Ed's world became about as small as possible. He worshipped her, despite all the damage she did to his early childhood.

Now he was alone. His mother, father, and older brother were dead, and he had no real friends. With no one around, Ed became a true eccentric. His farmhouse was a museum of strange items that were filthy and covered in dust, things like a gas mask, used medicine bottles, boxes of plastic whistles, toy airplanes, yellow dentures, a decomposing sponge rubber ball, and even some old radios, which were unusable because the house had no electricity. The floors were covered with moldering scraps of food, food, rodent droppings, empty cans, and grimy rags. One of the only things that appeared orderly

was a Maxwell House coffee can that was filled with used chewing gum. When Ed finished a piece of gum, he placed it neatly in the can on top of a growing mountain of old wads of gum. It was a unique tradition to say the least. But as the town of Plainfield would learn in the near future, Ed had far more sinister hobbies than saving old pieces of gum and collecting an odd assortment of junk. There were only 600 people in Plainfield, so it fit the cliche of a town where everyone knows everyone. Everyone thought they knew Ed Gein, but they would soon discover they didn't know him at all. On the surface, he'd looked mostly like the same guy he'd always been. He was still a good citizen who always helped a friend in need, but he started letting himself

go. He rarely took a bath or shaved. The town barber called him a filthy thing. He also neglected even the most basic upkeep of his farm. Weeds dominated the landscape and farming equipment sat rusting in the barnyard. And aside from the weeds and the old machinery, the yard was empty. Ed had sold the livestock to pay for his mother's funeral. Ed managed to survive because he didn't need much. He cobbled together odd jobs to buy enough to live. He cleared roadside brush, plowed snow, and occasionally worked on a threshing crew. Floyd Reed, who worked with Ed on various crews, called him the most dependable person in the county. But Floyd was in the minority. He was one of the few people who treated Ed with respect. Most thought Ed Gein was a joke, and it let him know it

as much as possible. People loved to pull pranks on Ed Gein. He was an easy mark. Sometimes the threshing crew got together for beers after a job. They'd give Ed a beer, but they'd secretly fill it half full with brandy. Ed would guzzle the beer without noticing, and he'd be drunk in an instant and barely able to stand up. Others teased him by planting smoke bombs under the hood of his pickup truck. He didn't like the teasing, but at least it was some form of attention, because when he went home, he was once again alone. And the only things that were well maintained in his house were his guns. He had two 22 caliber rifles, a 22 pistol, a Mouser that fired 765 rounds, and a 12-gauge shotgun. He enjoyed hunting small game like rabbits and squirrels,

but refused to kill anything larger. He claimed he couldn't stand the side of blood, which was odd because he'd spent the bulk of his life on a farm butchering animals. When he was home alone, he immersed himself in magazines like inside crime and startling detective that were filled with violence and murder. When Ed's mother was still alive, he went to the ice cream parlor or roller rink, but now he'd become a hermit. About the only time he ventured off his property was to go to Mary Hogan's Tavern. The tavern looked more like a warehouse than a bar, and it was about six.

seven miles north of Plainfield. Ed had never been a big drinker, but he wasn't at Mary Hogan's Tavern for the drinks. He was there for Mary Hogan. Mary was a middle-aged woman with a German accent who weighed nearly 200 pounds. She wasn't

classically beautiful, but to Ed Gein, she was a goddess. She reminded him of his mother, at least physically. Otherwise, they were polar opposites. Mary had been divorced twice. She sold, liquor and cursed like a man, and she allegedly had connections to the mob. So now Ed was in

a conundrum. He felt some sort of attraction to Mary because she reminded him of his mother, but Mary was also everything his mother hated. Ed began to question God. How could the Almighty Creator have taken his mother, who was so pure and perfect, but allowed Mary Hogan, a beer-swilling, foul-mouthed monster, to live? If Ed Gein didn't get answer soon, he'd have to answer the question himself. Austin, Texas, summer 1973. Toby Hooper had managed to raise $40,000 to make his first film Eggshells. It was a weird pseudo-documentary that he basically made up as he went along. That process wouldn't work this time, and neither would the money. Now he had a real concept and a real script, and he would

need real actors and a real crew to bring the idea to life, which would cost real money. Hooper and his production partner, Kim Hinkle, were currently calling their movie Head Cheese, and they were now facing their biggest challenge, finding financing when the only credit to their names was an experimental film that was a financial flop. The only thing they had going for them was that everyone wanted to be in show business, and so began the financial saga that still affects the casting, crew to this day. Warren Skaren was a former Eagle Scout who'd been student body president at Rice University. Thanks to his charm, he'd wrangled a job in the administration of Texas governor

Preston Smith after graduation. He and Smith loved movies. So, after New Mexico became the first state to form its own film commission, Skaren worked his persuasive magic on one of the governor's lobbyists. In short order, the state of Texas had its own film commission. and Skaren was in charge. That was in 1971. Two years later, legendary Hollywood director Sidney Lomette came to Texas to film a movie called Love and Molly, which was an adaptation of a Larry McMurtry novel.

The film starred Bo Bridges and Anthony Perkins, who'd rocketed to fame 13 years earlier with the lead role in Alfred Hitchcock's classic movie Psycho. Even though the pros from Hollywood were in town, Scaron was more interested in developing homegrown projects. So in the summer of 1973, Scarin called a friend named Bill Parsley. Parsley was a Ponchi lobbyist and avid networker. He was a mainstay at Austin's Villa Capri Cocktail Lounge

and often referred to himself, at least around pretty young women, as a movie producer. Technically it was true. He and a friend had financed two films, both of which have been lost to the trash heap of history. To this day, nobody can even remember the titles. But one of the movies was a black exploitation film about a jet-setting

publisher with a harem of lovers. The other, according to Parsley's son, was a horror film that was, quote, simply terrible. So Parsley was technically a producer, but not by much. Skarin met Parsley

in Austin and pitched the gruesome plot of head cheese. Parsley was intrigued. After sleeping on it, Parsley met with Hooper and Hinkle and offered to raise $60,000 in exchange for 50% ownership of the film. Hooper and Hinkle were ecstatic, but Parsley's lawyer had doubts. The trio went to the office of Parsley's attorney, Robert Coon, to draw up the contract. Coon had zero confidence in the project, and he didn't want his client to get involved. His only consolation was that his client could take a tax write off when the movie failed.

But then a week later, for some strange reason, Robert Coon decided he wanted to invest in the film as well. He put in $9,000, and that decision entangled him in the web of the film for decades. Now Hooper and Hinkle had their money. They had a production schedule, and they had their locations. All they needed was the cast. They needed five young adults to play the play their money. friends who were taking an innocent road trip, and they needed three men to play the insane villains who lived in the dark house down the lonely dirt road.

Marilyn Burns would be their star. She was a 21-year-old recent graduate of the drama department at the University of Texas. She was a stunning blonde who volunteered at the Texas Film Commission so she could be close to the action and get the inside scoop on new productions. was a shy girl from Houston who was opportunistic but had little acting experience. In 1970, she'd snagged a tiny role in Robert Altman's film Brewster McLeod. She thought her big break would come from the other production in Texas that summer of 1973, the big Hollywood movie Love and Molly. She'd been cast for a small role, but the director went back on the deal

at the insistence of the agent for lead actress Blythe Danner. The agent wanted the small part to go to an unknown actress named Susan Sarandon. So Burns lost out on her chance to be in love and Molly. While she continued to hope for her big break, she worked as a cocktail waitress at the Villa Capri Lounge in Austin, which was where the chief investor in a new movie hung out. Bill Parsley, who loved to call himself a movie producer and was now about to produce his next film, new Marilyn Burns. Either Parsley or the head of the film commission, Warren Skarin, introduced Marilyn Burns to Toby Hooper. Co-writer Kim Hinkle remembered that she got the part of Sally almost immediately.

Hooper was apparently enchanted with her, and he wasn't alone. When Chief Investor Bill Parsley had his lawyer create a company to invest in the film, he called the company MAB Inc. Many believe M.A.B. stood for Maryland A. Burns. Plainfield, Wisconsin, late 1940s. As the death of Ed Gein's mother slowly receded into the distance, Ed's reading habits evolved. He became obsessed with Nazis, specifically a woman named Ilsa Koch, who was known as the Bitch of Buchanwald. Coke was accused of collecting human heads and using the tattooed skin of her victims as lampshades and book bindings.

When Ed wasn't reading about Nazis, he read about cannibals and headhunters. He was fascinated by people in the South Seas who preserved the heads of their victims. And the third part of his disturbed reading trilogy was Examations. He liked British stories of body snatchers and resurrection men. In the future, when the horrors of Ed Gein's house were discovered, it wouldn't be hard to trace the origins of the things he made. Ed also read the local newspapers religiously. He loved the obituaries, which he tore out and saved.

Then one day Ed read an incredible story about a former soldier. The man had left New York City as a man, traveled to Denmark and returned as a woman. The story was shocking, but also exciting. Ed had been having similar thoughts, and it wasn't just his own thoughts, that were crowding his mind. He began to hear his mother's voice. She spoke to him, and her message was simple. Be good. Ed often laid on his bed, staring at the ceiling,

trying to remember what she looked like. Sadly, the only image that came to mind was of her in her coffin. But Ed began to believe that her death was just an obstacle. He thought he could raise her from the grave. He was so convinced of his powers that he drove out to the Plainfield Cemetery numerous times and tried to bring her back from the dead. But Augusta remained trapped in the ground. Ed sank deeper into his loneliness. When he did try to connect with others in Plainfield, they usually weren't so kind. Some refused to pay him for the work he performed. Others borrowed farm equipment with no intention of returning it. Meanwhile, over the next decade in Wisconsin, from the late 1940s to the late 1950s, women disappeared at an alarming rate, and the police had

no answers. May 1947, Georgia Weckler, eight years old, disappeared and is never seen again. February, 1953, Evelyn Hartley, 15, disappears and is never seen again. They were both more than 100 miles from Plainfield, but soon enough, people started to disappear in the area of the Gein Farm as well. November 1, 1952. Two locals, Victor Travis and his friend Ray Burgess, went deer hunting. That afternoon, they had a couple beers in Mack's bar in Plainfield. At 7 p.m., they left the bar in Burgess' car. They were never seen again.

Then, on December 8, 1954, the growing problem became even more scary to the residents of Plainfield. A farmer named Seymour Lester walked into Mary Hogan's tavern and knew immediately that something was off. There was nobody there, no customers, and no Mary. Then Lester saw a large pool of blood on the ground. He called the authorities. A group of sheriffs arrived. They found a spent 30. two-caliber cartridge on the ground next to the blood. And the patch of blood was streaked,

as if a body had been dragged through it. The trail of blood continued outside to the parking lot, and then stopped. The body had obviously been put into a vehicle and driven away. There were no suspects, and the fingerprints found at the bar turned up no leads. A year went by with no progress. On the anniversary, the Plainfield Sun newspaper ran a front-page headline, What Happened to Mary Hogan? Another year later, December 1956, the authorities were still perplexed. The evidence at the bar clearly pointed to a crime in which someone walked in, shot Mary Hogan with a 32-caliber gun, and then dragged her body away.

But after two years, her whereabouts were still a mystery. And of course, during that time, rumors flew hot and heavy. Many people thought she was somehow connected to the mafia. If so, was this a mafia hit? Or was it local hoodlums for whatever reason? Or was it a basic robbery? But if it was local hoodlums or a basic robbery, why had they taken the body?

And where was the body? Nobody knew. But within a year, they'd find out. and it would be far worse than any theory they'd imagine. Austin, Texas, summer 1973. Toby Hooper was about to make a real movie, so he needed at least one actor who was in the Screen Actors Guild. Hooper and his co-writer Hinkle had worked on a hippie biker movie

a couple years earlier that was trying to be the Texas version of Easy Rider. Needless to say, it was not as successful as the Peter Fonda Dennis Hopper classic. But while working on the movie, Hooper and Hinkle met an actor named Jim Seedow. When the young filmmakers needed a SAG actor, they called Seedow. Seedow had served in the Army Air Corps in World War II. He transported warplanes, cigars, and perfume from Alaska to the Soviet Union. He eventually settled in Houston with his wife, and he worked as the resident director of Theater Suburbia. He also took supporting roles in films that were made in Texas.

A couple years after Seedau played the father of the lead character in the Texas Biker movie, a young actor from that film called him and asked him to be in a new horror movie. Toby Hooper offered to pay Seedow with ownership shares of the film. Seedau said, no thanks, he'd take the cash. It was a smart decision, even though the money was incredibly low. The other actors accepted Hooper's offer of ownership shares instead of cash payments, and they would learn hard lessons in a couple years when they received their first checks. But for now, Hooper and Hinkle had the man who would play a character called The Cook.

He was the most sane member of the insane cannibal family, and that wasn't saying much. The rest of the actors were from local acting schools, like the drama department at the University of Texas, or community theaters, or they happened to learn about the film through Word of Mouth in Austin. Alan Danziger had been in Hooper's first film, Egg Shelts. Danziger got the part of Jerry, the curly-haired band driver who was Marilyn Burns' boyfriend. Terry McMinn was the lead in her college production of The Rainmaker. It was a classic stage play that was made into a film starring Bert Lancaster and Catherine Hepburn. But in the new horror movie, Terry played Pam, the astrology-obsessed girlfriend of the jock of the group, Kirk.

and Kirk was played by William Vale, one of the many casting crew members plucked from the University of Texas Drama School. Paul Partain rounded out the group of five friends. He'd served in the Navy in Vietnam before also going to the University of Texas Drama School. Someone else had already been promised the role of Franklin, Sally's whiny brother who's confined to a wheelchair. But Partain had just finished a small role in Love and Molly as the brother of Susan Saran. Coincidentally, if Sidney Lament, the director of Love and Molly, had kept Marilyn Burns in the film instead of Susan Sarandon, Burns and Partain would have played brother and sister in back-to-back movies.

Partane auditioned for Hooper several times before Hooper and Hinkle finally agreed on the obvious. If he's good enough for Sidney Lemette, he's good enough for us, they said. Partane became one of those actors you hear about sometimes. He stayed in character even when the cameras weren't rolling. The problem was, his character was so whiny and unlikable that the other actors couldn't stand him by the end of filming. He laughed about it years later, but at the time, he made a grueling shoot even more difficult. It became another piece of the legend of the production.

So the five innocent road-tripping friends were cast, and one of the three crazy villains was cast. But now Hooper needed the other two. Austin, Texas, July 1973. Ed Neal was cast as the hitchhiker through a twist of fate. He was on his way back to drama class at UT when a girl outside the classroom asked, Are you going to try out for the movie? Neil had never heard of this new horror movie, but he said, sure. He walked into the audition completely unprepared.

Hooper asked him if he could be weird. Neil's classmates could verify that he could definitely be weird. Neil instantly channeled his nephew, whom he said was a paranoid schizophrenic. Neil did some wild gestures and facial expressions, and he proved his classmates right. He was definitely weird. He got the part of the deranged hitchhiker on the spot. That left just one role to fill. The hitchhiker's chainsaw-wielding brother, who doesn't actually have a name in the film.

No one ever calls him by name, but he became known as Leatherface. Hooper and Hinkle thought they'd found their guy. They had an actor ready to go. But then something happened there became another piece of canonized lore in the history of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The actor apparently became so paranoid and so worried about the part

that he locked himself in a motel room. He stayed drunk all the time and refused to come out. Hooper and Hinkle had to scramble to find a new leather face. Gunner Hansen had a friend who was supposed to work on the film. The friend had told him about the role of the killer a couple weeks earlier, but then the role had been filled by the guy who was currently drunk and locked in a motel

room. Hansen's friend came back and said there was another chance, but he also warned Hansen that there was bad karma surrounding the film. The friend was probably going to quit, but Hansen decided to audition anyway. He got a meeting with Toby Hooper and made an instant impression. Hansen was six foot four and weighed nearly 300 pounds. He was born in Iceland, but he'd grown up in Maine. He was making a living in Austin as a carpenter, a bartender, and an actor in local theater.

As Hansen walked across the street to the building where he would meet Toby Hooper, Hooper spotted him out the window. Hooper thought he had his new leather face. Then when Hansen walked in and was so big that he filled the entire doorway, Hooper was positive. Hansen immediately started to define the character. He regarded Leatherface as a kind of tragic character that had severe mental challenges. Hansen's mother worked at a school for children with developmental issues,

so Hansen went to the school and studied their behaviors. Many walked with stooped shoulders and held their heads at odd angles and made erratic motions. Hansen tried to incorporate those mannerisms into Leatherface. So with the addition of Gunner Hansen and the role that would make him world famous for all time, the production was ready to begin. One week before the cameras started rolling during a blazing hot Texas summer, the head of the Texas Film Commission made one final contribution. It might have been one of the best pieces of advice in movie history.

Warren Skaren convinced Toby Hooper and Kim Hinkle to drop their two working titles, head cheese, and leather face. He said they should call the movie The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Next time on Infamous America, the owner of a hardware store goes missing in Plainfield, Wisconsin. Police follow the trail to the farm of Ed Gein, where they discover unimaginable horrors. And in Austin, Texas, Toby Hooper's rag-tag cast and crew discover different kinds of horrors as they film a low-budget movie in the summer heat. Some quit, many become sick, and none will be the same afterward.

That's next week on Infamous America. And if you're a member of our Black Barrel Plus program, you already have access to the full season. If you're not a member, you can sign up now through the link in the show notes or on our website, blackbarrelmedia.com. Members receive access to each new season in its entirety one week before the season begins for the general public. And members receive exclusive bonus episodes. Sign up today for just $5 per month.

Special thanks to Dan Madigan for his insight into the life of his friend, Toby Hooper. This season was researched and written by Brian Frazier and myself. Original music by Rob Valier. Audio editing and sound design by Dave Harrison. I'm your host and producer, Chris Wimmer. Find us at our website, blackbarrelmedia.com, or on our social media channels. We're Black Barrel Media on Facebook and Instagram and B-Beryl Media on Twitter. And you can stream all our episodes on YouTube.

Just search for Infamous America Podcast. Thanks for listening.