Editing Ed Wood (section)

==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."{{sfn|Ford|1999|p=81}}

Wood was [[cremated]] at the Utter-McKinley mortuary, and his ashes were scattered at sea.{{sfn|Grey|1994|p=160}} [[Paul Marco]], O'Hara, David DeMering and [[The Amazing 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.<ref>Rudolph Grey, Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1992). pg. 160. ISBN 978-0-922915-24-8.</ref>