Cherchez La Femme: My Affair with The Black Dahlia
Posted in Books, Films, Halloween, Horror, True Crime |By Less Lee Moore
The Black Dahlia was the first James Ellroy novel I read and I loved it. I had become a fan of the hardboiled detective fiction genre after being introduced to the pulp novels of Jim Thompson in a Film Noir class. Then, seeking more books in that vein, I soon devoured all the books of Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain. Since Thompson, Chandler, and Cain were all deceased, I was thrilled that Ellroy was still alive and kicking.
But it was more than that.
Elizabeth Short, aka “The Black Dahlia”
The grotesque nature of the crime, the beauty of the victim, and the unbelievable fact that Elizabeth Short’s murder had never been solved haunted me. I wanted Ellroy’s resolution to be true, though I assumed that the real story was probably much less complex and fantastic.
As an Ellroy fan, I thought Curtis Hansen’s 1997 film adaptation of L.A. Confidential was note-perfect. Although some of the plot points had been excised to meet the cinematic demands of brevity and clarity, I didn’t mind a bit.
In 1999, I read author John Gilmore’s take on the murder: Severed: The True Story of The Black Dahlia. Gilmore’s father was an LAPD officer at the time the crime was committed, though he was not directly involved with the case. Besides the incredibly gruesome, never-before-seen crime and autopsy photos, Gilmore’s prose disturbed me.
His hypothesis—that an “alcoholic drifter” named Jack Anderson Wilson committed the crime—seemed plausible, since according to Gilmore, Wilson knew specific details about the crime that would only be known to the killer or an accomplice. This information was related directly to Gilmore by Wilson in 1982. Wilson died in a fire a few days after his interview with Gilmore, thus erasing any possibilities of charging him with the murder.
Not long after, rumors that director David Fincher was handling the film adaptation of The Black Dahlia began to bubble forth. I figured one Ellroy film was enough for Curtis Hansen and since I loved Fincher’s creepy, twisted The Game (released one week before L.A. Confidential, in fact), I felt he’d be ideal to handle The Black Dahlia.
But as we all know, in Hollywood, things are never what they appear to be. Eventually, the project was passed off to Brian De Palma, who I’ve long dismissed as a rip-off artist and a hack. The casting of Josh Hartnett as Dwight “Bucky” Bleichert didn’t give me any additional confidence in De Palma’s skills.
Still, Elizabeth Short remained in my subconscious. Eventually, the idea of dressing as the Black Dahlia for Halloween, complete with 1940s style hair and attire, took hold of me. I found a re-issued Vogue pattern of a 1940s dress and kept my eyes peeled for the appropriate fabric. Since it had been over 15 years since I’d read Ellroy’s book, I decided to re-read it. Then, I watched De Palma’s movie version.
Mia Kirshner as
The Black Dahlia
The film begins auspiciously enough, with entire scenes lifted from the novel. Yet, by removing certain pieces of key exposition—specifically, the disappearance of Sergeant Lee Blanchard’s sister—his motivation for obsession ring hollow. Furthermore, there is very little which reveals that Bleichert was the more obsessed of the two, a point upon which the entire novel hinges.
Like Lee and Bucky, I was also hooked on The Black Dahlia. I did some Internet searching and found author Pamela Hazleton’s Black Dahlia Website. She provides an overview of the case as well as the books written on it. I was surprised to see just how many other books had been written proposing theories of the murder. I decided to explore retired LAPD detective Steve Hodel’s account of the case in his book, The Black Dahlia Avenger, mainly because James Ellroy himself supports his theories.
