Linda Darnell: Star Dust

Star Dust (1940) starring Linda Darnell, John Payne, Roland Young, directed by Walter Lang

A very young Linda Darnell is unearthly in her loveliness; always a true beauty, she looks stunning and also gets to play a more innocent type than she would later become known for. John Payne is also strong, surprisingly so; he comes across very well in it. Mary Healy scores with her beautiful voice, and Charlotte Greenwood is a delight as the motherly drama coach. William Gargan also deserves credit for his amusing Zanuck imitation. ~ Craig Butler, Rovi

A somewhat realistic--though not without the usual Hollywood gloss--treatment of a young girls attempt to make it as a star in the motion picture industry. Darnell, in a portrayal not too dissimilar from her own experiences, is given a chance at a contract by talent scout Young. She gets to Hollywood only to be turned down by studio boss Gargan (in an obvious impersonation of Darryl Zanuck), under the pretense of being too young.

Instead of heading back home, she meets and falls in love with Payne who pushes her along until she eventually lands a spot. Darnell injected her assignment with the needed charm to pull it off. Source: scootermoviesshop.com

At sixteen Linda was already starring in an autobiographical film, her name alone above the title. Her studio contract had been revised so that she was making $200 a week, with bigger increments on the way. Much of her fame still seemed unreal.

"When I wake up in the morning," she told a columnist, "I keep my eyes closed as long as possible. I'm afraid it will all fly away when I properly awake." They quickly devised a treatment, based not only on Linda's story, but on Dorris Bowdon's and Mary Healy's as well. In the initial draft of Star Dust the girls' first names were even used. Eventually Darryl Zanuck suggested the writers drop Dorris and combine her character with Mary's. Originally everybody in the story wound up happy, but Zanuck felt that didn't ring true.

Mary Healy as Mary Andrews, John Payne as Bud Borden and Linda Darnell as Carolyn Sayres in "Star Dust" (1940) by Walter Lang

"One of the characters, Mary probably, should be a flop in pictures," Zanuck urged, "yet find happiness elsewhere. Only Linda emerges as a hit." Eventually Linda's name was changed in the script to Carolyn, while Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, the working title, was shortened to Star Dust. Shooting on the picture began early in 1940, with Mary Healy playing her own part and John Payne as Linda's love interest.

Lang decided to duplicate Linda's actual screen test in the film. She even wore the same clothes. "I had a little less accent and a little more poise," Linda said. "I think I was dazed when I played the [original] park bench test, but I was almost as scared in the Star Dust one, because by then I knew how much depended on it." Variety found Star Dust entertaining and reported, "Miss Darnell displays a wealth of youthful charm and personality that confirms studio efforts to build her to a draw personality." Ultimately the film received a top B rating, playing not the major houses in most cities, but first-run theaters a notch below.

On March 18, 1940, Linda preserved her hand and footprints in cement in the forecourt of Grauman's Chinese Theater, just as she had at the end of her autobiographical film. Eventually her inscription would be surrounded by those of Jack Benny, Bing Crosby, George Burns, and Al Jolson. Later that month she received the first annual "Seein' Stars" award as the most promising actress of the year, a presentation the studio celebrated in grand style.

It's a remarkable indicator of how big a spell Linda Darnell had already cast on the American movie-going consciousness that her third film, Star Dust (1940), was semibiographical. 'Star Dust' is actually based on the early careers of Darnell, Dorris Bowdon, and Mary Healy. Bowdon acted in a handful of films in the late 1930s and early 1940s before retiring to have a family with husband Nunnally Johnson, while Healy acted in more movies and television and also has a part in Star Dust as Mary Andrews, a composite character based on herself and Bowdon.

Darnell, Bowdon and Healy all went to Hollywood after being discovered by talent scouts, but Darnell, who was only thirteen at the time of that initial trip, was told to return when she was older -- which is exactly what happens to her character in this movie. At one point in Star Dust we see a screen test for Darnell's character -- an exact recreation of Darnell's actual, original screen test on a park bench a few years earlier.

The New York Times called Star Dust "unlikely to stem the westward migration of youngsters with hallucinations of swimming pools and a six-figure apotheosis to stardom.... Miss Darnell, in the leading role, is not only well behaved, but one of the more comely starlets. Mr. Payne is refreshing and breezy." Variety called the picture "a top B that will deliver as an A attraction in the majority of spots." After the release of Star Dust, her salary rose to $500 a week.

Late in January 1945, Linda learned her next studio assignment would be Fallen Angel, with the Viennese tyrant Otto Preminger directing. Linda would play Stella, a mercenary waitress eventually killed by a blow on the head. Dana Andrews was cast as the male lead, and Darryl Zanuck coaxed Alice Faye out of retirement to play a dramatic role with no singing. Fallen Angel was the first of four pictures Linda would make with Otto Preminger, whom she learned to dislike intensely. The director had scored a huge success with Laura the year before, but Linda found him stubborn, humorless, terrifying on the set.

She played the tramp with gusto, and almost everyone agreed it was her finest acting yet. "Linda Darnell was the best thing in the picture," said costar Dana Andrews. "The scene I had with her was at least showy." There was even talk of her receiving an Academy Award nomination. David Raksin, who wrote the score, vividly recalled seeing Linda on the set: "My impression was that she was learning her profession as she went along. She had a sexy beauty. There was something lusty about her without any overt attempt to seduce."

Linda's role in A Letter to Three Wives was easily the best of the trio of leads. She had risen in Darryl Zanuck's estimation after Forever Amber, and perhaps for the first time he felt she was a solid gamble in an earthy part.

A Letter to Three Wives was shaping up into a script of quality, which Zanuck was confident would also be good box office. Although Zanuck privately found Joseph Mankiewicz an "arrogant bastard," he had faith in Mankiewicz's genius, both as a writer and as a director. Even in the first draft Lora May, the part Linda played, was viewed as a masterful portrait of a hard-boiled, cynical gold digger with a tender heart.


Linda Darnell, Kirk Douglas and Paul Douglas in "A Letter to Three Wives" (1949) directed by Joseph L. Mankiewick

Paired with Linda was veteran radio actor Paul Douglas, making his screen debut after a huge success in Broadway in Born Yesterday. They matched each other scene for scene, with Linda revealing a remarkable sense of comedy. Lora Mays classic line came in response to an older friend's suggestion, "If I was you, I'd show more of what I got. Maybe wear somethin' with beads." Linda replied, "What I got don't need beads." The part quickly became Linda's tour de force.

When A Letter to Three Wives was completed in August, Linda was back at the Amalfi Drive house, although her relationship with Joe Mankiewicz would continue for another six years. She assured Jeanne Curtis and others close to her that he was, and always would be, the great love of her life, referring to him later as her "back street affair." Old enough to be a father figure, dashing enough to be a lover, cultured and intellectual enough to serve as mentor, Mankiewicz represented the perfect combination Linda sought in a man, and she was willing to risk everything. Joseph Mankiewicz never talked about Linda, except to say that he "adored" her and that "she was a marvelous girl with very terrifying personal problems." He had a record of persuading women who fell in love with him that they were in serious need of psychiatric treatment.

"After she got involved with Mankiewicz," director Henry Hathaway recalled, "she became a little exotic. I think he was the one who turned a simple girl into what came damn close to being a neurotic." When 'A Letter to Three Wives' was released early in 1949, it brought Linda the most unanimous acclaim she ever received, providing her with the undisputed triumph 'Forever Amber' failed to deliver.

'Two Flags West' was shot near the San Ildefonso reservation, some fifteen miles northwest of Santa Fe. Linda hated making westerns, particularly since she was allergic to horses. Gradually the crew came to refer to the picture as "Two Fags West," as tempers began to flare. "Cornel is seemingly trying to be halfway decent," Linda wrote, "but I still avoid him as much as possible. Joe Cotten is an awfully stuffed shirt, and a lush to boot, but Jeff Chandler is a dreamboat, good actor, and a real down-to-earth guy."

"She was an excellent cook," said Lola (her adopted daughter). "I think it was something she could do privately that was productive. And Mother hoarded food! I think it came from the days when she was poor growing up." Although Linda would buy her daughter several dresses at a time, she always bought them a size or two too large. "I never had anything that fit," said Lola. "I had to grow into everything. It was just another of Mother's quirks." At an early age Lola was made aware that she was the daughter of an exceptionally beautiful woman whom everyone treated as somebody special.

When 'Second Chance' was released in July, it received favorable notices, with Linda, Robert Mitchum, and Jack Palance all awarded their share of acclaim. Critics agreed that the screenplay was tense and exciting, building to an effective climax. The suspense was brilliantly photographed, and director Rudolph Maté used the cumbersome 3-D process more skillfully than most. There was a spine-tingling fight between Mitchum and Palance on top of the cable car, culminating in Palance's being knocked overboard.

Linda met an American Airlines pilot named Merle Roy Robertson, whom she began dating. A likeable, soft-spoken man, Robby was strikingly different from any of Linda's other offscreen romances. He was handsome, debonair, a giant of a man. "Robby had the body of a Greek Adonis," Dick Curtis assured, "with a very dry way about him. He was the epitome of what a man in the movies should be. He had the women drooling over him." Linda soon became a major conquest. Although she never forgot Joe Mankiewicz, she clearly fell in love with Robby Robertson. "I mean he was a big, grand passion," said Yvonne Wood. "He was a handsome guy and dashing, and she fell for him." Before meeting her he had had an affair with Jayne Mansfield. Suddenly Linda found herself in a romantic involvement like none she had ever experienced. Robby was affectionate, sexually experienced, suavely aggressive.

Before long he asked her to marry him. He had never been married and made Linda feel like a desirable woman. He seemed to love her rather than her image. They had great times together, and Linda even promised him she'd stop drinking, although she never did. "At first theirs was a fun, happy, good marriage," Richard Curtis observed, "but what happened was that Robby was flying all over the country and Linda was doing her stage work, so that they wound up only seeing each other between performances. Then Linda started to go into a deep depressive shell."

''She adored Tyrone," Maria Flores said. "He had been so nice to her. When he died, she was absolutely devastated.'' Around the time of Power's death Linda began sinking into a depression, a mood that deepened over the next seven years. She reached the point where she even disliked Christmas, since the holiday reminded her of her estrangement from her family. Robertson convinced Linda to give up her business manager and let him handle her career. "Honey, you don't have to worry about the bills anymore," he said. "I'm going to take care of everything." They hoped for a television series, but when that fell through, a nightclub act seemed the only solution. Linda knew she couldn't sing anymore, couldn't dance, and was terrified of appearing before an intimate crowd without a play for protection. In February 1961 they were playing a month's engagement at the Drake Hotel in Chicago.

Linda was really hitting the bottle, and she and Robby were fighting viciously. She jumped up, ran to the window, and threw it open. She started to leap, but Tom Hayward grabbed her and pulled her back. By then Linda was hysterical. The two men put her in the shower, with Linda crying, "I want to get away from everybody." They checked her into a hospital for treatment of alcoholism. Linda and Robby legally separated on Valentine's Day 1962. Shortly before moving from Bel Air, Linda met and began dating Philip Kalavros, a Greek doctor. Kalavros did his best to keep Linda from drinking and tried to build her stamina.

"He picked her up when she was in her mentally depressed low end," Richard Curtis claimed. "She couldn't seem to face the position she was in. He was a means of escape for her. I don't think she had the ability to face the reality that she was no longer a power." Linda very likely suffered from cirrhosis, and Kalavros began giving her doses of vitamin B to reverse her liver damage. Linda opened in Houghton Lake, Michigan, to a standing ovation in August 1964. "Mother lit up in front of an audience," said Lola. "It was like turning on a light bulb. She was so beautiful, and her smile was incredible.

Black Spurs was Linda's first picture in seven years, and it would be her last. The actress reported to Paramount Studios for a wardrobe session on September 2, taking Lola and Jeanne and Patty Curtis with her. She would play a New Orleans madam in the picture, a role almost any veteran could have walked through with ease. Linda received third billing after Rory Calhoun and Terry Moore. She loved working before a camera again and all the fun and gags that went with it. Linda finished her part in less than two weeks, and had no delusions about the quality of the film, aware it fell into the "oater" category.

"You know, I never felt accepted in the movie world," the star confessed. "I think that's why I resent my family so. I would never have been an actress if it hadn't been for Mother's insisting. To think I paid a psychiatrist $25,000 trying to work through all that before he finally gave up on me!"

The cause of the fire was never determined. An ash or a lighted cigarette dropped into the living room sofa may have been the culprit, although Linda was always careful with cigarettes, and Jeanne Curtis recalled carrying ashtrays out to the kitchen after the movie and setting them in the sink. Jeanne also denied that Linda had been drinking heavily that evening. They had sipped coffee while they watched Star Dust, something Linda rarely did. Relatives and friends denied categorically that Linda's going into the fire was a subconscious suicide attempt. Jeanne and Dick both claimed their friend was simply afraid to jump from the second-story window and felt she could make it out the front door. -"Hollywood Beauty: Linda Darnell and the American Dream" (2001) by Ronald L. Davis

"Darnell died in 1965 after a fire broke out in a Chicago area house where she had just been watching Star Dust on television in the middle of the night. The cause of the fire was never determined, though it may have been a stray cigarette. Darnell suffered extreme burns and smoke inhalation and died a few hours later. She was 41. Source: www.tcm.com

Known as the "girl with the perfect face," irony followed her. She played the TV character of Dora Gray (female for Dorian Gray) in two episodes of Wagon Train in 1958, and, also ironically, appeared in a 1957 episode of Climax entitled "Trial By Fire." Her last movie was Black Spurs, in 1965. On April 10 of that same year she visited a friend in Chicago who had once been her secretary, and fell asleep while smoking in bed, causing a fire that killed her. For yet more irony, at the time she had been watching a TV rerun of her own film, Star Dust. But although Linda may be gone, cruel fate will not be permitted to have the last laugh. Thanks to DVDs and the internet, her memory will now electronically live forever. Source: www.lindadarnell.com

“At first, everything was a fairy tale come true. I stepped into a fabulous land where, overnight, I was a movie star. In the pictures your built up by everyone. On the set, in the publicity office, wherever you go, everyone says your wonderful. It gives you a false sense of security. You waltz through a role, and everywhere you hear that you are beautiful and lovely, a natural-born actress. You believe what people around you say.” -Linda Darnell

31 Days of Horror: ‘Inland Empire’, The Black Dahlia case

31 Days of Horror: ‘Inland Empire’ - an incredible showcase of Lynch’s most unsettling impulses:

Laura Dern in "Inland Empire" (2006) directed by David Lynch

"The only reliable constant throughout the film’s constantly shifting nightmare logic is Laura Dern, whose incredible performance is doubly impressive given that Dern has stated explicitly that she has no idea what the film is “about.” Inland takes place in a cruel, alluring Hollywood of the mind that recalls Mulholland Dr. (whose principal cast shows up here voicing a family of talking sitcom rabbits), but there are also callbacks to Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, Lost Highway, and possibly others, making Inland feel like a demented greatest-hits reel of sorts.

Over its colossal three-hour runtime, though, it becomes clear that Inland is not a mere restatement, but rather a digitized remix of Lynch’s pet themes and visual ideas, one that accentuates the most corrupting aspects of its cheap digital photography." Source: www.soundonsight.org

Poster of "Highway 301" (1950) directed by Andrew L. Stone

Poster of "Lost Highway" (1997) directed by David Lynch

FILMMAKER: There are a lot of film noir elements that come up in Lost Highway. In the late '40s, film noirs were considered B-movies, What is it about those particular movies is so fascinating now?

LYNCH: There's a beguiling and magnetic mood. There's so much darkness, and there's so much room to dream. They're mysteries and there are people in trouble, and uneasiness.

FILMMAKER: I thought that at certain times Patricia Arquette looked like Elizabeth Short, the victim of the real-life L.A. noir case, the Black Dahlia. Have you ever read a book called Severed?

LYNCH: No.

FILMMAKER: It's a book by John Gilmore where he says that he solved the Black Dahlia case.

LYNCH: I'll be darned. I talked to John St. John

FILMMAKER: Jigsaw John?

LYNCH: Exactly. We had dinner a couple of times. He was in charge of that case until he retired. Then he died, unfortunately. But he had a lot of information on her.

FILMMAKER: He was one of the sources for John Gilmore's book.

LYNCH: I'll bet he was.

FILMMAKER: What do you find interesting about that case?

LYNCH: Well, it's unsolved. And I love mysteries. And this thing just has this kind of other-worldly quality to it. The way she was killed a large part of it, and the fact that no one has ever come forward. They still don't know much about the case. Source: www.lynchnet.com

-John Gilmore: If David Lynch were to have a hand in The Black Dahlia, that would probably be a really good interpretation. I think he would do it rather well. It would be beautiful. But one of the problems facing David is... Lost Highway really didn't do anything for me.

-Yes, I went to see that film, and I wouldn't say it was so much esoteric as it was merely vague. But that was what occurred, and he was afraid, supposedly, to do something as stark as this. And so he's facing that problem, a typical Hollywood problem.

-Oh, it would have been a wonderful marriage, David Lynch and The Black Dahlia. He could have gotten back into the way he used to be, but would have done it in such a way that people would realise he just had a bad day with Lost Highway. Source: www.johngilmore.com

Tom Neal in "Detour" directed by Edgar G. Ulmer

John Gilmore: It wasn’t inspiration that focused my attention on the Black Dahlia case — although curiosity and fascination played their parts. It was a matter of financial necessity. It was ’63 and tough-guy actor Tom Neal wanted to produce and star in a movie based on the case. I was living in Hollywood, writing screenplays and stories, and trying to keep my head above water. The deal with Tom offered cash up front and a big carrot on the other end when he raised the financing “to get the cocksucker on a roll,” as he put it. Tom knew a retired cop who gave him information about my father, about his connections in LAPD and his past ties to L.A.’s former mayor, Fletcher Bowron. I took the “inside” door into LAPD and forged my associations with officers and detectives in homicide. After numerous ups and downs, the project with Tom collapsed almost two years later, when he was convicted of murdering his own wife in Palm Springs and sent to prison. Actor/director Jack Webb of Dragnet fame, closely associated with members of LAPD’s homicide, encouraged my unwillingness to give up on the case and prodded me to “keep hammering at the facts.”

I met Elizabeth Short in late ’46 when I was 11 years old. Elizabeth Short’s father abandoned his car on the Charlestown Bridge in Massachusetts, and seemed to vanish—to disappear. This was just after he lost his business during the Depression. Phoebe (Elizabeth's mother) worked as a bookkeeper whenever she could find employment, but for the next four years the family mostly depended on Mother’s Aid and government handouts. Phoebe Short was shocked when she received a letter from Cleo. He said he was in Northern California working in the shipyards, and apologized for leaving the way he did. He tried to explain in the letter that he had not been able to face up to the troubles, but knew that in his absence, if it appeared that he deserted or was dead, Phoebe would be eligible for more support. He asked if she might now allow him to return to the family. Phoebe answered her husband with an emphatic 'no'. She did not consider him her “husband.”

Almost daily Beth met new servicemen and went on dates, but she liked to think she was keeping a special place “in her heart” for Gordan Fickling. Several guys fell in love with Beth in Miami Beach before the season ended. “She was a natural vamp,” Sharon Givens says, “one who brings out the wolf in all men, no exceptions, and she didn’t even have to try.”

Beth met a very handsome Army Air Corps lieutenant, a pilot who had taken her to dinner twice. They danced at the Canteen, but she was also dating him on the outside because she wasn’t an “official” junior hostess. His name was Gordan Fickling and he’d come up from Long Beach. He had the use of a car and he’d take her to the beach and the amusement pier, or to Knott’s Berry Farm for fried chicken.

This sentiment changed on New Year’s Eve of 1945, when flyer Major Matt Gordan stepped into her life. A few days later the major asked her to be his wife. “I’m so much in love, I’m sure it shows,” she wrote to her mother. “Matt is so wonderful, not like other men... and he asked me to marry him.” Phoebe was very surprised with this news, but impressed with the photograph her daughter sent of herself and the handsome pilot. Matt gave Beth a gold wristwatch that was set with diamonds as a pre-engagement gift, and wrote to his own sister-in-law that Beth “is an educated and refined girl whom I plan to marry.”

Ann Toth portrayed Beth in a softer light: "In the first place, she didn’t drink, she didn’t smoke, because after all, living with her, I knew, and she always came in at a decent hour, 11 o’clock, or around there. She never came in later than that, and naturally if she was supposed to be sexy and do other stuff, there is a lot more that goes to it, rather than if a decent girl - there is drinking, smoking, wining and dining, and a few other things that go with it. I don’t think she was trying to be sexy."

Beth became a regular at the Medford Café, a late-night hangout in the Square. “It would usually be after midnight when she’d come in the café,” recalls Joe Sabia, at the time attending Leland Powers School of Radio. He had wanted to fight in the war but was 4-F due to a disability. “She was like a shadow figure,” he says. “There was this void—something missing.” A few days later a telegram arrived from Matt’s mother. Muriel watched as Beth tore it open, saying it was probably about the wedding. Beth read the telegram, then stood there, holding the piece of paper, staring at it. “It’s not going to be,” she said. “I can’t believe it’s not going to be...” She handed Muriel the telegram. Her sister read it out loud: “Received word War Department. Matt killed in plane crash on way home from India. Our deepest sympathy is with you. Pray it isn’t true.” She wrote an urgent letter to Matt’s mother, asking if she could possibly send Beth enough money to “start a new life over again.” She had waited faithfully for Matt, but their future together had been taken away by the war.”

A new movie was playing around the corner, The Blue Dahlia, with Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake. Two soldiers started kidding around and called Beth “the Black Dahlia.” Even the drugstore proprietor and his son were amused by the name. A.L. Landers owned the pharmacy, and often winked to his son when Beth showed up. “She’d come into the drugstore frequently,” Landers says. “She’d usually be wearing a two-piece beach costume which left her midriff bare. Or she’d wear black lacy things. Her hair was jet black and she liked to wear it high. She was popular with the men who came in the drugstore and they got to calling her the Black Dahlia.” Other servicemen began looking for her. “Has she come in today?” they’d ask Landers, “the Black Dahlia?”

“Every few days or so I’d see this girl coming past the window, looking at the shoes. She’d come in and she liked to try on the most expensive ones.” Martin Lewis co-managed two Hollywood shoe shops, one on Cahuenga south of the boulevard. “We were down from Macy Jewelers,” he says. “She would come in after that, trying on shoes, and I’d be helping her if there wasn’t anyone else in the store. We’d flirt a little and one thing would lead to another. Maybe three pair of shoes I let her have, and I loaned her money to pay rent — on the second time we drove up Outpost after I’d closed the Leeds store. We got in the back seat that time, but she said it was her time of the month.” “She was running around in a loose circle, with people that were broken up, or not working. I don’t mean employment as we think of it, but getting settled somehow within the law, you know, being legal. She did gravitate in that way, and ran around getting rides and being picked up by men to get from one place to another. She had a way of walking — of advertising her ass, certainly drawing attention to it. “I know she wasn’t a tramp, and I do not have any way to say that she was—expect that was how I wanted to see her, even while another part of me was so drawn to her in a way that had nothing to do with any sort of sex.”

She still hadn’t managed an income on her own and the small but frequent loans made to her by Hal and others had quickly mounted to a good-sized sum. Nobody for a minute thought they would get their money back. Despite her optimism and the assurances of booking agent Fred Sherman, whom she’d met through Barbara, Beth was walking a thin line, trying to look the part— measuring up to the flash and verve she generated. Sherman planned to have Beth meet an associate of actor Bob Steele, who was producing at an independent studio. Sherman, too, advanced Beth some cash for expenses and some additional clothes that were requested for a possible photo session. There was no hope for Hal McGuire, who found that following Beth around was as hectic as “jumping like a fast bouncing ball in a pinball game — that’s how she was living.”

“She was smart, an intelligent girl,” Phillip Jeffers (the 'war bond boy wonder') says, “but she seemed content to just float.” One night they were laughing and joking and Beth became very quiet. A sadness came over her that he did not understand. “What is it that’s bothering you?” Phillip Jeffers asked. “Please tell me what’s wrong.” She stared for a moment. Her eyes were watery. “Let’s enjoy today, right now,” she said. “Enjoy what we have in life!”

Actor Kevin Wilkerson remembers when Beth moved into Mark Hansen’s and started showing up at the Florentine Gardens. “She was being called the Black Dahlia, but my girlfriend said that Mark was calling her the black-haired eight ball. Mark Hansen was planning the Beautiful Girl Revue for 1947 and Ann said he’d promised Beth a part in it, featured in a gardenia or a big flower opening and she’d be in the heart of it, wearing a thin G-string, and a flesh colored flower in her crotch. She should be a stripper, Mark was telling her. He talked about the Flesh and Fantasy revue, where she’d wear high heels and ankle straps like Ann Jeffreys in the Dillinger movie.” Hansen gave a lot of big show business names their “break” and he was quick to publicize the beauties he’d made —Yvonne deCarlo and Betty Hutton, Jean Wallace, Gwen Verdon, Marie ‘the body’ McDonald, and Lili St. Cyr.

Red-haired Robert Manley was soon to find himself in the worst predicament of his life. It began casually enough; he hadn’t been intending to pick up a girl. But there she was — and there was no avoiding it. He was driving on San Diego’s Broadway in his old Studebaker coupe on a business trip from L.A. Stopping at a signal, he glanced to his right as a car turned the corner. When it passed, he was looking at a very pretty blackhaired young woman standing on the corner near the Western Airlines window.“You think I’m very attractive?” she asked. He said sure, and that she knew it herself without having to ask. Then he laughed a little, too, as though they’d shared a joke. She directed him to the Frenches’ house where he parked and shut off the motor. He then asked if she wanted to have dinner with him. “I don’t have anything else to do until I make some calls in the morning,” he said. “We can have a few drinks and maybe dance.”

Myth: She worked at the Hollywood Canteen. Fact: The Hollywood Canteen closed in 1945, while Elizabeth Short didn't get to Los Angeles until late July or early August 1946, according to a time line of her life prepared by the district attorney's office, among many other sources. "Severed" claims that Elizabeth Short worked at the Hollywood Canteen as part of its attempt to link this killing to the 1944 murder of Georgette Bauerdorf. The claim in "Severed" that she met Gordon Fickling at the Hollywood Canteen is even more ridiculous. As an officer, Fickling wouldn't have been allowed inside because it was strictly for enlisted men, as any photo of the front will prove. As I say many times throughout this Web site, "Severed" is 25% mistakes and 50% fiction. For the record, when I interviewed Fickling in 1996, he said they met in Florida. Source: lmharnisch.com

Mia Kirshner as Elizabeth Short in "The Black Dahlia" (2006) directed by Brian De Palma

"The novel is written from Bleichert’s point of view. His whole world and seemingly all of LA eventually revolves around the Dahlia. She becomes the only motivating factor in his life. He is not the only detective in the novel who talks to Elizabeth Short (the Dahlia’s real name) and swears they will find who killed her."

"Even though the book is set in Los Angeles in 1947 with period slang and dialog, the characters were very relatable. I never felt a disconnect with their motivations. Then Ellroy makes more and more of a point that Bucky is trying to both protect and possess the Dahlia. His obsession becomes overtly sexual in nature. His desire to have sex with Elizabeth Short is so central to his motivation that other characters admit to his face that they are using it to manipulate him. He is powerless in the face of it. Reading the afterword it becomes obvious that Ellroy was projecting his Oedipal desire onto Bucky and the Dahlia. It was a disservice to the character. Instead of letting him develop in a more organic fashion, Ellroy pushes too much of himself into Bleichert. Bucky does eventually solve the Dahlia’s murder." Source: www.pajiba.com