What did you watch? The 1946 crime thriller, The Blue Dahlia.

OMG is that a prequel to The Black Dahlia Murder? No.

Is it an early band name for The Black Dahlia Murder? Double no.

The Blue Dahlia is somewhat notorious, not for the story but because a year after it was released, a body was found cut in half (at the torso) and the press named the victim The Black Dahlia. The reasons are for the name are unclear. She wore a black dahlia flower in her hair? Her black clothing and dark hair? This movie was still in the public consciousness?

Well, no one gets cut in half. People do irritate and occasionally kill each other. I don’t know what the connection is, but other than Blue/Black Dahlia, there’s also the matter that the movie stars Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake, whom we enjoyed together in This Gun For Hire, so America said why not. America loved seeing the same actors in movies over and over, at the time. Look at William Powell & Myrna Loy, why weren’t they married in real life, America wondered.

The other reason I checked it out was because it was Raymond Chandler’s first screenplay (that wasn’t an adaptation of someone else’s or his own novels). Does the great Raymond Chandler, who gave us The Big Sleep, know how to write a movie from scratch and work well with others? Not without a lot of alcohol, apparently.

The story here is that Alan Ladd is Johnny, who shows up with his recently discharged army unit, including Buzz, played by the meaty William Bendix (whom we’ve seen in Kill The Umpire and The Glass Key). Buzz has some shell shock and everything bothers him and his perpetual headaches, and he lets everyone know about it constantly. Our “Save The Cat” moment where our heroes are introduced at a bar to show what kind of everyman you the audience can relate to, and Buzz yanks out a cord from the jukebox, pretty much ruining it, because he doesn’t like the music another serviceman is enjoying. (FYI my new job involves having to follow up on broken equipment, like large electrical items with power cords ripped out, and it’s annoying for our electrician.) Johnny intervenes telling the serviceman to forget it, and everyone except the bar owner has a laugh. The bar owner is pissed, but the story moves away from him and his ruined jukebox. What a bunch of swell fellas.

Johnny’s friends get a place to stay and Johnny goes to visit his wife, Helen, who is partying it up at hotel bungalow. He intervenes at the worst time, because she has a boyfriend, Eddie, who owns a bar, the Blue Dahlia. Everyone leaves the party and Johnny has a heart to heart with his wife, who confesses that she had killed their son in a drunk driving accident (she was the driver). Johnny threatens Helen with a gun but leaves it behind and walks out in the rain.

There are witnesses, and stuff happens. Buzz goes to a bar where he bumps into Helen, who invites him back to her place for a drink. Meanwhile, moody Johnny is picked up out of the rain by Joyce, played by Veronica Lake. They drive away and stay at another hotel, separately. Joyce, it turns out, is married to Eddie. There are some great coincidences in this movie. Johnny finds out that Helen has been murdered, and he is the main suspect.

Johnny is picked up by some goons who bring him to a sleazy hotel, but the goons get arrested for an unrelated issue. The hotel manager figures out who Johnny is, and also tries to blackmail him.

Our characters go back and forth in situations like this. Johnny’s friends try to help clear Johnny. Buzz acts more and more bizarre, and the music and seeing Joyce handle flowers reminds him of being in the same room with Helen when she was handling a flower. This is where the movie goes off the rail a little bit, and I’m going off of wikipedia here which references Turner Classic Movies. Buzz was intended to be Helen’s killer, having gone into a rage upon hearing the music he was annoyed by and blacking out but the Navy didn’t like the idea of having a fictional soldier be portrayed as a murderer. So, there’s a last minute interview and reveal of another character’s motivations, and Johnny and his friends including his unreasonably quick to violence friend Buzz all live happily ever after.

Was it noir? Uh, I don’t know what this was. It’s interesting, and I didn’t spoil the ending (or describe more characters, of which there are plenty), but I don’t feel for Johnny even though we find out that his wife is self destructing after admitting to killing their son (which, wow: BLEAK). I thought this movie would go to some Of Mice And Men places with Buzz. And Buzz is not played likable by Bendix whatsoever, at least in the context of this mystery/thriller. A character like that, suffering and struggling and prone to violence, is a the subject of a serious drama. Instead, he’s a mascot for his buddies and, in the final product, a misdirect for the real murderer. Hooking up with Joyce might be the last thing on Johnny’s mind, what with finding out his son was killed by his wife while he was gone, and then mere hours after threatening her, she’s killed. That’s a lot of grief, you’ve already lost her and you walked out without any forgiveness or attempt to salvage anything and then she’s gone (though, how sympathetic are we supposed to be for a drunk driver?). That’s some heavy stuff.

Was it good? Uhhhhhhhhh ummmmmm sigh, end result is no. It was worth me checking out. Watch it if you love Raymond Chandler, be confounded by it, and then have hard bad icky feelings about the whole thing. I’ve seen some downer-ending film noir where i was like WOW that’s a story (Scarlet Street), this is a mystery with a happy ending for our leads and i just feel icky. There’s nothing about the story that connects with the famous real life “Black Dahlia” murder a year later. You get to see Ladd & Lake together again. It’s not without some merits. But overall, there’s better movies and this likely just survives on notoriety that it was given on an extremely loose connection.

You can look up Raymond Chandler’s work ethic while the movie was filming and he was writing & rewriting the end. He wasn’t, he was just drinking a lot, and it was in his contract. What a gig!