Taxi Driver
"The Ford pulled up behind the other cars. The man driving spit over the side, yanked his emergency brake on, got out without using the door. He was a big fellow in shirt sleeves. I went down the steps to meet him." --Raymond Chandler, 'Goldfish'. Black Mask, June (1936)
I guess the whole "60° of Latitude Killer" thing was a sure non-starter. That's a cold night in L.A. Still, if somebody had piped up with, I don't know, the "Sixty-Minute Murder" we might have been onto something. One of the wags at bethshort.com even suggested the "Sex Fiend and the Sextant" after Roxy Pulitizer, the Strumpet with a Trumpet. I was going to call it; "On the longitude where you lived" or "Airport '47," having already passed on "L.A. X" and "Here is the Norton H-Bomb Site". Nyet, me thinks, it wouldn't have made it past the still active movie censors. But the Black Dahlia? Why have I never heard of such a thing! Pass the popcorn.
Tastes change. Back in '46, people who make love to inanimate objects are considered quaint old married folk. American males still saw themselves as lanky, taciturn, "aw shucks" cowboy types like Jimmy Stewart or Gary Cooper. The women saw themselves as part equal parts Veronica Lake, and Mildred Pierce. Roughed up a little, by the world's recent vacissitudes, but still in control. Both sexes were restless and dissatisfied. Big change was inevitable. It was time to forget about the war and the bad old days. Get your kicks, on Route 66. The Fifties would see further strains upon the way things were. By the Sixties, all the old connections would be severed.
There's a smog  upon L.A.
All the sublimated needs, and pent-up desires of years of shortages and the hard sacrifices made for the effort were souring in their stomachs, along with all the booze, cigarettes and the poisonous miasma of the ever present gray stinging smog. But things had yet to change all that much on the big, airconditioned sound stages, the movies only got more popular during the duration, and now that the stars were all back in the firmament, things were going to be better than ever. It's really a wonderful life, and these are the best days ever. Let the good times roll. With all this talk of the television menace, yet movie attendance wouldn't peak until 1955.
Hollywood had just rolled along like old man river. Even as the concrete was being poured for the rest of the American Century,and the orders were flooding Detroit for what everybody wanted really wanted in those days, horsepower. One of those big, fast, shiny death machines. Freedom was the call of the open road and automobile production that wouldn't catch demand for a decade. Gas was now plentiful and cheap and the roads hadn't gridlocked, yet. So if you were a young vet who had a car, even a pre-war junker in the Winter of '46, you could do alright for yourself with that type of frail who always seem need a ride somewhere, and who could be very grateful for the ride. A frail like Betty Short, AKA, The Black Dahlia.
The Black Dahlia Murder Blog
8:41:37 PM 
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