A dead giveaway
I just finished the The Black Dahlia Files, by Donald Wolfe. I found it unhelpful. This sort of class-based propaganda, idol worship, and pathological name-dropping has been spewing out of Hollycrack since the Seventies with the rise of T&A, and jiggle, and as the utterly debauched third-generation spawn of show biz "players" debouched from their coke infested lairs in the Hollywood Hills to rapine, pillage and plunder eight-figure deals in the stinky brown-stained basin air.
Just as their less well-heeled "peers" soaked in the pale glow from their screened-off existance out there, where all the poor and ugly and unconnected people live. Some of them come to Flicker in hope, some only come there to die, like Elizabeth Short. The Godfather, Jaws, Roots, Three's Company, and then the brat pack tried to suffocate them in sickly sweet insufferable middle-class Judeo-Christian angst as they mucked around in the culture of fast money and sudden fame, like some rare tropical fish all lit up in a platinum fishtank and the childish pursuit of fun, fun, fun.
Right about the time Wolfe's family moved across the alley from Virginia Hill's house from a less affluent part of Beverly Hills, which he literally describes as the wrong side of the tracks, I almost cracked of sheer envy. The avid reader might as well forget about the sudden urge to sputter out the thought that just entered his or her mind...I'll bet it's...Nope, I won't spoil it for you.
Lots and lots of neatly meaningless anectdotes, with an heavy dose of Mob comings and goings, and loads of pictures. Slopply written, though indexed, but strangely unsourced at the most critical junctions in the tale. Two LAPD dicks with a story to tell, and his very exclusive barber's opinion on the matter just won't do it for the heavy lifting still to be done in the Black Dahlia murder.
More old business. The Bill Kurtis, Cold Case Files hour documentary from 2006 was a condemnation with faint praise for all who have done any work on the murder at all. Hodel came-off worst, as expected. His story is just too too. That said, I've been waiting for my copy of Hodel's book, and once I read it, I'll tell you what I really think of his theory. It's only fair. I also plan to read and review all the published material, except the fictionalized stuff. Well, maybe Ellroy. I also want to watch the movie again (ugh), but only because it was my poor reaction to the Black Dahlia film that attracted me to this fascinating mystery, with it's ghostly echos of my own childhood and the far off summer of my own waking life, out here in the cold, hard and real world of the great lathered, washed and fleeced and stored in empty venues, the movie going public.
bethshort.com
6:20:41 PM 
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