The Black Dahlia a Universal Studios film starring:Josh Harnett, Scarlett Johansson, Aaron Eckhart and Hillary Swank. is set in Los Angeles, 1947.
The years immediately after the end of World War II were the City of the Angels best years. Hundreds of thousands of Marines, sailors and soldiers had passed through the city's port on their way home after half a decade at war.
Thousands of them stayed in Los Angeles to go to school or to look for work. They were joined by many young women who decided to stay when the defense plants shut their doors for the last time; the aircraft they had built had completed their missions.
Elizabeth Short was the young lady whose body was found in the vacant lot at Crenshaw and Exposition Boulevards. She was to become known as the legendary Black Dahlia, the most perplexing of the unsolved cases.
In 1947 there were three major newspapers in the City of Los Angeles, which, at that time was quite an idylic place. There were Morning, Afternoon and FIVE STAR FINAL***** editions, battling to Scoop! each other with new developments in the case going cold.
The newspaper reporters went to the "soda fountain" where she was a regular (1947 Los Angeles' Coffeebucks)and were told that Elizabeth Short was called the Black Dahlia by her friends there, so they dubbed her that in their stories of her murder, which was big news in what was then more a quiet collection of small towns than a BIG CITY.
In 1946 there had been another movie about returning war veterans.The Blue Dahlia starring Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake.
Four long years of war, some wives had found it impossible to remain faithful to their marriage vows, and one was murdered because of that. Back from the war the husband finds out she was involved with the owner of a nightclub the Blue Dahlia.
Elizabeth Short's friends, having seen that movie named her similarly because of her black hair and the dark clothes she wore, was this an oracle of her future?
A clever newspaper headline writer monikered her thus, and it is by that name we have come to know what little we do about her life and it's untimely end.
I was saddened to hear about Anna Nicole Smith's son, Daniel's death, so far away from "home". She has had a tumultious life so far, and it appears to be becoming more so.
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Black Dahlia by James Elroy click www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/asin/0446698873/ref=nosim/your_httpgetoveblo-20_id link.