The Blue Dahlia ***** (1946, Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake, William Bendix, Doris Dowling, Howard Da Silva, Tom Powers, Hugh Beaumont, Howard Freeman, Don Costello, Will Wright) – Classic Movie Review 1,012

The great 1946 film noir crime thriller The Blue Dahlia stars Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake and William Bendix, and boasts Raymond Chandler’s first and only original screenplay. Chandler called her ‘Moronica’ Lake and Ladd a ‘small boy’s idea of a tough guy’.

The all-time great hard-boiled thriller novelist Raymond Chandler provides his own original movie screenplay for director George Marshall’s high-anxiety classic 1946 Hollywood film noir The Blue Dahlia. Chandler was Oscar nominated for Best Original Screenplay in 1947.

It makes a stupendous vehicle for the noir team of Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake, who give superb performances as prime murder suspect Johnny Morrison and the sultry femme fatale Joyce Harwood. Their co-star in 1942’s The Glass Key, William Bendix again steals their limelight and nearly steals the show as Ladd’s troubled, battle-scarred, shell-shocked buddy Buzz Wanchek, with a metal plate in his head, his memory shot and not at all fond of dance music.

Demobbed as a retired lieutenant commander bomber pilot after World War Two, Morrison has come home to Hollywood, California, along with his South Pacific flight crew buddies Buzz Wanchek and George Copeland, to find his wife Helen (Doris Dowling) kissing her new boyfriend Eddie (Howard Da Silva), the owner of the Blue Dahlia nightclub on the Sunset Strip, and gives him a quick sock on the jaw.

Morrison just has time to find out that his wife has been two-timing him when she is discovered dead.

When Helen also admits her drunk driving caused their son’s death in a car crash, Morrison pulls a gun on her but finally decides that she is not worth it. However, unfortunately, soon Helen’s corpse is found lifeless and Johnny is in deep water with the law.

So he goes investigating the real killer of his wife, a trail that leads him to his number one suspect, Eddie, whose separated wife Joyce (Lake) he encounters when she mysteriously picks him up in her car in the rain. They do not reveal their real names to each other.

This dark, brooding thriller mystery is sharply directed by Marshall with an eagle eye to tension, atmosphere and mounting suspense. Chandler provides a strong plot, a good mystery, fascinating characters, interesting situations and much hard-boiled dialogue – and there are tough little bursts of action too, with Ladd leaping into fisticuffs, beating men up and chucking himself around.

Maybe Dowling overplays her role, vamping fairly outrageously, but Da Silva is excellently slimy and duplicitous as Eddie, Tom Powers is first rate as the weary copper on the case Police Captain Hendrickson, and Will Wright is outstanding as the crusty, cynical old apartment security man ‘Dad’ Newell. When Bendix does not steal the limelight, Wright does.

The Blue Dahlia co-stars Hugh Beaumont as George Copeland, Howard Freeman as the hotel manager Corelli, and Don Costello as gangster Leo.

Also in the cast are Frank Faylen, Walter Saande, Vera Marshe, Mae Busch, Gloria Williams, Harry Hayden, George Barton, Harry Barris, Paul Gustine, Roberta Jonay, Milton Kibbee, Dick Winslow, Anthony Caruso, Arthur Loft and Matt Hugh.

It proved to be the often drunk and writer’s-blocked author Chandler’s only original screenplay.

Producer John Houseman, who knew him from The Unseen, says Chandler had started a novel but was stuck and was turning it into a screenplay. Houseman read Chandler’s 120 pages and sold to Paramount in 48 hours. Chandler wrote the first half of the script in under six weeks and sent it to Paramount who arranged for filming to start in three weeks.

Chandler initially delivered an unfinished screenplay, and shooting began in March 1945 without a completed screenplay. After four weeks, they were running out of script and then Paramount told Chandler he had to devise a new ending. Chandler wanted to quit, but agreed to continue if he started drinking, and he penned new work daily in a scramble to finish it somehow. It is no way to work, of course, and must have troubled the actors and director, not to mention the Paramount studio bosses, However, miraculously it does not show in the completed work, which is commendably taut and atmospheric.

Chandler, though, was unhappy with with the forced ending and his female star, both personally and as an actress, and he gives her an underdeveloped role, which she still plays extremely well, pitching it perfectly. She does not appear till 25 minutes into the movie, which runs 96 minutes. Lake recalled: ‘I’m not much of a motivating force, but the part is good.’

Chandler unpleasantly insisted on calling her ‘Moronica’ Lake. Apparently she had never heard of him before, let alone ever read one of his books. So, after being told, “He’s the greatest mystery writer around”, she listened intently to an analysis of his work by the film’s publicity director to impress reporters with her knowledge of the writer.

He did not have a high regard for Ladd either, calling him a ‘small boy’s idea of a tough guy’. The film was a hit, but it was the last great film for Lake, as Paramount continued to put her in poor movies, though she did get to star one more time with Ladd, in the decent Saigon (1948). Sadly, in 1962 she was an alcoholic living in an old hotel and working as a bartender.

Alfred Hitchcock, however, hired Chandler to help adapt Patricia Highsmith’s first novel Strangers on a Train in 1951, though he encountered a difficult worker.

Ladd was unhappy with Dowling playing his wife because she was half a foot taller, so she had to be filmed sitting or lying down in their scenes together.

The 5′ 6″ Ladd was only 50 when he died on January 29 1964 of an acute overdose of alcohol and sedatives and so was the 4′ 11½” Lake when she died of hepatitis on July 7 1973.

The cast are Alan Ladd as Johnny Morrison, Veronica Lake as Joyce Harwood, William Bendix as Buzz Wanchek, Howard da Silva as Eddie Harwood, Doris Dowling as Helen Morrison, Hugh Beaumont as George Copeland, Tom Powers as Captain Hendrickson, Howard Freeman as Corelli, Don Costello as Leo, Will Wright as ‘Dad’ Newell, Frank Faylen as man recommending motel, Walter Sande as Heath, Vera Marshe, Mae Busch, Gloria Williams, Harry Hayden, George Barton, Harry Barris, Paul Gustine, Roberta Jonay, Milton Kibbee, Dick Winslow, Anthony Caruso, Arthur Loft and Matt Hugh.

The Blue Dahlia is directed by George Marshall, runs 96 minutes, is made and released by Paramount Pictures, is written by Raymond Chandler, is shot in black and white by Lionel Lindon, is produced by John Houseman, and is scored by Victor Young.

Release date: April 19, 1946.

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