Hard-Boiled Hollywood: Crime and Punishment in Postwar Los AngelesThe tragic and mysterious circumstances surrounding the deaths of Elizabeth Short, or the Black Dahlia, and Marilyn Monroe ripped open Hollywood’s glitzy façade, exposing the city's ugly underbelly of corruption, crime, and murder. These two spectacular dead bodies, one found dumped and posed in a vacant lot in January 1947, the other found dead in her home in August 1962, bookend this new history of Hollywood. Short and Monroe are just two of the many left for dead after the collapse of the studio system, Hollywood’s awkward adolescence when the company town’s many competing subcultures—celebrities, moguls, mobsters, gossip mongers, industry wannabes, and desperate transients—came into frequent contact and conflict. Hard-Boiled Hollywood focuses on the lives lost at the crossroads between a dreamed-of Los Angeles and the real thing after the Second World War, where reality was anything but glamorous." |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
4.0 International License actor actress Allen American Angeles Examiner arrest Attribution 4.0 International Barbara Payton Bioff Black Dahlia murder Blacklist body Bogart career celebrity Charlie Charlie's column columnist Commons Attribution 4.0 Communist Creative Commons Attribution crime dead death DeMille DeMille's director Dragna Elizabeth Short FIGURE film former Frank gangster girl gossip Graham guild headline Hedda Hopper Hodel Hollywood Hollywood Ten Hopper and Parsons HUAC IATSE industry investigation January Jean Spangler John Kennedy killed killer knew Lana Turner LAPD later Library Digital Collections lives Louella Parsons magazine Mankiewicz Marilyn Monroe memoir Mickey Cohen Mitchum mobsters Monroe's movie star named narrative Neal night Ogul Overell party Patty Pegler photograph picture play police political postwar public-relations relationship reporters role Sandra Dee scandal scene screen screenwriter Siegel Sinatra Spangler Stompanato story studio subcultures Sunset Boulevard tabloid Tone UCLA Library Digital Vaus victim York