FRAGMENTS OF POSTWAR LOS ANGELES: THE BLACK DAHLIA IN FACT AND FICTION*

The gruesome murder of Elizabeth Short, a sex worker nicknamed the “Black Dahlia,” created a real-life film noir tale in postwar Los Angeles. In the unsuccessful search for her killer, the tabloid press and psychiatric “experts” indicted all forms of the open sexual expression brought on by the war as complicit. The problematic connection made at the time between the sexually dangerous woman and the corruptions of postwar Los Angeles has been reinforced in the numerous fictional retellings of the case written in the past fifteen years.