Hard-Boiled Hollywood: Crime and Punishment in Postwar Los Angeles
Jon Lewis
Abstract
The history of Hollywood’s postwar transition is framed by two spectacular dead bodies: Elizabeth Short, AKA the Black Dahlia, found dumped and posed in a vacant lot in January 1947 and Marilyn Monroe, the studio era’s last real movie star, discovered dead at her home in August 1962. Short and Monroe are just two of the many left for dead after the collapse of the studio system, Hollywood’s awkward adolescence during which the company town’s many competing subcultures -- celebrities, moguls, mobsters, gossip mongers, industry wannabes, and desperate transients – came into frequent contact and ... More
Keywords: Hollywood, Black Dahlia, Gossip, Mickey Cohen, Marilyn Monroe, Mobsters (gangsters), Movie Stars (Celebrities), Film Noir, True crime (unsolved crimes), Hollywood history
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2017 | Print ISBN-13: 9780520284319 |
| Published to California Scholarship Online: January 2018 | DOI:10.1525/california/9780520284319.001.0001 |
