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The Blue Dahlia

Play trailer Poster for The Blue Dahlia Released Apr 18, 1946 1h 36m Crime Drama Play Trailer Watchlist
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100% Tomatometer 12 Reviews 72% Popcornmeter 1,000+ Ratings
Discharged naval officer Johnny Morrison (Alan Ladd) returns to his wife, Helen (Doris Dowling), in Hollywood after fighting in the South Pacific, and with him are two military friends, George (Hugh Beaumont) and shell-shocked Buzz (William Bendix). Johnny is stunned to discover Helen's unfaithfulness with a local nightclub owner named Eddie (Howard Da Silva), who then breaks it off with her. When Helen is found murdered, everyone seems to have a motive.
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The Blue Dahlia

Critics Reviews

View All (12) Critics Reviews
Richard Brody The New Yorker The core of the drama is the torment of the debilitated Buzz—and the hell reserved at home for heroes, who often faced their traumas in silence. Nov 7, 2022 Full Review James Agee The Nation It knows its own weight and size perfectly and carries them gracefully and without self-importance; it is, barring occasional victories and noble accidents, about as good a movie as can be expected from the big factories. Jun 23, 2021 Full Review H. Viggo Andersen Hartford Courant Alan Ladd and William Bendix are in rare form, and Miss Lake is seen to best advantage in many a film. Mar 31, 2021 Full Review Mike Massie Gone With The Twins The finale is smartly unpredictable, though by the time the killer is revealed, some of the steam and intensity has dissipated. Rated: 7/10 Aug 3, 2020 Full Review Thomas Delapa Boulder Weekly Rated: 3/5 Nov 4, 2005 Full Review Matthew Turner ViewLondon Rated: 4/5 Jul 1, 2005 Full Review Read all reviews

Audience Reviews

View All (91) audience reviews
Jay B Spectacular cast and story! Rated 5 out of 5 stars 12/13/23 Full Review Audience Member Shooting on The Blue Dahlia began without a completed screenplay. There is a lack of command over the material by the director, perhaps because script pages were being seen just days before shooting. In fact, scriptwriter Raymond Chandler was forced to re-write the ending and suffered writer's block, and dissatisfaction with the process. All of these problems - and others - show on the screen. But, there are definitely some moments But, overall, I'm not a fan. Rated 2 out of 5 stars 02/13/23 Full Review Audience Member Good! Stylish and Classy! First rate acting to! Great Chandler dialog! Rated 4 out of 5 stars 02/07/23 Full Review steve d Ladd and Lake are always great together even if the story is nothing special. Rated 3 out of 5 stars 03/30/23 Full Review Audience Member Typically stylish film noir with a hard-boiled Chandler script, but absent that amoral/non-judgmental quality that marks out the best of the genre. No anti-heroes here. Sad to find out that this was Veronica Lake's last major picture as she is great in it. Interesting also to see a sympathetic treatment of (what we now call) PTSD and brain injury. Rated 3 out of 5 stars 02/19/23 Full Review Audience Member I feel faced with generational disparity when prompted with boring film noir like the Raymond Chandler penned "The Blue Dahlia" (1946). I'm too young to be among the latter-day film scholars who decided that the writer was the best thing to ever happen to the crime drama since Claire Trevor, but I'm also too old and weary to stop myself from comparing the film itself to more apt Chandler screenplays, like 1944's "Double Indemnity" or 1951's "Strangers on a Train." All I can do for now is throw my hands up in surrender, citing flat artistry, phoned-in performances (aside from affable lug William Bendix), and an overly complicated script as the reasons for "The Blue Dahlia's" standing as the noir classic which tried to be but never was. No surprise, since the conditions under which it was made were hardly dreamy. Thumb through the depths of the godsend that is Wikipedia and it's clear that the product in front of us is a result of a myriad of studio stresses. Consider that the film started shooting before Chandler was even finished with the screenplay (with the man's heavy drinking wasting additional time in wrapping things up), that the studio had to deal with the stresses of leading man Alan Ladd possibly getting drafted, and that Chandler himself developed an intense, unfounded dislike for heroine Veronica Lake which ensured bountiful on-set tension. In the end, "The Blue Dahlia" was a hit, a box-office bonanza which briefly revitalized Lake's flagging career and brought Chandler an Oscar nomination for his screenplay. But 70 plus years later and the movie feels like a noir dazzler that forgets what it means to sizzle. It has the blueprint in place to help itself work up toward the dizzying heights set by the aforementioned masterpieces but doesn't have the passion to get there. It feels like exactly what it is: a movie made with high anxiety by severely talented people. The feature, plodding if competently made, is headlined by Ladd, here playing a discharged United States Navy officer readjusting to civilian life with cohorts Buzz (Bendix) and George (Hugh Beaumont). Named Johnny Morrison and hoping his life will return to its comfortable predictability after he settles back into domesticity, he's surprised to arrive home and find that his spouse, Helen (Doris Dowling), is having an affair with Eddie Harwood (Howard Da Silva), the owner of local Blue Dahlia nightclub. Enraged, Morrison walks out, gets drenched by the evening rain, and is coincidentally picked up by Harwood's wife, Joyce (Lake), with whom he exchanges flirtations and eventually rooms with in a Malibu hotel later that night (in separate quarters, no less). Come the next morning, Morrison decides that he might as well give his marriage a chance - not necessarily his wife's fault that she got lonely in his absence. But blasting radios announce that such is no longer an option for the former army man: Helen has been found murdered in their home, a handful of bullets having penetrated her heart. Morrison, of course, is the prime suspect. Helen's widespread extramarital activity was well-known to most, and it would make sense that he retaliate in such a callous manner. Forced to go on the run, with Joyce by his side, Morrison must clear his name, clever amateur detective work getting him far. But we've seen this all before - "The Blue Dahlia" is a run-of-the-mill wrong-man story which isn't helped by Ladd's decidedly unsympathetic exterior (he seems relatively inclined to beat up his wife, even if she is venomous) and by the lack of urgency clearly a result of the movie's slapped together middle and final acts. The ending is particularly a let down - the reveal is scarcely juicy and the manner in which it's delivered is straight-faced rather than gasping. I wish, then, that "The Blue Dahlia" had flavors of melodrama. This story should be told with Hitchcockian flair, and yet it always seems to be at a standstill. For a better Ladd/Lake pairing, look in the direction of their first collaboration, "This Gun for Hire" (1942). That film knew how to use them. "The Blue Dahlia" doesn't. Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 02/03/23 Full Review Read all reviews
The Blue Dahlia

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Movie Info

Synopsis Discharged naval officer Johnny Morrison (Alan Ladd) returns to his wife, Helen (Doris Dowling), in Hollywood after fighting in the South Pacific, and with him are two military friends, George (Hugh Beaumont) and shell-shocked Buzz (William Bendix). Johnny is stunned to discover Helen's unfaithfulness with a local nightclub owner named Eddie (Howard Da Silva), who then breaks it off with her. When Helen is found murdered, everyone seems to have a motive.
Director
George Marshall
Producer
John Houseman
Screenwriter
Raymond Chandler
Distributor
Paramount Pictures
Production Co
Paramount Pictures
Genre
Crime, Drama
Original Language
English
Release Date (Theaters)
Apr 18, 1946, Limited
Release Date (Streaming)
Aug 30, 2016
Runtime
1h 36m
Sound Mix
Mono
Aspect Ratio
35mm
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