The Blue Dahlia (1946)

Directed by George Marshall. Starring Alan Ladd, William Bendix, Howard Da Silva, Veronica Lake, Hugh Beaumont, Doris Dowling, Tom Powers, Howard Freeman, Don Costello, Will Wright.

Raymond Chandler’s one and only original screenplay successfully produced as a feature film can’t hold a candle to his best novels (or the films adapted from the same) but still makes for an intermittently engrossing mystery noir. Navy pilot veteran Ladd is home from the war along with a couple of buddies—including short-fused and shell-shocked Bendix, who’s a lot to take at length—and he walks in on his two-timing harpy of a wife (Dowling); she turns up murdered, so he’s the natural prime suspect, which forces him to prove his innocence and search for the real culprit. In Chandler’s hands, there’s rarely a dull moment and no shortage of surprises, but the story shows signs of surgical scars—the script was unfinished when filming started and changes were made mid-production, including a completely different ending, which explains why hardly any steam is left for the strained, underwhelming reveal. Ladd is his usual cucumber-cool self (or, sometimes, pancake-flat), but there’s enough steel for a reasonably compelling protagonist. Naturally, there’s a “good” dame in store for him, played by Lake in the standard dazed-and-confused performance that comes from a screen starlet better known for a signature look than a signature technique; fortunately, despite being billed as a co-lead in most promotional materials, she’s absent long stretches of the film. Produced by John Houseman.

69/100