Welcome to the third session of the Black Dahlia Book Club!
I finally got tired of talking about George Hodel and Steve Hodel (at this point, I know Steve’s monologues from memory) so I decided to spend some time looking at the portrayals of the Black Dahlia case. I consider myself first and foremost a historian of the Black Dahlia case, and think it’s important to examine the source material in detail to emphasize the challenges of researching the murder of Elizabeth Short.
Gloria Swanson in Queen Kelly.
Milestone Entertainment’s newly restored “Queen Kelly” is touring the United States as a loving tribute to its incredible backstory and the work of the ambitious and incredibly talented actress Gloria Swanson and “Man You Love to Hate” director Erich von Stroheim. A rich, operatic story, “Queen Kelly” demonstrates what a telling masterpiece the film might have been if completed as intended.
The story alone of the film’s making is wild enough. Star Swanson and her producer boyfriend Joseph Kennedy hire the profligate von Stroheim to shoot his barely finished script. The director goes overboard with sexual scenes and rough manners before getting fired from a half-finished film bankrupting the company. A few years later, editor Viola Lawrence would attempt to stitch together what little survived of part two of the film with first half shenanigans in order to play it in theatres, only to see it disappear from sight until appearing in short glimpses during the 1950 film “Sunset Boulevard.” Continue reading
For Monday, we have a mysterious person! Continue reading
In the March 2026 Ask Me Anything on the Black Dahlia case, I give an update on my work in progress, Heaven Is Here!
Note: The Black Dahlia Book Club (formerly Ask Me Anything about George Hodel), which looks at the resource material on the Black Dahlia case, is March 17 at 10 a.m. Pacific time on YouTube. The next Black Dahlia session is April 14, 2026, also at 10 a.m. Pacific time on YouTube.
In this session, I talked about being invited to appear on Michael Connelly’s podcast, which is still under discussion.
I noted Steve Hodel’s claims that he gave Alex Baber a large amount of his research material and that Baber then “ghosted” him. And that the website of Alex Baber’s Cold Case Consultants of America has been scrubbed of all people except for him.
I also covered: Continue reading
Black Dahlia: Murder, Monsters, and Madness in Midcentury Hollywood, by William J. Mann, Simon & Schuster, 464 pages, January 27, 2026, $31.
Like a game of Clue with an actual cold case to solve, a well-worn list of suspects in the 1947 Black Dahlia killing released 22 years ago continues to provide the “true” crime community and the multimillion-dollar industry that feeds it with endless possibilities for speculation and, occasionally, another book.
Was it the murderous Dr. George Hodel at the Sowden House in a gruesome attempt at surrealist art? Mob nightclub owner Mark Hansen at the Florentine Gardens hiring morgue-trained assassin Leslie Dillon to take care of a troublesome dame? Army butcher Carl Balsiger in a fit of violence?
All of them are fakery and fraud by writers Steve Hodel (the ongoing Black Dahlia Avenger franchise launched in 2003), Piu Eatwell (Black Dahlia, Red Rose, 2017) and Eli Frankel (Sisters in Death, forthcoming in October 2025) who, if they read all of their source material, knew their suspect wasn’t the killer and proceeded anyway. Truth is the first victim for a “true” crime author with hopes of making The New York Times bestseller list and everything that goes with it. Continue reading
March 20, 1944
It’s Monday in 1944, which means we have:
— Franchot Tone, Chester Morris, Anne Baxter and Miriam Hopkins in “The Hard Way” on Lux Radio Theatre. Courtesy of Archive.org.
— “The Lone Ranger.” Courtesy of Archive.org.
Rosalind Shaffer is not byline I recognize. She filed this feature on Preston Sturges, published in the St. Petersburg Times, March 20, 1944.
Here’s a bonus fact: Shaffer helped found the Hollywood Women’s Press Club.
Note: This is an encore post from 2006.
The Methodist Episcopal congregation, formed from a merger of the Centennial and Central churches, planned a wonderful new building at 22nd Street and Union. Although the congregation studied the idea of a new location, the members finally decided there was no better place than the one they had.
The church was designed by A. Dudley using an old English half-timbered style with a Gothic tower. The vaulted ceiling was highlighted with gold and the pews were arranged in concentric circles around a corner pulpit.
The Times noted:
“The congregation of St. James gives promise of becoming one of the strongest in the outlying parts of the city. Its pastor [the Rev. Robert S. Fisher] is a young man who has made his way rapidly toward the front and only last fall declined to accede to the wishes of the bishop that he accept a leading church in San Francisco.”
By Tammerlin Drummond
Times Staff Writer
Barack Obama stares silently at a wall of fading black-and-white photographs in the muggy second-floor offices of the Harvard Law Review. He lingers over one row of solemn faces, his predecessors of 40 years ago.
All are men. All are dressed in dark-colored suits and ties. All are white.
It is a sobering moment for Obama, 28, who in February became the first black to be elected president in the 102-year history of the prestigious student-run law journal.
The post, considered the highest honor a student can attain at Harvard Law School, almost always leads to a coveted clerkship with the U.S. Supreme Court after graduation and a lucrative offer from the law firm of one’s choice. Continue reading
March 19, 1944
— CBS’ “World News Today” reports on Allied bombing of Germany and the battle for Cassino. “This is still a battle of yard by yard annihilation.” Courtesy of Archive.org.
March 19, 1944
It’s Sunday in 1944, which means we have:
— “The Jack Benny Show.” Courtesy of Otrrlibrary.org
—“The Texaco Star Theater” with Fred Allen. Courtesy of Otrrlibrary.org.
March 18, 1944
It’s Saturday in 1944 and today we have:
— Jungle Jim and the crew evade Japanese soldiers. “The Adventures of Jungle Jim.” Courtesy of Otrrlibrary.org via Archive.org.
Note: This is an encore post from 2006.
“Who was the first man?” asked the teacher of an American boy.
“Washington,” was the reply. He was reminded of Adam and observed: “Yes, if you count foreigners.”
Henrietta B. Freeman paid a call on a schoolroom somewhere in Los Angeles in March 1907. She didn’t say where, nor did she give the teacher’s name, just that the teacher was a woman.
All Freeman says about the classroom is that there was a blackboard. For visual aids, the teacher had picture cards: a boy fishing, riding a bicycle and rolling a hoop; a girl washing her doll’s clothes in a tub, using a bar of soap.
March 17, 1944
It’s Friday in 1944 and today we have:
— Andy finally located Madam Queen in “The Amos ‘N’ Andy Show.” Courtesy of Archive.org.
— Constance Bennett is the guest on “Bill Stern’s Sports Newsreel.” Courtesy of Otrrlibrary.org via Archive.org.
— Donald Dame of the Metropolitan Opera is the guest on “To Your Good Health,” a musical program from the House of Squibb. Courtesy of Otrrlibary.org via Archive.org.
— “Vic and Sade.” Courtesy of Archive.org.
As Austrian Jews flee for their lives, only to be turned back at the border, Los Angeles congregations prepare to celebrate Purim. Note the name of Jacob Sonderling, identified in The Times as former chief rabbi of the German army.
Above, The Times examines life among the homeless in the railroad yards and encampments of Mojave. Note the particularly unfortunate use of an ethnic slur in the artwork by The Times’ cartoonist Edmund Waller “Ted” Gale …
March 15, 1944
It’s Wednesday in 1944, and today we have:
— Charles Laughton is the guest on “Orson Welles’ Radio Almanac.” More jokes about the income tax. Courtesy of Archive.org.
— “The Lone Ranger.” Courtesy of Archive.org.
— Baritone William Hargrave is the guest on “To Your Good Health,” a musical program from the House of Squibb. Hargrave died at the VA hospital in Los Angeles in 1986. Courtesy of Otrrlibrary via Archive.org.
Note: This is the beginning of the 1907 blog, which I began March 15, 2006. This followed the original cycle of the 1947project, begun by Nathan Marsak and Kim Cooper on March 13, 2005.
As I began to write my grand opening about Los Angeles in 1907, I felt a ghostly hand pluck ever so gently at my sleeve.
“Promise me, dear boy, you’ll remember to say that women couldn’t vote in 1907.”
“Yes, of course.”
Now where was I? Ah yes. The street names are deceptively familiar: Broadway, Spring Street and Main. But stand up on Bunker Hill and look at the city below and you might pick out the Bradbury Building and the Alexandria Hotel. Maybe the Pan American building at Broadway and 3rd Street, kitty-corner from the Bradbury and currently undergoing loft conversion, and the Rosslyn Hotel on Main.
March 11, 1944
It’s Saturday in 1944 and today we have:
— “The Adventures of Jungle Jim.” In episode, Jim and the crew are fighting the Japanese. Courtesy of Otrrlibrary.org.
— Dinah Shore, Ginny Simms and Frank Sinatra on “Command Performance.” Courtesy of Otrrlibrary.org.
Below, 100 masked night riders shoot and whip African Americans in Birmingham, Ky. … A man is arrested after a fight over a woman turns deadly … And there’s pandemonium in prices at Bukowski Square, courtesy of Overell’s. Continue reading
Here’s a quick reminder that the Black Dahlia Book Club will convene next Tuesday, March 17, 2026, at 10 a.m. Pacific time on YouTube. The Book Club replaces my George Hodel and Steve Hodel Ask Me Anything as I got tired of talking about them.
Note: The next Ask Me Anything on the Black Dahlia case will be April 14 at 10 a.m. Pacific time, a week later than usual.
March 10, 1914:
Here’s another item I found at the city archives. Non-Asian women working at “Oriental cafes” except entertainers “does not comport with public welfare and morals.”
ladailymirror.com 