Note: This is an encore post from 2005 and originally appeared on the 1947project.

“Red” Shay, 26, was riding with his girlfriend, Nancy Reed, in the rumble seat a car driven by his roommate, L.W. Sinclair, when it struck a Pacific Electric train on Huntington in Arcadia at the edge of the Baldwin Ranch, Jan. 22, 1933. Sinclair and his girlfriend, Lorraine Gaines, apparently survived. Shay and Reed did not.

Shay, the beloved ice cream man of Burbank, was buried at Forest Lawn, Glendale.

A happy discovery. I’ll never be able to think of the author of “The Postman Always Rings Twice” and “Double Indemnity” in the same way.