Liz Short werewolfed 61 years ago today in Leimert Park. She never made it home to the East Village again. Per me some time back:

Elizabeth Short came to Long Beach in the summer of 1946 with six months to live, visiting and sometimes living with a sweetheart named Lt. Gordon Fickling. She rotated through a series of local hotels, at one point settling for a few days at the Washington Hotel (now private apartments) at 53 Linden Ave., just doors down from a corner pharmacy and soda shop (now Flowers By Vickie) and a block and a half from the Lafayette Hotel.

In James Ellroy’s footnoted novel, she’s also working in a café on the first floor of the Lafayette—Lafayette building manager Sharon Hays says she’s heard the story. And her nickname comes down to one of two—or maybe both, since Dahlia-ism isn’t the clearest discipline—reporters who found that Paramount’s then-current film The Blue Dahlia (which won screenwriter Raymond Chandler an Academy nomination) had reminded people in Long Beach of the dark-haired girl often spotted walking up Linden.

Reporter and Times columnist Jack Smith wrote in 1975 (as recovered on L.A. Observed by Times archivist Carolyn Strickler) that he thought he’d put the name in print first—sourced from druggist Arnold Lander, who worked at the soda fountain, and who said he’d heard kids at the counter call her ‘the Black Dahlia.’

But L.A. Herald-Express reporter Bevo Means said he’d heard a Long Beach policeman call her ‘the Black Dahlia’ at a Long Beach bar about the same time, which he reported in his own articles. Smith eventually passed the credit to Means, but the original honor still belongs to the City of Long Beach, which gave her the nickname that made her famous.

Bad news, suspects still at large.

Tags: black dahlia