[GaylordWilshire]

I'd like to recommend a great book as accompaniment to this blog: L.A. Noir by John Buntin. It's a great history of L.A. crime and politics, extremely well-written. It really made me think about the origins of noir when I read "The bucolic Los Angeles of blue skies, sunshine, and orange groves had disappeared (or at least withdrawn to wealthy Westside enclaves like Beverly Hills, Bel Air, and Brentwood). In its place was a new Manchester [presumably he's referring to the English city], a dark, industrial city.... Los Angeles's transformation had occurred suddenly--so suddenly that it could almost be traced to a single day: July 26, 1943 [the date of the first big smog attack].... By late 1943, [the smog] had settled permanently over downtown Los Angeles. The noir atmosphere that the director Billy Wilder captured so brilliantly with Double Indemnity in 1944 was not just a symbolically frought artifact of black-and-white film technology, it was real. Not until 1946 would... downtown Los Angeles see sunshine and blue skies again. Los Angeles had become a noir city."