Upon finishing William J. Mann’s newest true crime book, Black Dahlia: Murder, Monsters, and Madness in Midcentury Hollywood, Agnès Varda’s 1985 psychological drama, Vagabond, comes to mind. The film stars Sandrine Bonnaire as Mona Bergeron, a young woman who lives on the streets of France and ultimately freezes to death in a ditch on a cold, barren field.
Viewers are made aware early on that Mona has died, brutally murdered by illness and the elements, but how did she live her life? Vagabond, sooner rather than later, and with mock-doc directorial choices, becomes about Mona’s fateful and fatal journey, her independence and resourcefulness throughout, only taking her as far as that lifestyle can take anyone. What makes Varda’s film a masterpiece is that, although Mona quite literally walks through life without much in the way of food, water, money, or essential/critical material items, she is a transient who seemingly chooses to be one, living life on her own terms, even if that existence happens to lead to an unpleasant end.
Elizabeth Short, aka the Black Dahlia, led a similar life before her tragic and pitiless demise, and Mann’s book is an attempt to prove that very point, which differs from how Short has been portrayed in multiple mass-mediated venues since her 1947 murder. Black Dahlia is a well-constructed biographical police procedural about the myths and realities surrounding the complex narrative of Short’s short life.
Mann is not trying “to solve a crime” with this work, but rather sheds new light or “brings a fresh eye to the story of Elizabeth Short and the extraordinary investigation of her murder, what this young woman’s story reveals about midcentury America and why it’s still relevant today.” Mann tries “to see things as she did” by conducting interviews, reading personal accounts of her life from those who knew and/or loved her, and presenting evidence drawn from the hard work of capable investigative journalists and detectives who spent decades trying to figure out whodunnit and why.
One gets the sense that Mann, like Varda as the director of Vagabond, becomes a passive but inquisitive observer of Elizabeth Short and the people who randomly happen to be in her orbit as she nonchalantly roamed the boulevards of Los Angeles. Readers, with a modicum of morbid curiosity, walk alongside Mann (and Varda), spying Short (and Mona) “in the minutiae gleaned from records and interviews passed down and pored over by thousands of different hands.”
In Mann’s case, which is the true focus of this review, it is these miniscule pieces that are meant to complete what fundamentally is a sprawling and unwieldy puzzle that, unfortunately, cannot be solved: too many missing pieces have been lost to the black hole of time and other pieces have been mangled by those who interpreted the story in a host of different ways throughout the decades. Because the Black Dahlia lived such a short life, only 22 years, Mann has no choice but to abandon his initial thesis about midway through and go straight to the murder investigation. Thus, he comes up with his own theories about who the culprit was and what the motive was.
That is not to say Black Dahlia is not compelling, comprehensive, and narratively sound; Mann can only go so far in depicting how she may have seen the world. Also, to get into Elizabeth “Beth” Short’s mind, although admirable, is an impossibility without really knowing her, and one gets the sense, based on Mann’s interpretation of her life story, that she never really wanted to be truly known.
True, Short had dreams and desires while living in Cambridge, Massachusetts; however, when she arrived in Los Angeles to seek fame, she became something of an itinerant, regularly living in others’ homes and sleeping on their couches. She was not a prostitute or a drunk who liked to party hard. Yes, she dated men, and men were infatuated with her, but she was not as she has been portrayed and perceived since her demise.
What Mann succeeds in doing is presenting Short as a smart, savvy, yet somewhat flippant and sometimes flirty young woman who lived life to the fullest without having to resort to selling herself to monsters on the prowl. Mann sees her as such, so readers see her as such. It is easy for authors and screenplay writers to judge her perceived shortcomings, given how women are so often judged. Mann, however, like any proficient investigator, maintains his objectivity and stays at a distance, like a film noir private detective taking snapshots and handing them off to his audience, an audience that paid for his services.
Not much is known about “Beth” Short historically, but Mann is determined to find out pertinent information about her life, loves, and family. There are multiple people she associated with before she was murdered, and some of them are potential suspects according to Mann (jealous boyfriends, infatuated suitors, roommates, and acquaintances), but most of them just seemed to care about her and the free spirit she exuded, especially during a tumultuous time in American history.
Mann is not only a journalist but also a historian; Black Dahlia, in true noir fashion, speaks of a grand metropolis with a dark, seedy underbelly of crime, degradation, and outright murder. Short becomes a victim in a sea of victims, but due to the nature of the crime, she finds herself on the front page of countless newspapers.
The gruesome nature of her murder is bound to be sensationalized by the mass media machine, and Mann presents this fact with gusto throughout Black Dahlia, a news story that victimizes the victim even more. Readers of Mann’s work see what Mann sees, but are complicit in the dramatization of her death. Elizabeth Short’s death becomes more important than her life, and Mann, in this work, seeks to breathe life back into a person who was a vibrant daughter, sister, friend, and companion to those lucky enough to have known her. She is more than a body; she is also a soul.
Mann, in essence, is speaking about “Beth” Short, not about the Black Dahlia. Short was a survivalist who managed the world she created for herself, yet readers learn she may have been growing tired of the ragamuffin lifestyle she led. Like Mona in Vagabond, there is only so much the mind and body can take, so Short decided to take a bus back to Massachusetts. Witnesses saw her at the bus station. Soon after, however, for some unknown reason, she never got on that bus.
This is where speculation starts to take place, and Mann’s work becomes about the investigation behind Short’s murder; he has no other choice but to go in that direction, because of the circumstances: Short’s mutilated body was found in an underdeveloped field in January 1947. Short’s narrative, once again, was overshadowed by the question: Who would or could possibly do such a thing to such a beautiful young woman?
The rest of Black Dahlia is about how experienced detectives, for decades, have still been unable to definitively say who killed Short. Interrogations, sleuthing, evidence-building, re-evaluating the case, etc., have led only to continued speculation and frustration, and Mann’s work is another text that does similar things. Thus, by the end of Black Dahlia, Mann provides readers with yet another theory, one that seems as plausible as the many others that preceded his.
That is not to say his assumptions are not well-researched. His conjectures ultimately become antithetical to his agenda in the first chapters of Black Dahlia, which is to make Elizabeth Short, the loving and kind soul, the central focus of his study.