Elizabeth Short: A Life in Black Shadows 1
Elizabeth Short: A Life in Black Shadows
Eric Cannon
AxiaCollegeUniversity of Phoenix
Elizabeth Short: A Life in Black Shadows
From those who lust after clues to who actually killed President Kennedy to fans who believe Marilyn Monroe was killed by the Mafia or the CIA, people seem to be unable to resist solving a good mystery, especially when it includes equal amounts of beauty and horror.It is one of the greatest ironies of life that humans are deeply and equally attracted to beauty and horror with passion and deep fascination. It is another irony of life that many hopeful things often end up delivering only black tragedy, like the lure of Hollywood lights that often brings only despair. When beauty, horror, hope, and despair all combine in one person along with an unsolved, even unsolvable, mystery, the draw of this combination is too powerful to resist. The fear of not solving, further, drives people to investigate how it could have occurred. Elizabeth Short has the dubious honor of succeeding at this eerie combination. It was likely the only success she ever had in life and she only achieved it by dying. The success, however, was so large that it was, and remains, huge and alluring for generation after generation.
The body of Elizabeth Short was discovered at 10:30 AM by a woman who had taken her three year old daughter out shopping (Elias, 2007). Initially the woman thought someone had discarded a broken mannequinin the vacant lot, but as she walked closer to it she realized it was actually a corpse. One can only hope she never got close enough to see the absolute horror the killer of the 22 year old woman, who had been nicknamed the “Black Dahlia” before her death, had left in that vacant lot. From a distance it was clear that Elizabeth’s body had been cleanly cut in half, separating her torso from her legs (Beaven, 2007). Up close, however, the body and the scene were far more gruesome. Elizabeth’s killer had used a knife to carve lines from the sides of her mouth to her ears, making her face look like a horrible, smiling, mask (Beaven, 2007). It was even uglier, however, one breast had been half sliced off and, due to the lack of blood in the lot it was evident that she had been tortured and drained of blood in another location, and she had been dissected and left lying on top of her intestines (Beaven, 2007; Hoffman, 2003). There are not enough words to describe how horrible the scene looked and fewer words that could describe how horrid the final hours of Elizabeth Short must have been.
In life she had been a very pretty woman known for her beauty, dark, curly hair, blue eyes, and a life full of partying, lack of money, and rather ill repute (Hoffman, 2003). While Short said she went to Hollywood to be an actress there are no indications she ever sought out an agent or attended auditions (Hoffman, 2003). She also left home at 16 and did not arrive in Hollywood until she was 19 (Hoffman, 2003). She actually drifted from her hometown in Massachusetts to Indiana, Chicago, Texas, and Florida, meeting men, seducing some, working little, and charming many out of a place to stay, food, and “loans” (Hoffman, 2003). She had an active fantasy life and often imagined herself as a famous Hollywood star, a model, or a World War II widow (Hoffman, 2003). When the film The Blue Dahlia came out in 1946 a bar friend started calling Elizabeth the "Black Dahlia," probably because of the black, tight, dresses she often wore, and the name stayed with her in life and death since that time (Hoffman, 2003). It is doubtful that Elizabeth Short had any real hope left in her by the time she died, she had long been living hand-to-mouth, she had been evicted too many times, and she hung out with dark crowds in Hollywood’s underworld, but her beauty allowed her to be seen as a lovely, young woman who had been touched by a horrible evil (Hoffman, 2003).
So alluring is her murder that in 2007, the 60th anniversary of her murder, Los Angeles celebrated as only a city devoted to business, money, and illusion can: it held a week-long programof events that included tours of the crime scene and a very popular “VIP Package” that was nearly sold out and provided “a chance for people to transport themselves back to the night she was killed and try and make up their own minds on who killed her and why” (Elias, 2007). There have been countless books, movies, and television programs inspired or based on her death and many claim to have solved the mystery of her death. For example, one former Los Angeles Police Officer turned author claims his father, Dr. Hodel, was the actual murderer in his book, Black Dahlia Avenger; in author Max Allan Collins's series, The Memoirs of Nathan Heller, which began in 1983 and continues today, the killer is as yet unnamed; in author James Ellroy’s (Murr, 2003; Hoffman, 2003).
It is because of the image created when Elizabeth Short’s beauty in life is juxtaposed against the horror of her torture and murder, as well as the fact that no one yet knows anything about the killer or why and how he killed her that her murder still haunts Los Angeles and its police department. Since her death it has been the story of Elizabeth Short’s murder, not her life nor who she was as a person, that has gripped people all over the world. The power of her murder to do this is because it joins beauty with ugliness and mystery. While little is known about her actual life no one seems too interested in discovering who Elizabeth Short was but many are desperately seeking her killer. It seems everyone wants to be her hero, no matter how late they arrive to the save her, they can at least solve the mystery of how a beautiful and very young woman died. This may be what drives the fascination – everyone feels pain when beauty is destroyed and there is a natural drive to fix things that have gone wrong and no one else can fix – like an unsolved murder.
While Elizabeth Short’s murder has gripped people since 1947, this same pattern of fascination with beauty destroyed and a dedication to solving the mystery of who or why has routinely been seen in America. In the summer of 1841 the body of a 20-year-old sales clerk named Mary Cecilia Rogers was found in the Hudson River with a lace cord tied around her neck (Stashower, 2006). The girl had been hired in a cigar shop to attract customers and was said to be so beautiful that poems were written about her and that men could not stop looking at her (Stashower, 2006). It was in death, however, that she claimed true fame, desire, and passion. Author Edgar Allan Poe said he was pulled into an “intense and long-enduring excitement” while writing a story in which he laid out the many conflicting theories of her case but in which he also claimed to “indicated the assassin,” (Shashower, 2006). Other authors also wrote dozens of books about Mary Cecilia Rogers seeking, just as in the case of Elizabeth Short, to solve the mystery and honor, somehow, the beauty of these young women, made famous by their deaths. More recently the murder of Jon Benet Ramsey gripped America and still has many seeking to find the answer to the question of who would kill such a beautiful child (Roeper, 1997). The murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, as of 1997, had “inspired two trials, 65 books, and thousands of discussion hours on television” (Roeper, 1997). Jack the Ripper has gripped people since the time English prostitutes were first killed in the nineteenth century. People are driven to know the answers.
Something that is beautiful or innocent should not suffer pain. If our society allows those who cause pain or who kill beauty to live then it puts the rest of us in fear and, in a way, makes us conspirators in the ugliness. As author Jody M. Roy says in her book, Love to Hate: America's Obsession with Hatred and Violence, the knowledge that murderers have lived among us is “like the monster under the bed” and people need to put that monster far from them (Epstein, 2003). Monsters such as those who can torture, split apart, and murder a 22 year old woman in Los Angeles or a child in Colorado have been called monsters. “Monstrous bodies are the remarkable presencesthat appear as signs of civic omen, or trauma, and which demand interpretation: they offer a bitof each, apocalypse as well as utopia” (Picart & Greek, 2003, 39).
Parents tell children that there are no monsters under the bed and that they will take care of them always. However, as children grow up they learn that while there are no real monsters there are killers and other evils which can hurt them. Most people accept this and try their best to avoid these things. However, people know that they are, simply by being alive, at risk to these evils or monsters. When someone young, innocent, pretty, and seemingly defenseless against such a monster is found and no one can find the monster who did it, people may feel too close to that evil. But, when people investigate these murders they may feel they regain control and power over the monster and over their own lives. “‘Feelings of fear…derive from the conviction of loss of control and the sense of helplessness’ ... When environmental controlsare weak, magical solutions for controlling the monstrous are sought” and those magical solutions can include reviews of the evidence, the victim, the crime, and anything that helps provide answers to who the monster is or was. Therefore, the investigation into and fascination with the murder of Elizabeth Short provides generations a way to keep the monsters at bay and protect the beautiful.
References
Beaven, A. (2007). The Gruesome Link to a Hollywood Horror: Victim: Elizabeth Short. The London Daily Mail. Retrieved May 23, 2009 from HighBeam Research:
Elias, R. (2007). Haunted by Black Dahlia: Exclusive 60 Years After Young Actress was Found Butchered Beneath Hollywood Hills, her Unsolved Murder Still Fascinates.Glasgow Daily Record. Retrieved May 23, 2009 from HighBeam Research:
Epstein, R. J. (2003). Fascination with Evil is American Obsession. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Retrieved May 23, 2009 from HighBeam Research:
Hoffman, C. (2003). Return to the Primal Noir: Two Modern Authors on the Black Dahlia.The Journal of American Culture. Retrieved May 23, 2009 from HighBeam Research:
Murr, A. (2003). Old Case, New Twist: An ex-LAPD Detective Says He's Finally Solved the 1947 Black Dahlia Murder. He Probably Wishes He Hadn't.Newsweek. Retrieved May 23, 2009 from HighBeam Research:
Picart, C.J. & Greek, C. (2003). The Compulsion of Real/Reel Serial Killers and Vampires Toward a Gothic Criminology. Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture, 10 (1): 39-68. Retrieved May 23, 2009, from
Roeper, R. (1997). True Crime Stories we May Never Hear End of.Chicago Sun-Times. Chicago Retrieved May 23, 2009 from HighBeam Research:
Stashower, D. (2006). New York's Black Dahlia.The New York Times. Retrieved May 23, 2009 from
Written Grading Form for Introductions and Conclusions CheckPoint, Due in Week SevenContent and Development
40 Points / Points
Possible / Points Earned
All key elements of the assignment are covered: / Additional Comments:
The paper consists of an introduction and a conclusion for the expository essay.
The introduction and conclusion focus on one of the following topics:
oHealthful eating
oOil and gas prices
oEducation
oMedia in the courtroom
oCosmetic surgery
oTattoos or body piercing
oLanguage in the United States
oA topic approved by the instructor / 4 / 4
The introduction and conclusion are added to the body paragraphs of the expository essay. Turn in the ENTIRE essay even though the focus for grading will be the Introduction and Conclusion. (This requirement is necessary for the peer review activity.) / 6 / 6
The paper is also submitted to the Center for Writing Excellence and the Plagiarism Checker. Evidence of this is included. / 6 / 6
The content is accurate and informative. / 6 / 6
The tone is appropriate for the intended audience. / 6 / 6
The introduction provides sufficient background on the topic, includes the thesis statement, and previews major points. / 6 / 4 – You need to make your thesis statement more obvious. It should clearly and succinctly state the point and purpose of your paper and should appear at or near the end of your introductory paragraph.
The conclusion is logical, flows from the body of the paper, and reviews the major points. / 6 / 4 – The conclusion to your paper should reprise and pull together the information in the preceding paragraphs and should not bring in new ideas, i.e. magical solutions.
Total
40 Points / Points Earned
36/40
Overall Comments: Your paper contains numerous grammatical errors, notably in the area of subject/verb agreement. Please refer to the comments and corrections I marked on your body paragraphs.