One Foot in 1941

the backless dress – georges barbier – 1918

Double Indemnity was released in the US on 3 July 1944.

Based on James M. Cain’s 1943 novella of the same name (which was based on a 1927 murder Cain covered as a reporter and serialized in Liberty magazine in 1936), director Billy Wilder wanted Cain to help him adapt the work for the screen, but Cain was already under contract elsewhere, so Wilder turned to Raymond Chandler.

Chandler and Wilder did not get along (Chandler even sent the studio a list of reasons why he couldn’t work with Wilder), but the two were committed to the project and overhauled Cain’s novella, changing much of the characterization (especially Barton Keyes, played by Edward G. Robinson), plot, and dialogue. (Wilder defended the antagonistic relationship, saying, “If two people think alike it’s like two men pulling at one end of a rope. If you are going to collaborate, you need an opponent to bounce things off of.”

Cain was pleased with the adaptation, “It’s the only picture I ever saw made from my books that had things in it I wish I had thought of. Wilder’s ending was much better than my ending, and his device for letting the guy tell the story by taking out the office dictating machine – I would have done it if I had thought of it.“

Violet Fairy Book

Andrew Lang

Today’s Inspiration: Anita Loos

Loos’ wrote the book “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” a spoof on romance. Published in 1925, it’s had (at least) 85 editions & has been translated into more than 14 languages. The book became a play, a musical in 1949, starring Carol Channing. In 1953 it became a feature film starring Marilyn Monroe.

Born in 1893, in California, her childhood was hard. Dad, though charming, was unreliable, Mom was always digging the family out of a crisis. “Miss Loos’s insouciance was hard-earned.” One of dad’s odd jobs resulted in Loos getting a small part in a play, it did well, she became a child actor & supported her family. By 10 she was appearing in the comedy bits that were shown with longer films.

Loos never really had an education, but was a lifelong autodidact. She always wanted to write, at 13 she began to sell “humorous anecdotes” to theatrical papers. Once she understood that movies were based on written outlines she wrote a short (under the name A. Loos) and sent/sold it to the American Biograph Company & it in 1912 it was made into a movie starring Mary Pickford & Lionel Barrymore. She was the first woman to professionally write scripts. Film director DW Griffith hired her as a screenwriter when she was 20, starting off writing screen captions- remember these films were silent.

Loos was a prolific writer, wrote dozens of plays, novels, and screenplays. She was also a bit of a character; “she seemed to epitomize the vamp or the flapper’ apparently her Mainbocher clad figure was often seen in nightclubs. Her plays and films starred actresses like Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, & Paulette Goddard. Cecil Beaton was her buddy. She wrote the (stage) adaptation of Collette’s “Gigi”.

Until a year before her death, Loos kept up her busy lifestyle; fashion shows, parties, balls. She was “a New York social institution” only slowed down when she began to lose her hearing & sight. She died of a heart attack at 93, in 1981.

“ She had a relentless desire to rebel, an honest love of flim-flam and a disarmingly pertinent comic vision of life. She was unashamed of working and just as unashamed of having fun.” NYT Obituary

James Mason, Eva Marie Saint, and Cary Grant at Mount Rushmore filming Hitchcock’s NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959).