Items related to Sins of the City: The Real Los Angeles Noir
New in town, huh? Look around, kid—palm trees, movie stars, glittering promises of fame and fortune....Now look closer, and you'll see the real action in the City of Angels: goons and thugs, backroom dice clubs, motel room cheesecake shots, crusading cops, and a few unlucky saps who didn't make it out alive. Sins of the City is a daring photographic compendium of vintage vice in Los Angeles from the '20s to the '50s, the true-life pictures of a milieu immortalized in the hard-bitten novels of Raymond Chandler, Walter Mosley, and James Ellroy, and such films as Criss Cross, Double Indemnity, Chinatown, and LA Confidential. Pore over 200 shots of the people, places, and events that only tabloids such as Hush-Hush, Confidential, and Whisper dared publish. Witness the LAPD bust a floating casino, see a dapper Bugsy Siegel "before" (living) and "after" (deeply deceased), and marvel at the criminal excess of marijuana-stuffed suitcases. Author Jim Heimann has scoured archives and newspaper morgues for prime examples of Southland's inglorious past, presenting a compelling history of its notorious corruption. Sure, it's a tough city, but thankfully someone was there to record it all.
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Review:
In the first half of the 20th century, Los Angeles was as well known for its lurid nightlife and criminal underground as it was for the Hollywood film empire. Often, of course, the two sides of L.A. met, as when Robert Mitchum was busted for marijuana possession in 1949; among the photos collected in Sins of the City you'll find a snapshot of Mitchum in prison gear during his 50-day incarceration. You'll also find several pictures of local crime boss Mickey Cohen and his gang, usually after somebody's made an attempt to rub them out. Several of the crime scene photos are not for the squeamish, including the shooting death of mobster Bugsy Siegel and the discovery of both halves of the body of Elizabeth Short, better remembered as the "Black Dahlia." (Actually, the two pictures of Short's bisected corpse are taken from a distance, compared to more gruesome photos of that scene found in other sources.)
From the Inside Flap:
Jim Heimann's introduction provides some historical context, but it's the photos themselves that are the real attraction here. From them you'll get a sense of what the gambling parlors, speakeasies, and drag balls of the period looked like--as well as Beverly Hills movie premieres, the back alleys of Chinatown, and the exteriors of such swank nightclubs as La Conga and the Mocambo. Sins of the City is fascinating reference material for readers of classic L.A. noir (it includes quotes from several authors, among them Raymond Chandler and John Fante), as well as anyone interested in studying or writing about this period.
Los Angeles is recognized as much for its history of civic corruption, criminal excess, and common degeneracy as for its glamorous facade. From the days after the First World War to the dawn of the Cold War era, the transition from coarse rural outpost to chaotic urban center was underway, resulting in a mysterious and charismatic nether-world that has been immortalized in countless books and films of the noir genre. Now, Jim Heimann collects hundreds of real photographs from the golden age of Southland vice in SINS OF THE CITY: THE REAL LOS ANGELES NOIR.
Culled from historical archives, newspaper photo morgues, and personal collections, this visual history traverses the mean streets of Angel City taking you in to the heart of the grit and grime. From gin joints to waterfront tattoo parlors, casino barges to the back alleys of Chinatown, a hopped-up Sunset Strip to jazz-drenched Central Avenue, SINS OF THE CITY presents a rare view of a confidential Los Angeles.
For those fascinated with the myth as well as the reality, SINS OF THE CITY delivers the visual documents and fascinating details of a city looking for redemption.
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- PublisherChronicle Books
- Publication date1999
- ISBN 10 0811823199
- ISBN 13 9780811823197
- BindingPaperback
- Edition number1
- Number of pages144
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