The Black Dahlia ~ Art, Sex and Death: Exquisite Corpses

 NSFW - contains graphic Crime Scene photographs ...

On the 9th of January 1947, the naked and mutilated body of a young woman was found in a vacant lot at Leimert Park, Los Angeles. The tragic victim was 22 year old Elizabeth Short - she would become known more widely however as The Black Dahlia. Her poetic nickname was attributed both to her fondness for dark clothing and hair and also in relation to George Marshall's Film Noir of the previous year The Blue Dahlia (which was written by crime writer Raymond Chandler).

German film poster for The Blue Dahlia directed by George Marshall (1946)

The Black Dahlia case has gone down in history as a Hollywood equivalent of the Jack the Ripper murders, because although a number of men were considered potential culprits, nobody was charged and to this day the killing (or killings) remain officially unsolved. Another factor that has granted this tragic slaying infamy is that Elizabeth's body was found drained of blood and having suffered numerous mutilations including the slashing of her face into a 'Chelsea Smile', the mastectomy of her breast, genital abuse and most strikingly her body had been severed in half and positioned with deliberation. It is this last detail that has most relevance to this post and to the 2006 book that inspired it - 'Exquisite Corpse: Surrealism and the Black Dahlia Murder' by Mark Nelson and Sarah Hudson Bayliss. This book was itself inspired by Steve Hodel's 2003 book Black Dahlia Avenger.

Numerous books have been published, each suggesting a different suspect for the murder, but Hodel's book has caused quite a stir as within it the retired police officer placed the blame for the heinous mutilation and murder firmly upon his own father Doctor George Hodel. Whilst it was speculated that due to the precision of the severing of the body, the culprit must be a medical man or at least a skilled anatomist, if Hodel was indeed the killer then his motivations for the placing of the body in such a manner has been given more complex suggestion.

Dr George Hodel

George Hodel was a surgeon but he was also a sadist and a sex abuser. He went to trial for the incestuous rape of his teenage daughter Tamar, and was accused of both impregnating her and forcing her to undergo an abortion. Despite eye witness testimony that Hodel had indeed raped his daughter, he was found Not Guilty. Hodel was indeed a suspect in the Black Dahlia slaying to the extent that his home was bugged and he was recorded saying "Supposin' I did kill the Black Dahlia. They can't prove it now. They can't talk to my secretary anymore because she's dead. They thought there was something fishy. Anyway, now they may have figured it out. Killed her. Maybe I did kill my secretary.". Yet he was never tried for this crime and his son Steve believes that his father went on to kill again.

The Hodel family's dysfunctional history was adapted into a 2019 TNT drama series I Am the Night which was inspired by the book One Day She'll Darken by Fauna Hodel. This book follows the personal quest by Fauna Hodel to find her birth family after discovering that she had been adopted by a black woman. Believing herself to be African American but very light-skinned she was shocked to find out that her mother Tamar Hodel was white and that her grandfather George Hodel was a man whom if not the Black Dahlia killer indeed cast a dark shadow over his own family. (The legacy of George Hodel is discussed in detail in the excellent podcast Root of Evil: The True Story of the Hodel Family and the Black Dahlia).

 

An interesting aspect in the George Hodel case was his enthusiasm for art, especially the Surrealist movement and this is the bones of Nelson and Bayliss' Exquisite Corpse books. Among Hodel's friends was the artist and photographer Man Ray. How close they were is a matter of debate - some claim they were fairly intimate, others that they were connected only through Man Ray being commissioned to take some photographs of Hodel and his wife Dorothy but  Exquisite Corpse details further communications between the Hodels and the Rays.
(There were claims that Man Ray also took nude photographs of Tamar Hodel when she was a child but this is apparently unverified). Whether Man Ray attended the sex parties thrown by Dr George Hodel is another unproven matter. He did photograph some S&M scenes for a series entitled The Fantasies of Mr Seabrook featuring author, adventurer, alcoholic and possible cannibal William Seabrook. There is no evidence that Man Ray and Lee Miller (whom posed in the photos) shared Seabrook's sadistic tastes and there is an account of how Man Ray and Miller untied a woman Seabrook had bound to a staircase and gave her a meal whilst he was out of the way.

Self Portrait - Man Ray (1943)

From The Fantasies of Mr Seabrook - Man Ray (1930) 

An odd un-savoury aside is the accusation that the film director and actor John Huston did attend Hodel's soirees. Huston was previously married to George Hodel's wife Dorothy. Huston's directorial debut was the classic Noir film The Maltese Falcon (1941 - based on Dashiell Hammett's 1930 novel of the same name). The falcon statuette in the film was designed by Fred Sexton. Sexton was a friend of both Huston and Hodel - however he was one of the eye witnesses at the Hodel incest trial admitting that he too had intended to rape Tamar. He was accused of having raped his own 11 year old step-daughter and at the age of 63 he married a teenager. Upon his death aged 88 Sexton ordered the destruction of all his personal effects.
In the 1974 neo-Noir movie, Chinatown, John Huston played Noah Cross a man whose granddaughter is also his daughter due to the incestuous rape he committed upon his own daughter. The film is directed by Roman Polanski whose own life was darkly touched by sex and murder. His wife Sharon Tate was a victim of the Manson Family murders in Los Angeles in 1969. In 1977 Polanski was accused of the drugging and rape of a 13 year old girl. The scene of the crime was the house that Jack Nicholson (star of the film Chinatown) shared with the actress Anjelica Huston - the daughter of John Huston.

John Huston in Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974)

Back to Exquisite Corpse and the killing of Elizabeth Short - The Black Dahlia; using the theory that George Hodel was the murderer,it explores the premise that the positioning of the corpse was a 'work of art' in tribute to and perhaps surpassing the creations of the Surrealists that he greatly admired.

I do not know if George Hodel was the Black Dahlia Avenger or whether he killed many more people as his son Steve Hodel claims. George Hodel certainly seems to have been a cruel deviant but there are those that contest Steve Hodel's claims and others that propose other strong suspects for the savage murder of poor Elizabeth. It remains a mystery.

What the book Exquisite Corpse does however reveal is that the Surrealist art movement did indeed have a disturbing obsession with the image of women whose bodies have been severed - images that do resonate chillingly with the  Black Dahlia crime scene. I end this twisted thread with some of those artworks.

La Jumelle - Man Ray (1945)

Eternal Evidence - Rene Magritte (1930)

Minotaure - Salvador Dali (1936)

The Doll - Hans Bellmer (1936) 

The Art of Radio - Salvador Dali (1944)

Anatomy as a Bride - Max Ernst (1921)

Etant Donnes - Marcel Duchamp (1946) 

Black Dahlia Murder Scene (1947) 

RIP Elizabeth Short (1924 - 1947)