Arnold Zwicky's Blog

The Zippy of 8/12/14 (which seems to have fallen into a wrinkle in time):

An exercise in tracking down (some of) the references.

(Earlier postings about film noir: of 8/16/12 and of 6/14/14.)

The 1951 film noir is presumably The Prowler:

The Prowler is a 1951 black-and-white thriller film noir directed by Joseph Losey that stars Van Heflin and Evelyn Keyes. The film was produced by Sam Spiegel (as S.P. Eagle) and was written by Dalton Trumbo under a pseudonym. (link)

The strip’s title “The Asphalt Dahlia” is a combination of two titles:

(1) The Asphalt Jungle is a 1950 film noir directed by John Huston. The caper film is based on the 1949 novel of the same name by W. R. Burnett and stars an ensemble cast including Sterling Hayden, Jean Hagen, Sam Jaffe, Louis Calhern, James Whitmore, and, in a minor but key role, Marilyn Monroe, an unknown at the time who was pictured but not mentioned on the posters.

The film tells the story of a group of men planning and executing a jewel robbery. (link)

(2) The Black Dahlia (1987) is a neo-noir crime novel by American author James Ellroy, taking inspiration from the true story of the murder of Elizabeth Short. It is widely considered to be the book that elevated Ellroy out of typical genre fiction status, and with which he started to garner critical attention as a serious writer of literature. The Black Dahlia is the first book in Ellroy’s L.A. Quartet, a cycle of novels set in 1940s and 1950s Los Angeles, which is portrayed as a hotbed of political corruption and depravity. The Quartet continues with The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, and White Jazz. (link)

Now, the quotations from dialogue. Here are the first two; the remainder are left as an exercise for the reade.

Reading the cards. This is from Touch of Evil:

Touch of Evil is a 1958 American crime thriller film, written, directed by, and co-starring Orson Welles. The screenplay was loosely based on the novel Badge of Evil by Whit Masterson. Along with Welles, the cast includes Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh, Joseph Calleia, Akim Tamiroff, and Marlene Dietrich.

Touch of Evil is one of the last examples of film noir in the genre’s classic era (from the early 1940s until the late 1950s) (link)

Quinlan: What’s my fortune? You’ve been reading the cards, haven’t ya?
Tana: I’ve been doing the accounts.
Quinlan: Come on, read my future for me.
Tana: You haven’t got any.
Quinlan: What do you mean?
Tana: Your future is all used up. Why don’t you go home? (link)

At rock bottom. This is from Cape Fear:

Cape Fear is a 1962 American psychological thriller film starring Gregory Peck, Robert Mitchum, Martin Balsam and Polly Bergen. It was adapted by James R. Webb from the novel The Executioners by John D. MacDonald. It was directed by J. Lee Thompson, and released on April 12, 1962. The movie concerns an attorney whose family is stalked by a criminal he helped to send to jail. (link)

Diane Taylor: Max Cady, what I like about you is… you’re rock bottom. I wouldn’t expect you to understand this, but it’s a great comfort for a girl to know she could not possibly sink any lower. (link)

Solenoid Selznick is not a noir character.

This entry was posted on January 6, 2015 at 6:52 am and is filed under Linguistics in the comics, Movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.