A James Ellroy Playlist: Hollywood Signs

In The Black Dahlia, Bucky Bleichert discovers the site where Elizabeth Short was murdered at the same time as the last four letters of the Hollywoodland sign are being removed nearby in the Hollywood Hills. While Bucky is solving the most famous homicide in Los Angeles history two songs are referenced in the text. These songs might strike the reader as two of the corniest tunes to come out of the Hollywood publicity machine, but that would be similar to confusing ‘Born in the USA’ with jingoism and ‘Afternoon Delight’ with chastity.

For behind these two upbeat tunes, there is a warning about the dark side of fame.

Hooray for Hollywood

Bleichert is piecing together the connections between the Dahlia murder and Emmett Sprague’s slum bungalows which were used as sets in Mack Sennett films. He visits the Admiral Theater and watches a film in which ‘the Keystone Kops (are) transplanted to Biblical Days’. He recognises the set from a Stag film he’d viewed in which Elizabeth Short had been abused, ‘The exterior shots looked like the Hollywood Hills’. Bucky needs to visit the murder site immediately as it is due to be demolished in conjunction with the Hollywoodland sign. He makes his way past huge crowds, all in thrall to the sign-changing ceremony unfolding before them. Before he enters the house of horrors where the Dahlia was tortured to death, ‘the letter “A” crashed to the dirt’ and the Hollywood High School band starts playing ‘Hooray for Hollywood’.

‘Hooray for Hollywood’ has generally been regarded as a light, breezy tune ever since it first appeared in the 1937 film Hollywood Hotel. It later became a staple of the Academy Award ceremonies. However, the original lyrics are, in places, disturbing. Hollywood is the place where ‘any shopgirl can be a top girl, if she pleases the tired businessman’. This line was changed when Doris Day recorded the song in 1958. It seems particularly inappropriate in light of the MeToo movement, and the ongoing debate as to whether Elizabeth Short was an aspiring starlet.

Here’s the original version from Hollywood Hotel.

There’s No Business Like Showbusiness

Once he departs the shack where Elizabeth Short was murdered, the alteration to the Hollywood sign is complete and the band starts playing ‘There’s No Business Like Showbusiness’. This is another song in which the upbeat tone masks some dark lyrics, ‘There’s no people like show people, they smile when they are low’. The opposite of show people would be the everyman ‘butcher, the baker, the grocer, the clerk’ who are all ‘secretly unhappy’ and would ‘gladly bid their dreary jobs goodbye for anything theatrical’.

Of course, the band is playing the tune without the lyrics, so the large crowds who have gathered to watch the changing of the sign are unaware of how Hollywood is mocking them. Only Bleichert is aware of the hypocrisy. The glitz and glamour of the ceremony and the fact that the set which doubled as the murder site of Elizabeth Short was used for a film set in ‘Biblical Days’ is designed to contrast sharply with the grisly reality Bleichert has uncovered.

‘There’s No Business Like Showbusiness’ was written by Irving Berlin for the musical Annie Get Your Gun. Members of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show sing it to Annie Oakley to persuade her to join their production. Once she is lured into this world, even gun-toting Annie Oakley discovers that showbusiness can be as ruthless as anything she experiences in the Wild West.

Love Me Fierce in Danger: The Life of James Ellroy is available to pre-order from Bloomsbury. You can also pre-order a copy from all good booksellers.