"Playing a discharged naval flier returning home from the Pacific first to find his wife unfaithful, then to find her murdered and himself in hiding as the suspect, Alan Ladd does a bangup job. Performance has a warm appeal, while in his relentless track down of the real criminal, Ladd has a cold, steel-like quality that is potent. Fight scenes are stark and brutal, and tremendously effective...Scenes between Ladd and Lake are surprisingly sensitive, with an economy of dialog and emotion doubly appealing." – Variety

"To the present expanding cycle of hard-boiled and cynical films, Paramount has contributed a honey of a rough-'em-up romance which goes by the name of The Blue Dahlia...in this floral fracas it has starred its leading tough guy, Alan Ladd, and its equally dangerous and dynamic lady V-bomb, Veronica Lake. What with that combination in this Raymond Chandler tale, it won't be simply blasting that you will hear in Times Square for weeks to come...For bones are being crushed with cold abandon, teeth are being callously kicked in and shocks are being blandly detonated at close and regular intervals on the Paramount screen. Also an air of deepening mystery overhangs this tempestuous tale which shall render it none the less intriguing to those lovers of the brutal and bizarre." – The New York Times

"...a welcome throwback to a better, rougher day in movies...The Blue Dahlia serves this old wine in up-to-date glassware...The cynical crispness of atmosphere, character, and knowledge of the cold half-world, roughly approximated in films like Double Indemnity and Murder, My Sweet, has seldom been excelled since the early 1930s. Best aspects: the tortuous, anarchic understanding of a bad world's infinite mezzotints of menace and blackmail; the constant twitching of city lights; the icily skillful use of the personalities of Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake; the finely stylized, underplayed scenes involving Howard da Silva as a cabaret owner. Will Wright as a house dick, Walter Sande as a gunman." -- Time Magazine

"Exciting Raymond Chandler-scripted melodrama has Ladd returning from military service to find wife unfaithful. She's murdered, he's suspected in well-turned film." – Leonard Maltin, Movie and Video Guide

AWARDS AND HONORS

Raymond Chandler's script for The Blue Dahlia received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay.

Compiled by Andrea Passafiume