Three demobilized United States Navy aviators, Johnny Morrison, Buzz Wanchek, and George Copeland, arrive in Hollywood, California.

While George and Buzz get an apartment together, Johnny surprises his wife, Helen, at her hotel bungalow where she is hosting a riotous party with many drunken revellers.

Johnny discovers that Helen is having an affair with Eddie Harwood, the owner of the Blue Dahlia nightclub on the Sunset Strip.

Johnny punches Corelli out, smashing the frame in the process; he discovers on the back of the photo that Helen has written an insurance note revealing that Eddie is really Bauer, a murderer who is wanted in New Jersey.

As Joyce picks at a blue dahlia flower, the nightclub's music sets off a painful ring in Buzz's head.

Lapsing into a fit, he remembers the agonizing music that he heard at Helen's bungalow, as she played with a blue dahlia.

They talk and Eddie admits with regret that, fifteen years earlier, he was involved in the shooting of a bank messenger.

Johnny ends up shooting Leo and flees to the Blue Dahlia, where the police are trying to force a confused Buzz to admit that he killed Helen.

Uncredited performances include Mae Busch as Jenny the maid, Anthony Caruso as a corporal playing a jukebox, and Noel Neill as Nolie the hatcheck girl.

[10] Paramount announced the film in February 1945, with Ladd, Lake, Bendix and Marshall (the director) all attached from the beginning.

[11] Houseman said George Marshall had a reputation for rewriting extensively on the set and had to persuade him to stick to the script.

[13]) Houseman recalled that Ladd was unhappy with the casting of Doris Dowling as his wife because she was half a foot taller than he but this was disguised during their scenes together.

By never letting Ray share my apprehensions, I had convinced him of my confidence in his ability to finish the script on time.

To be offered a large additional sum of money for the completion of an assignment for which he had already contracted and which he had every intention of fulfilling was by his standards a degradation and a dishonor.

(It wasn't the drinking that was dangerous, he explained, since he had a doctor who gave him such massive injections of glucose that he could last for weeks with no solid food at all.

[15] Chandler was unhappy with the forced ending, saying it made "a routine whodunnit out of a fairly original idea.

"[17] Chandler received a lot of deference on the set, but Lake was not familiar with him so, upon asking about him and being told, "He's the greatest mystery writer around", she made a point of listening intently to an analysis of his work by the film's publicity director to impress newspaper reporters with her knowledge of a writer she had never read.

[22] In a contemporary review for The New York Times, critic Bosley Crowther called the film "a honey of a rough-'em-up romance" and wrote: "[A]n air of deepening mystery overhangs this tempestuous tale which shall render it none the less intriguing to those lovers of the brutal and bizarre.

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.

"[24] Diabolique called it "a fantastic film noir, full of atmosphere, intrigue, crackling dialogue and sensational performances, which was recognized as a classic almost immediately and made a tonne of money."

[25] The film's title could have been the origin of the Black Dahlia nickname, given to 1947 murder victim Elizabeth Short.

[27] The Blue Dahlia was dramatized as a half-hour radio play on the April 21, 1949 broadcast of The Screen Guild Theater, starring Lake and Ladd in their original film roles.