Episode #60: True Crime/Fine Art: Man Ray and the Black Dahlia Connection (Season 6, Episode 7)

December 23, 2019 Jennifer Dasal

This season we’re learning that true crime and art history are two genres that have smashed together with some fascinating results. Today’s show: it’s our season finale, and this is the story we have been DYING (sorry) to tell you. Did Man Ray inspire the infamous (and infamously unsolved) Black Dahlia murder?

Please SUBSCRIBE and REVIEW our show on Apple Podcasts!

Instagram

SPONSORS

Audible: enjoy a special offer of 53% off your first 3 months of Audible by visiting audible.com/artcurious or text ARTCURIOUS to 500-500.

Feals: Become a member today by going to feals.com/artcurious and you'll get 50% off your first order with free shipping.

Episode Credits

Production and Editing by Kaboonki. Additional editing by Hannah Roberts. Theme music by Alex Davis. Social media assistance by Emily Crockett and Caroline Haller. Additional writing and research by Joce Mallin.

ArtCurious is sponsored by Anchorlight, an interdisciplinary creative space, founded with the intent of fostering artists, designers, and craftspeople at varying stages of their development. Home to artist studios, residency opportunities, and exhibition space Anchorlight encourages mentorship and the cross-pollination of skills among creatives in the Triangle.

Additional music credits

Recommended Reading

Please note that ArtCurious is a participant in the Bookshop.org Affiliate Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to bookshop.org. This is all done at no cost to you, and serves as a means to help our show and independent bookstores. Click on the list below and thank you for your purchases!

Links and further resources

Hyperallergic: Was Man Ray the Inspiration Behind the Black Dahlia Murder?

Steve Hodel’s Books

Root of Evil Podcast

Exquisite Corpse: Surrealism and the Black Dahlia Murder

Episode Transcript

If you’ve been following the ArtCurious podcast throughout our current season, then you probably can glean some knowledge about my own interests in the genre of true crime. After all, it’s been so hot for these past three years and it doesn’t seem like it’s slowing down at all. So, yes, I am one of the many, many people out there who occasionally digs into true crime stories. Yes, I listen to some of the podcasts and yes, I’ve been to those podcasts’ live shows and have read a lot of true crime books and have seen the requisite true crime documentaries. As morally ambiguous as it can be to enjoy these tales for pure entertainment, I do find them intriguing-- it’s easy to be fascinated with the dark side of human nature, especially when your everyday life is stable and safe. Sometimes, true crime can just be fun.

In addition to consuming those previously mentioned delivery systems for true crime stories, I’ve also been a fan of the occasional fictionalized film or TV portrayal, too. And earlier this year, 2019, I was particularly excited when TNT premiered their limited-run series called I am the Night, starring Chris Pine and directed by Patty Jenkins. It portrayed a woman’s search for information about her family and her heritage, which dovetailed with the search for one of the most elusive killers of the 20th century-- the murderer of Elizabeth Short, a woman known to us today under the moniker The Black Dahlia. This murder is one of the most gruesome in California history--perhaps even U.S. history, and it has never been solved. Even today, the case remains open and stalled, more than 70 years later. This was enough to get me curious about watching the TV show itself. But when news articles started popping up connecting the real-life figures in the mini-series with the mid-century Los Angeles art scene, replete with collectors and internationally-acclaimed big-name artists-- well, I was surprised. Because a case has been made that the Black Dahlia’s death is an awful, gory, bodily translation of surrealist visual art off of the canvas and into the world.

Some people think that visual art is dry, boring, lifeless. But the stories behind those paintings, sculptures, drawings and photographs are weirder, crazier, or more fun than you can imagine. In season six, we are uncovering the dastardly deeds of several of art history’s famed artists, including their involvement--or participation--in murder most foul. For our season finale today, a story that I’ve been excited to share with you for nearly a year. Did Man Ray and the Surrealists inadvertently--or perhaps even directly?-- influence the Black Dahlia murder? This is the ArtCurious Podcast, exploring the unexpected, the slightly odd, and the strangely wonderful in Art History. I'm Jennifer Dasal.

As with any discussion of a major story in the true crime sphere, there exists a truckload of information about the Black Dahlia-- more information than can possibly shared in today’s podcast. But just know that should you want more background about the victim, Elizabeth Short, the ongoing police investigation, the dark noir world of 1940s Los Angeles, and the range of suspects outside of our discussion today, rest assured that there is really no lack of information and resources out there-- and I’d personally recommend the podcast Root of Evil for lots more details here. For our purposes today, however, I’m going to give you the basics of the crime, the top suspect, and that suspect’s relationship to the visual arts. But first, let’s discuss the finding of the corpse of the Black Dahlia.

On January 15, 1947, Betty Bersinger was taking a walk with her toddler daughter through the Leimert Park neighborhood of south Los Angeles, an area that, at the time, was still only loosely developed and populated. On the side of the road at an abandoned lot, Bersinger and her daughter approached what appeared, at first glance, to be a fashion mannequin that had been disassembled and abandoned. As the got closer, Bersinger realized quite quickly and quite horrifically that it wasn’t a mannequin at all, but a woman who had been cut cleanly in half, drained of blood, and positioned with her body halves obviously separated and with her limbs splayed, arms above her head. The woman’s face had been mutilated, cut from ear to ear in what appeared to be a ghastly smile. This corpse wasn’t just thrown on the side of the road-- she had been purposefully prepared and posed for a specific effect.

Soon after the discovery of the mutilated body, police confirmed the identity of the victim as Elizabeth Short, a waitress who moved to California from the East Coast with hopes of becoming an actress. Short’s lustrous, dark hair, combined with her purported love of the Veronica Lake and Alan Ladd film The Blue Dahlia, may have inspired Short’s friends to bestow her with her now-immortal nickname. Today, many might shrug their shoulders if you mention the name Elizabeth Short. But say “the Black Dahlia,” and an image is immediately conjured. The same thing happened in the late 1940s. Because of the absolutely horrifying manner in which Short’s postmortem body was displayed, because of her alluring nickname, and because a killer was not immediately identified, the story of Elizabeth Short’s murder became big news fast. Los Angeles police received dozens of tips regarding possible leads and theories as to the identity of the murderer, with 60 individuals coming forward to confess to the crimes during the few months of the initial investigation. None panned out--and interestingly, there have now been over 500 purported confessions of the Black Dahlia killer-- but all have been ID’d as false confessions. Go figure. But by mid-1947, the case had already started going cold, and as one of the lead detectives, Sargent Finis Brown, noted, quote, “No lead had any conclusions. Once we'd find something, it seemed to disappear in front of our eyes.” Two years later, a grand jury convened to discuss the LAPD’s failure at solving several high-profile murders, including the Black Dahlia case. This revisiting to the Dahlia case-- and the probable embarrassment that its still-unsolved status bestowed upon the LAPD--led investigators to renewed efforts at identifying the killer. They narrowed down a large list of suspects down to a total of 25--none of whom were ever charged with the crime. On that original list was a Los Angeles-born physician and art collector whose interests in surrealism--and connections to several surrealists-- makes him of particular interest to us today. His name was George Hill Hodel, Jr.

George Hodel grew up in Los Angeles and by all accounts had a particularly charmed upbringing as the only son of a wealthy and connected family. Hodel was a child prodigy, with an IQ in the genius range and a wunderkind on the piano--so much so that the famed Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff even made a visit to the Hodel home in order to hear young George perform. During his teen years, George Hodel became interested in the visual arts, aspiring early on to be a photographer--and several of his artsy, blurry self-portrait photos do still exist out there. Eventually, though, Hodel opted to move into medicine instead, but he still kept the art world close to heart and--in a sick way, may have even created an ultimate surrealist nod himself, a terrible crime completed as a nod to his close friend, the artist Man Ray.

Born Emmanuel Radnitsky in Philadelphia in August 1890 to a family of Russian Jewish immigrants, Man Ray was one of the most prolific artists involved in both the Dada and Surrealist art movements of the early 20th century. Man Ray began his life as an artist at a very young age, and was so set in his aim to become a working artist that he even turned down a lucrative scholarship to an architectural college in order to pursue his dream of becoming a painter. Ray worked first as a commercial designer and illustrator in Manhattan after high school, and practiced in what was a pretty traditional, very 19th century artistic style-- all realistic and figurative. In 1913, though, he attended an art exhibition that blew his socks off and changed his life-- he saw the 1913 Armory Show, the first truly large-scale modern art exhibition in the United States, and one that introduced several art superstars to the American public: Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky, Mary Cassatt, Paul Cezanne, Henri Matisse, Edward Hopper, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. I could go on, guys-- this was one epic exhibition. Even Claude Monet and our old pal Vincent Van Gogh were part of the show. And Man Ray was giddy. He was especially taken by Cubism and Futurism, and their dreams of presenting new ideas of space and movement in art--speed and mechanics especially interested him. But if there was one artist who most thrilled him at the Armory Show, it was Marcel Duchamp.

Listeners, I am sure that many of you are familiar with the name Marcel Duchamp. We’ve talked about Duchamp multiple times on this podcast, including, most recently, in our episode on his (or maybe his?) controversial Fountain urinal sculpture as part of last year’s series on “shock art.” We also touched on him again in a bonus episode that followed up on our Fountain tale with a consideration of the theory that Fountain was actually created and/or inspired by Duchamp’s friend and colleague, the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. Please do go back and listen to those episodes, if you are new to the show, and catch up on this fascinating debate and this influential and again, controversial, artist. At the Armory Show, Duchamp exhibited one of his most debated works ever-- a painting titled Nude Descending a Staircase, No.2, a work from 1912 that didn’t fare too well in France upon original exhibition and wasn’t too positively received at the Armory either, as people struggled to find a nude at all-- was Duchamp showing an automaton descending a staircase? Was it a disavowal of traditional art historical representations of the nude and the human figure? Was it even ART? Duchamp’s so-called nude was a scandal. And Man Ray loved it. He quickly became friends with Duchamp and began working in similar artistic modes as the French artist, becoming one of the foremost proponents of Dada and Surrealism in the United States during the first two decades of the 20th century. After moving to Paris and immersing himself in the arts--working especially as a photographer, Man Ray escaped the dawning horrors of World War Two by returning to the U.S., this time settling in Los Angeles. And it was there that he became friendly with arts collector and surrealist supporter, George Hodel.

Coming up right after a quick break, it’s time to parse the creepy similarities between several surrealist tropes and the death of Elizabeth Short. Stay with us.

Welcome back to ArtCurious.

In May 1999, George Hodel died in San Francisco at the age of 91, after living for half his life in the Philippines, where he moved in 1950, after a series of events dogged him- first was the death of his secretary, Ruth Spaulding, in 1945-- Spaulding was thought to have died as the result of a drug overdose, but Hodel was suspected of being involved, though he was never charged. Four years later, in 1949, Hodel’s own daughter, Tamar, accused him of incestual sexual abuse, noting that such abuse ended in a pregnancy which Tamar was then forced to terminate through a dangerous back-alley abortion. George Hodel was tried, but acquitted of this crime. After this, he moved far, far away to the Philippines. And right in between the death of Spaulding and the incest trial was the murder of Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia.

After Hodel’s 1999 death, one of his sons-- Steve Hodel, was tasked with mulling through his father’s possessions. Among his father’s papers, he found photographs of an unidentified woman with glossy, dark hair and a mysterious and glamorous air. Steve Hodel was an LAPD homicide detective, and he was immediately taken by the photo because the woman in the picture reminded him of something, or to be more precise, of someone--someone mysterious and still a curiosity and a legend within the LAPD: The Black Dahlia, Elizabeth Short.

Steve Hodel found further things among his father’s possessions that intrigued him: documents attesting to his father’s strange sexual proclivities, his penchant for violence, and, most interestingly, his interest in art. Included in George Hodel’s documents were a number of photographs of George Hodel, his wife Dorothy, and his children, all taken by a big-name artist: Man Ray. George Hodel even owned works of art by Man Ray. This discovery was the beginning of a huge moment for Steve Hodel, as he began to unravel a tangled web that linked George Hodel to the L.A. art world, especially through his friendship and familiarity with Man Ray. Four years after his father’s death, Steve Hodel published Black Dahlia Avenger: A Genius for Murder, which skyrocketed to bestseller status on the New York Times list, a case he added to continually over the past sixteen years, and through a further four books, delineating the myriad connections between his father and the killer of the Black Dahlia (he’s even declared that George Hodel may have been the infamous Zodiac killer, but that one seems extraordinarily implausible). The connection to the Dahlia, though? This one seems to make a little bit more sense, at least.

Though Hodel’s theory of his father’s guilt is predicated upon many things-- not the least of which being that his father was one of the original short-listed suspects of the crime, someone whose home was even bugged by the LAPD because of their suspicions--a huge key to Steve Hodel’s argument is the striking similarities between the appearance and pose of Elizabeth Short’s body and the way that women, most frequently, are visualized in surrealist art. Steve Hodel writes that Man Ray and George Hodel became acquainted in Los Angeles after Man Ray relocated to the city in the 1940s, with the two men drawn together by their shared interest in the tenets of surrealism, which--like Dada, its predecessor-- sought to dismantle rationality in favor of seeking a different kind of truth through accessing the subconscious mind. The poet Andre Breton established a circle of surrealist aesthetes, writers and intellectuals in France in the 1920s, and the philosophy quickly spread around the world, ending up inspiring people in the U.S. as well. The dream world and the psychological theories of Sigmund Freud were key to the surrealists, who hoped to open doors to their subconsciousness via assemblage, automatic writing, and strange and uncanny imagery or word combinations. One of the most popular surrealist modes originated as a parlor game wherein two or more individuals each draw on a folded sheet of paper, where the previous artists’ contributions are concealed. So, when drawing a body, for example, one artist might sketch a head, a second would be responsible for creating the torso, while a third might draw the legs. What is created, then, is a bizarre mishmash of styles, ideas, and even symbols and subject matter-- a Frankenstein’s monster of a figure. Breton, alongside fellow surrealists Duchamp, painter Yves Tanguy and poet Jacques Prevert, pioneered this concept. And one of the things that pops up repeatedly in exquisite corpse imagery--as well as other surrealist works of art-- is an undercurrent of violence, especially violence towards women, which also frequently has a sexual tinge. Think about the exquisite corpse-- in creating a drawing that is meant to represent an actual figure, or more specifically, the so-called corpse whose name is given to this method of artistic production. The figure is sectioned, sliced, divided, oftentimes drawn nude by the surrealists, and is almost always a female figure.

Sound familiar? It sure did to Steve Hodel. And the more that he looked at surrealist art--especially the work of Man Ray and Man Ray’s good friend Marcel Duchamp, the more Steve began to feel confident in his thesis-- that the Black Dahlia murder was surrealist art made reality. As Steve Hodel recounted to Dr. Phil on his eponymous TV show in March 2019, quote, “This is dad’s surrealistic masterpiece. I talk about his scalpel being his paintbrush and her body was the canvas. It’s that twisted.” Unquote. Elizabeth Short became, in both a literal and metaphorical sense, an exquisite corpse.

In his books, Steve Hodel relies mostly on circumstantial evidence to support his arguments, but his web of art-historical connections is truly attention-grabbing, and that’s what we are focusing on here today. These artistic connections were taken to the next level by art museum designer Mark Nelson and and arts and culture journalist Sarah Hudson Bayliss in their 2006 book, Exquisite Corpse: Surrealism and the Black Dahlia Murder, wherein the authors analyze the Dahlia case from a purely visual and art-historical perspective. In their book,they relay that many surrealist signifiers and visual vocabulary circled around misogyny and sexual violence against women. In Man Ray’s artworks from the 1940s, for example, women’s faces are scratched out; photographs of nude women, too, are altered so as to make their forms appear bisected or with strange amputations. Oftentimes in Man Ray’s images and in the works of others, including Man Ray’s own Los Angeles art dealer, William Copley, there exist scenes of naked women in unsettling locations or positions, sometimes lorded over by a strangely threatening man--who would be fully-dressed, of course, in comparison. And sometimes, these women appear with their eyes closed--a frequent trope for Surrealist imagery that evokes a fascination with dream worlds or interior life a la Sigmund Freud, but also hints at a dark obsession with death, of snuffing the light out of someone’s eyes. Threat and control are huge touchstones in each image. And all of these, Steve Hodel, Mark Nelson, and Sarah Hudson Bayliss argue, are present in the actual killing of Elizabeth Short. It’s like George Hodel came in and took all of these elements and translated them into a single form, merging them together into one artsy, fame-grabbing crime.

Steve Hodel and the Exquisite Corpse authors draw further connections between the adopted Surrealist mascot --the Minotaur-- as a potential model for the body placement of Short, post-death. Like other surrealists of the day, Man Ray loved the minotaur as an artistic subject and referenced it frequently in his works. The Minotaur, a figure stemming from Greek mythology-- was a curious beast who was part man, part bull, and who devoured young people--including young maidens--who were sacrificed for its sustenance. In the eyes of the Surrealists, the Minotaur was meant to symbolize the darkest desires of mankind. Man as beast, man as animal, man as a killing machine, fueled by blood lust. The minotaur makes appearances, or is referenced, in numerous works by Andre Masson, Max Ernst, Giorgio de Chirico, and even Pablo Picasso, just to name a few examples. But the minotaur connection to the Black Dahlia seems strongest, and most direct, when compared to the works of Man Ray. Take a recently rediscovered print by Man Ray, a 1969 lithograph titled Les Invendables, which roughly translates to something unsellable or too damaged to be marketable. In the image, a nude torso of a woman, her pendulous breasts hanging down, is splayed with her arms up and over her head. Her face is marred out with red ink, and her lower body is delineated in the same color, as it appears to bleed down into four legs-- into the sturdy form of the Minotaur. On his blog, Steve Hodel superimposes the widely-available crime scene photographs of Elizabeth Short’s corpse over the Man Ray Minotaur image, and while it is not a perfect match, it is enough to make your hair rise on the back of your neck. Was Man Ray illustrating his interest in the Dahlia murder and hinting at his possible connection to the perpetrator? Was the death of this young, damaged maiden a sacrifice made to satiate a man’s deepest, darkest desire?

An even more compelling argument joins a strange photograph-slash-installation by Marcel Duchamp to the Dahlia. One year after Duchamp’s death in 1968, a work called “Étants donnés” was presented at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, a piece that Duchamp had toiled over for twenty years, beginning around the time of the Dahlia murder, and that he requested would not be revealed until after his death. Installed as a peep-hole tableau in a wooden door (and now located at the Philadelphia Museum of Art), this work-- Duchamp’s last big project and created at a time when he had supposedly given up on creating art entirely-- presents viewers with a scene of a nude woman lying spread-legged in a landscape, her genitals blatantly revealed to the viewer and her head as blatantly hidden. Here, too, the similarity in the body positioning with the Dahlia is notable, at the very least. To Hodel and others, it appears to be quote “identical,” unquote, and shows a knowledge, if not acceptance, of Hodel’s purported surrealist masterpiece. As such, not only was Hodel inspired by surrealism, but surrealists were, in turn, inspired by Hodel’s one-upsmanship of their own game and acknowledged it in their own works.

I have to admit that researching this--reading Steve Hodel’s theories, and poring over Mark Nelson and Sarah Bayliss’s image comparisons--was fun, just from that true-crime enjoyment perspective that I discussed at the beginning of this episode. And the connection between visual art and one of the most notorious crimes of the 20th century is totally intriguing. But all of it leads me to a big question, and it’s one that I admit that I personally don’t have a really good answer for. The question is this: why? Say that George Hodel was indeed a homicidal maniac and that he really is the Black Dahlia killer. The reasons why he would kill are one thing, but the reasoning for turning Elizabeth Short into a surrealist symbol or reference are another entirely. Why would Hodel do this? Steve Hodel posits that George Hodel, himself an artist wannabe, so loved the works of the surrealists that he, too, wanted to be a part of their mixed-up world. And as someone with a medical background and murderous intent, he simply used Elizabeth Short’s own body and life as his medium, instead of a camera or a paintbrush. Bayliss and Nelson further note the collaborative nature of Dada and Surrealism, wherein artists frequently winked at each other via their works of art, hinting and referencing each others’ visuals, themes, and personal preoccupations. George Hodel, they say, winkingly referenced surrealism in his crime, and that Man Ray and others winked back by referring to the Dahlia murder in their own pieces. But if Hodel did kill the Dahlia, and artists like Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp knew of Hodel’s crime, why didn’t they alert authorities to their knowledge and why would they themselves keep hinting at the Dahlia through their own works of art more than twenty years after the crime itself as Duchamp supposedly did with his “Étants donnés”?

And that question-- the WHY-- is just the beginning. We can follow up with more interrogation by asking if misogyny is enough to indict the surrealists alongside Hodel here? And is the curiosity and interest in the darker side of humanity--and a willingness to illustrate it--a damning thing? In this way, it reminds me of the kinds of questions that were posited in a documentary series now considered to be classic within the true crime genre itself: the Paradise Lost series about the West Memphis Three, where three teenagers were fingered for the early 1990s murders of three Arkansas children because, in part, of the teens’ penchant for wearing black and listening to heavy metal. Did the teenagers engage in murder as part of a satanic ritual fueled or symbolized by the kind of music they liked, or the clothes they wore? Same thing goes for yet another of the most gruesome crimes of the 20th century: the 1969 killings of Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, and others by members of Charles Manson’s drugged-out family. In Manson’s adoption of the phrase “Helter Skelter” to denote a racially-motivated uprising against the Hollywood elite, the Beatles--whose 1968 White Album included a song titled “Helter Skelter,” were thrown into the spotlight for supposedly inspiring the family’s senseless, gory killings. Did the surrealists here thus inspire the death of Elizabeth Short?

Ultimately, the visual stylings of surrealism and the theoretical comparison to the Black Dahlia murder leave us with more questions and more avenues for further research than actual evidence or true links. Even as renewed interest in the Black Dahlia murder reached new heights with the release of the miniseries I am the Night and its corresponding podcast, Root of Evil, and with Steve Hodel continually publishing and publicizing his theories, Los Angeles law enforcement still considers the Dahlia case to be closed, and it is unlikely that any connections to art history--interesting though they may be--are going to cause it to be reopened. That being said, you never know-- in true crime, as in art history, stranger things have happened.

Thank you for listening to the ArtCurious Podcast. This episode was written, produced, and narrated by me, Jennifer Dasal, with additional research help by Joce Mallin. Our theme music is by Alex Davis at alexdavismusic.com, our logo is by Dave Rainey at daveraineydesign.com, and social media help is by Emily Crockett and Caroline Haller. Our production and editorial services are provided by Kaboonki. Video. Content. Ideas. Learn more at kaboonki.com. Additional editing help is by Hannah Roberts. The ArtCurious Podcast is sponsored primarily by Anchorlight. Anchorlight is a creative space, founded with the intent of fostering artists, designers, and craftspeople at varying stages of their development. Home to artist studios, residency opportunities, and exhibition space Anchorlight encourages mentorship and the cross-pollination of skills among creatives in the Triangle. please visit anchorlightraleigh.com.

The ArtCurious Podcast is also fiscally sponsored by VAE Raleigh, a 501c3 nonprofit creativity incubator. We’re a fully independent podcast, and we rely on sponsors and donations to keep us going, so if you enjoy this show and have the means, please consider giving $10 to help this show, and thank you for your kindness. And if you don’t have money to give, that’s okay! You can help our show as well by leaving a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen-- believe me, it makes a huge difference and helps new listeners tune in. For more details about our show, including the image mentioned in this episode today, please visit our website: artcuriouspodcast.com. We’re also on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at artcuriouspod.

Check back in a few months as we continue to explore the unexpected, the slightly odd, and the strangely wonderful in art history.