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A Bright and Guilty Place: Murder, Corruption, and L.A.'s Scandalous Coming of Age
Best Book of the Year
The Los Angeles Times • The Washington Post
Los Angeles was the fastest growing city in the world, mad with oil fever, get-rich-quick schemes, and celebrity scandals. It was also rife with organized crime, with a mayor in the pocket of the syndicates and a DA taking bribes to throw trials. In A Bright and Guilty Place, Richard Rayner narrates the entwined lives of two men, Dave Clark and Leslie White, who were caught up in the crimes, murders, and swindles of the day. Over a few transformative years, as the boom times shaded into the Depression, the adventures of Clark and White would inspire pulp fiction and replace L.A.’s reckless optimism with a new cynicism. Together, theirs is the tale of how the city of sunshine went noir.
The Los Angeles Times • The Washington Post
Los Angeles was the fastest growing city in the world, mad with oil fever, get-rich-quick schemes, and celebrity scandals. It was also rife with organized crime, with a mayor in the pocket of the syndicates and a DA taking bribes to throw trials. In A Bright and Guilty Place, Richard Rayner narrates the entwined lives of two men, Dave Clark and Leslie White, who were caught up in the crimes, murders, and swindles of the day. Over a few transformative years, as the boom times shaded into the Depression, the adventures of Clark and White would inspire pulp fiction and replace L.A.’s reckless optimism with a new cynicism. Together, theirs is the tale of how the city of sunshine went noir.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2009
37 people are currently reading
777 people want to read
About the author
Richard Rayner
53 books17 followersRichard Rayner is a British author who now lives in Los Angeles. He was born on December 15, 1955 in the northern city of Bradford. Rayner attended schools in Yorkshire and Wales before studying philosophy and law at the University of Cambridge. He has worked as an editor at Time Out Magazine, in London, and later on the literary magazine Granta, then based in Cambridge.
Rayner is the author of nine books. His first, Los Angeles Without A Map, was published in 1988. Part-fiction, part-travelogue, this was turned into a movie L.A. Without a Map (for which Rayner co-wrote the screenplay with director Mika Kaurismaki) starring David Tennant, Vinessa Shaw, Julie Delpy, Vincent Gallo, and, in an uncredited part, Johnny Depp.
(from Wikipedia)
Rayner is the author of nine books. His first, Los Angeles Without A Map, was published in 1988. Part-fiction, part-travelogue, this was turned into a movie L.A. Without a Map (for which Rayner co-wrote the screenplay with director Mika Kaurismaki) starring David Tennant, Vinessa Shaw, Julie Delpy, Vincent Gallo, and, in an uncredited part, Johnny Depp.
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 82 reviews
November 2, 2023
Richard Rayner is an author of books, articles, and essays; some of which have appeared in The New Yorker and The Los Angeles Times. His foray into the history of the city of Los Angeles is lively, dramatic, and certain to compel a hunt for more information on the events he mentions - which makes it a fine introduction to incidents of note while, at the same time, a less than satisfactory exploration of them.
The era would be the early decades of the 1900s. After a brief sketch of the gangland nature of Los Angeles politics at the time, we are launched into the St. Francis Dam disaster; a rare, albeit colossal, error on the part of William Mulholland that sent a midnight wall of water in a deadly cascade over rural cities and towns, killing hundreds as it churned a path toward the open sea. The wake of this devastation provides an opportunity to introduce us to Canadian-born Leslie White, a photographer assigned the gruesome task of documenting each and every death. White's competency here brings him to the eventual attention of Los Angeles law enforcement, where he begins to be dispatched to various crime scenes and is soon dabbling in the burgeoning field of forensics. Also introduced to us is a golden boy named Dave Clark, who flirts for a moment with a career in film but chooses, instead, the law, and becomes a rising star in the D.A.'s office. These two men, positioned as they are, act as doors that open to countless scandals and infamous crimes perpetrated in an age that found the city struggling to establish itself with an ever-elusive legitimacy.
There's a lot of juice in the text, and more than a cadre of startling bit players - among whom include Raymond Chandler and Erle Stanley Gardner. In fact, I felt the author had way, way too much on his plate and, for some bewilderingly unknown reason, kept going back to the buffet station to spoon up a little more. This, coupled with a clearly manufactured tabloid/noir style of approach, made the work difficult to handle. But handle it I did, because it's books like these that lead us to books like those, and that's how you chart the journey.
At least that's what I tell myself. Some days, though, who knows...?
The era would be the early decades of the 1900s. After a brief sketch of the gangland nature of Los Angeles politics at the time, we are launched into the St. Francis Dam disaster; a rare, albeit colossal, error on the part of William Mulholland that sent a midnight wall of water in a deadly cascade over rural cities and towns, killing hundreds as it churned a path toward the open sea. The wake of this devastation provides an opportunity to introduce us to Canadian-born Leslie White, a photographer assigned the gruesome task of documenting each and every death. White's competency here brings him to the eventual attention of Los Angeles law enforcement, where he begins to be dispatched to various crime scenes and is soon dabbling in the burgeoning field of forensics. Also introduced to us is a golden boy named Dave Clark, who flirts for a moment with a career in film but chooses, instead, the law, and becomes a rising star in the D.A.'s office. These two men, positioned as they are, act as doors that open to countless scandals and infamous crimes perpetrated in an age that found the city struggling to establish itself with an ever-elusive legitimacy.
There's a lot of juice in the text, and more than a cadre of startling bit players - among whom include Raymond Chandler and Erle Stanley Gardner. In fact, I felt the author had way, way too much on his plate and, for some bewilderingly unknown reason, kept going back to the buffet station to spoon up a little more. This, coupled with a clearly manufactured tabloid/noir style of approach, made the work difficult to handle. But handle it I did, because it's books like these that lead us to books like those, and that's how you chart the journey.
At least that's what I tell myself. Some days, though, who knows...?
July 19, 2017
3.5 stars
RTC
True Crime Commemoration # 2
Setting: 1920s and 30s Los Angeles
RTC
True Crime Commemoration # 2
Setting: 1920s and 30s Los Angeles
July 26, 2013
On the face of it, this is an odd book. It deals with L.A. noir years before noir really existed as a literary genre. And it views a strange slice of history, from 1927 to 1933, through the eyes of two people of whom I had never heard: the prosecuting attorney Dave Clark and the criminal investigator/detective writer Leslie White. Not really a promising field.
And yet, the British writer Richard Rayner manages to carry it off. Using primarily newspapers and autobiographies as his main sources, Rayner shows us the proto-noir Los Angeles, with it corrupt politicians, attorneys, and mobsters. He begins with the breaching of the St. Francis Dam, which killed hundreds on a broad swath of carnage from Santa Clarita to the sea. We see the genial mobster Charlie Crawford, and how he was killed by Dave Clark, who managed to be acquitted because, well, he was a very good prosecuting attorney and knew how to look good to female jurors. We see the murder/suicide of Ned Doheny and his servant Hugh Plunkett; the destruction of the acting career of Clara Bow, the "It" girl who seemed to be out of a job during the ravages of the Depression; and a plethora of minor characters who made the headlines during that formative period.
It is no secret that California produced Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, Horace McCoy, and Dashiell Hammett. They were just writing about what they saw.
A Bright and Guilty Place: Murder, Corruption, and L.A.'s Scandalous Coming of Age is worth reading. It definitely surprised me, who knew little about the period and characters discussed. The book also contains an extensive bibliography, which makes it a keeper for me.
And yet, the British writer Richard Rayner manages to carry it off. Using primarily newspapers and autobiographies as his main sources, Rayner shows us the proto-noir Los Angeles, with it corrupt politicians, attorneys, and mobsters. He begins with the breaching of the St. Francis Dam, which killed hundreds on a broad swath of carnage from Santa Clarita to the sea. We see the genial mobster Charlie Crawford, and how he was killed by Dave Clark, who managed to be acquitted because, well, he was a very good prosecuting attorney and knew how to look good to female jurors. We see the murder/suicide of Ned Doheny and his servant Hugh Plunkett; the destruction of the acting career of Clara Bow, the "It" girl who seemed to be out of a job during the ravages of the Depression; and a plethora of minor characters who made the headlines during that formative period.
It is no secret that California produced Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, Horace McCoy, and Dashiell Hammett. They were just writing about what they saw.
A Bright and Guilty Place: Murder, Corruption, and L.A.'s Scandalous Coming of Age is worth reading. It definitely surprised me, who knew little about the period and characters discussed. The book also contains an extensive bibliography, which makes it a keeper for me.
October 29, 2010
Richard Rayner focuses on the careers of two men, Leslie White and Dave Clark, to detail the history of Los Angeles in the turbulent 1920s and '30s. The city's population was exploding in the boom years of the '20s, and its government and police force were thoroughly corrupt. Movie stars, oil men, gangsters and countless others flooded into the city in the hope of making their names, their fortunes, or both. Newspapers exploited the sensations of the day, often with little regard for the truth, in the hope of gaining an increasing readership and an advantage over their rivals.
Leslie White is a young photographer who basically trains himself to be a crime scene investigator in an era when forensic science was in its infancy. He manages to get a job in the district attorney's office where he meets Dave Clark, an ambitious, handsome prosecutor with a taste for the finer things in life that will take him, ultimately, over to the dark side.
Rayner details a number of sensational trials where the lives of White and Clark intersect and which would ultimately inspire any number of novels. White himself ultimately becomes a pulp fiction writer, inspired by Erle Stanley Gardner, the creator of Perry Mason, who makes a cameo appearance. This is the L.A. that would inspire any number of crime fiction writers, principal among them, Raymond Chandler an L. A. oil executive who would become one of the great crime writers of all time and who drew much of his inspiration from the characters and events that Rayner describes.
Rayner's principal contribution with this book is to demonstrate how this beautiful city on the Pacific was transformed into the noir capitol of the world. Anyone who enjoys reading noir, or who loves movies like "Chinatown" and "L.A. Confidential," will doubtless enjoy this book.
Leslie White is a young photographer who basically trains himself to be a crime scene investigator in an era when forensic science was in its infancy. He manages to get a job in the district attorney's office where he meets Dave Clark, an ambitious, handsome prosecutor with a taste for the finer things in life that will take him, ultimately, over to the dark side.
Rayner details a number of sensational trials where the lives of White and Clark intersect and which would ultimately inspire any number of novels. White himself ultimately becomes a pulp fiction writer, inspired by Erle Stanley Gardner, the creator of Perry Mason, who makes a cameo appearance. This is the L.A. that would inspire any number of crime fiction writers, principal among them, Raymond Chandler an L. A. oil executive who would become one of the great crime writers of all time and who drew much of his inspiration from the characters and events that Rayner describes.
Rayner's principal contribution with this book is to demonstrate how this beautiful city on the Pacific was transformed into the noir capitol of the world. Anyone who enjoys reading noir, or who loves movies like "Chinatown" and "L.A. Confidential," will doubtless enjoy this book.
March 22, 2018
Why did I stop reading this? Probably other things just got in the way.
In the end, I found it pretty interesting. But I took so long to read it that I may have to go back to the beginning and read some of it again.
I did find a couple of tiffs though. He cites gangster movies The Public Enemy and Scarface and quotes the line about someone "bringing a knife to a gunfight" - believe this is a quote from The Untouchables. The minor note was that all three of these movies were about gangsters in Chicago, not LA. Perhaps it was safer in the '30s to use gangsters from Chicago rather than LA. Although Ben Hecht has said that Capone did send a couple of "fellows" to talk to Hecht when he found out about Scarface. He convinced the fellows to stay on as "consultants" (per Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of Hollywood by a former schoolmate, Todd McCarthy).
Through much of the book we are (I think) following photographer/investigator Leslie White and his book, Me, Detective, which apparently is very difficult to find. But the author was also able to interview Mr. White's children who remembered the stories their father told.
In the end, I found it pretty interesting. But I took so long to read it that I may have to go back to the beginning and read some of it again.
I did find a couple of tiffs though. He cites gangster movies The Public Enemy and Scarface and quotes the line about someone "bringing a knife to a gunfight" - believe this is a quote from The Untouchables. The minor note was that all three of these movies were about gangsters in Chicago, not LA. Perhaps it was safer in the '30s to use gangsters from Chicago rather than LA. Although Ben Hecht has said that Capone did send a couple of "fellows" to talk to Hecht when he found out about Scarface. He convinced the fellows to stay on as "consultants" (per Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of Hollywood by a former schoolmate, Todd McCarthy).
Through much of the book we are (I think) following photographer/investigator Leslie White and his book, Me, Detective, which apparently is very difficult to find. But the author was also able to interview Mr. White's children who remembered the stories their father told.
March 25, 2012
There's something simply delicious about reading nonfiction books like this. They're the intellectual equivalent of Dove Bars: one part nonfiction--so feel like you're actually learning something--and one part narrative--so you actually enjoy reading it.
Anyway, like another recent LA history book (John Buntin's "L.A. Noir"), this book spells out the real historical basis for Raymond Chandler's fictionalized version of Los Angeles. It turns out that the real L.A. was just as corrupt as Chicago--if not moreso. Rayner's narrative device for recounting the 20s and 30s history of this corruption is to trace the overlapping careers of two employees of the D.A.'s office: an investigator and a public prosecutor. Along the way, we get detailed accounts of many of the big events of the day: the 1928 St. Francis dam catastrophe (fictionalized in "Chinatown") and the 1929 Doheny murders at the Greystone Mansion (quasi-fictionalized in "There Will Be Blood"). Wisely, Rayner only starts to compare Chandler's fictional L.A. with the real L.A. at the end of the book, after he's thoroughly immersed us in the atmosphere of 20s and 30s L.A.
Anyway, like another recent LA history book (John Buntin's "L.A. Noir"), this book spells out the real historical basis for Raymond Chandler's fictionalized version of Los Angeles. It turns out that the real L.A. was just as corrupt as Chicago--if not moreso. Rayner's narrative device for recounting the 20s and 30s history of this corruption is to trace the overlapping careers of two employees of the D.A.'s office: an investigator and a public prosecutor. Along the way, we get detailed accounts of many of the big events of the day: the 1928 St. Francis dam catastrophe (fictionalized in "Chinatown") and the 1929 Doheny murders at the Greystone Mansion (quasi-fictionalized in "There Will Be Blood"). Wisely, Rayner only starts to compare Chandler's fictional L.A. with the real L.A. at the end of the book, after he's thoroughly immersed us in the atmosphere of 20s and 30s L.A.
February 16, 2012
Narrative non-fiction is a rare gift and this book was like Christmas. Rayner makes believable the mystique and mythology of LA noir, which inspired a whole genre of writing (pulp fiction) and film (film noir), through his exhaustive research and the retelling of the lives of two lesser known historical figures whose destinies are interwoven with the glamour and corruption that was LA's messy coming of age.
March 24, 2016
Wird mich einige Zeit in Bestform kosten, um eine einigermaßen angemessene Rezi zu schreiben. Aber das Buch ist ein Muss für jeden aufmerksamen Leser.
December 13, 2020
“Los Angeles is never just light or dark; it’s always both at the same time.”
“Leslie White came to L.A. and managed to get away. Dave Clark was born here and never escaped. The stories of both men are emblematic of the city…The one man speaks of hope and luck, the other portrays doom…The events [Leslie White] witnessed neither tortured nor twisted him; rather they changed him and allowed him to grow. Dave Clark, meanwhile, was drawn in deep and become a noir movie before the genre existed; his real-life story, an intense drama of failed promise, seems predictive. He lived for the moment and was killed by his past.”
I would think anyone reading this lengthy quote would be struck by two things. One, it reads a bit like noir fiction (or hard-boiled fiction). Indeed, parts of the book, whether in the description, the feel of the setting, the people, this place and time, “a beautiful world gone wrong,” does indeed read like noir fiction. Two, the author noted how events of 1920s and 1930s Los Angeles, “L.A.’s sensational crimes and history of graft were part of the raw material,” allowed Raymond Chandler to become “a haunting poet of place – this place, L.A., whose split personality of light and dark” mirrored his own, not only speaking in terms of a general atmosphere but also of specific events, noting from time to time how different examples of noir fiction (written or films) were inspired by specific people and events in the city. The author discussed at different times inspiration for such works as _The Big Sleep_ (the famed Chandler novel, which drew inspiration from such sources as the Clover Club, which “was fitted with tables that could be flipped over and hidden during raids,” and real life crooked “LAPD vice cop turned racketeer” Guy McAfee who later went on to help found Las Vegas as we know it, who provided inspiration for the “smooth mobster Eddie Mars”), _The White Rose_ (the novel by author B. Traven, who also wrote _The Treasure of the Sierra Madre_, who was inspired by the real life “Mexican plots and counterplots” of oil magnate E.L. Doheny of Teapot Dome fame, “a figure of awesome accomplishment and domineering arrogance,” whose home Greystone also inspired the depiction of the home of General Sternwood in _The Big Sleep_ and also the Grayle residence in _Farewell, My Lovely_ and the murder of his son Ned Doheny Jr. and his personal secretary and friend Hugh Plunkett in 1929 also inspired scenes in such works as Chandler’s Marlowe story _The High Window_), and _Double Indemnity_ (a James M. Cain novella that Raymond Chandler would help turn into a screenplay, foreshadowed by an example of insurance fraud Chandler encountered in his career before he became a writer).
It was fascinating to read how much of real Los Angeles found its way into noir fiction, how much especially it inspired the “greatest single chronicler of L.A.’s gathering malaise, its sunlit moods of loss and hopelessness,” Raymond Chandler, both in terms of the general character of the city but also specific events, people, and places connected with both. Though it is not a book about Raymond Chandler, it does have more than decent coverage of his career.
The other question my opening passage might make you ask is who are Leslie White and Dave Clark and why is there is a book about them? I hadn’t heard of either one either, but author Richard Rayner did well in picking the story of these two men to depict the history of L.A. from this time period, as they were both “caught up in the crimes, murders, and swindles of the day,” that their lives read like noir fiction come to life and indeed were part of the inspiration for a number of the most famous examples. Leslie White was a photographer turned forensic investigator who after he got out of that world that inspired noir fiction turned into a pulp-fiction writer (who though not in that world any longer, helped immortalize it). Dave Clark was a man who went from dashing war hero turned crusading prosecutor, with movie-star good lucks and rather popular with women, into a very dark world of racketeering and murder, becoming what he used to fight. Though a number of other people are detailed in the book (listed in a four-page cast of characters near the beginning of the book) most of the book really is a biography of these two men and how their paths crossed.
Well-written and fast-reading book, it has a number of black and white photos, notes on sources, an extensive bibliography, and a thorough index. Though the Teapot Dome Scandal is not a primary focus of the book, I do recommend reading _The Teapot Dome Scandal: How Big Oil Bought the Harding White House and Tried to Steal the Country_ by Laton McCartney for a fleshing out that scandal and some of the people in _A Bright and Guilty Place_. I also recommend _The Mirage Factory: Illusion, Imagination, and the Invention of Los Angeles_ by Gary Krist for additional coverage of the St. Francis Dam disaster and Aimee Semple McPherson (the dam disaster is near the beginning of _A Bright and Guilty Place_ and McPherson is mentioned a few times early on in the book).
“Leslie White came to L.A. and managed to get away. Dave Clark was born here and never escaped. The stories of both men are emblematic of the city…The one man speaks of hope and luck, the other portrays doom…The events [Leslie White] witnessed neither tortured nor twisted him; rather they changed him and allowed him to grow. Dave Clark, meanwhile, was drawn in deep and become a noir movie before the genre existed; his real-life story, an intense drama of failed promise, seems predictive. He lived for the moment and was killed by his past.”
I would think anyone reading this lengthy quote would be struck by two things. One, it reads a bit like noir fiction (or hard-boiled fiction). Indeed, parts of the book, whether in the description, the feel of the setting, the people, this place and time, “a beautiful world gone wrong,” does indeed read like noir fiction. Two, the author noted how events of 1920s and 1930s Los Angeles, “L.A.’s sensational crimes and history of graft were part of the raw material,” allowed Raymond Chandler to become “a haunting poet of place – this place, L.A., whose split personality of light and dark” mirrored his own, not only speaking in terms of a general atmosphere but also of specific events, noting from time to time how different examples of noir fiction (written or films) were inspired by specific people and events in the city. The author discussed at different times inspiration for such works as _The Big Sleep_ (the famed Chandler novel, which drew inspiration from such sources as the Clover Club, which “was fitted with tables that could be flipped over and hidden during raids,” and real life crooked “LAPD vice cop turned racketeer” Guy McAfee who later went on to help found Las Vegas as we know it, who provided inspiration for the “smooth mobster Eddie Mars”), _The White Rose_ (the novel by author B. Traven, who also wrote _The Treasure of the Sierra Madre_, who was inspired by the real life “Mexican plots and counterplots” of oil magnate E.L. Doheny of Teapot Dome fame, “a figure of awesome accomplishment and domineering arrogance,” whose home Greystone also inspired the depiction of the home of General Sternwood in _The Big Sleep_ and also the Grayle residence in _Farewell, My Lovely_ and the murder of his son Ned Doheny Jr. and his personal secretary and friend Hugh Plunkett in 1929 also inspired scenes in such works as Chandler’s Marlowe story _The High Window_), and _Double Indemnity_ (a James M. Cain novella that Raymond Chandler would help turn into a screenplay, foreshadowed by an example of insurance fraud Chandler encountered in his career before he became a writer).
It was fascinating to read how much of real Los Angeles found its way into noir fiction, how much especially it inspired the “greatest single chronicler of L.A.’s gathering malaise, its sunlit moods of loss and hopelessness,” Raymond Chandler, both in terms of the general character of the city but also specific events, people, and places connected with both. Though it is not a book about Raymond Chandler, it does have more than decent coverage of his career.
The other question my opening passage might make you ask is who are Leslie White and Dave Clark and why is there is a book about them? I hadn’t heard of either one either, but author Richard Rayner did well in picking the story of these two men to depict the history of L.A. from this time period, as they were both “caught up in the crimes, murders, and swindles of the day,” that their lives read like noir fiction come to life and indeed were part of the inspiration for a number of the most famous examples. Leslie White was a photographer turned forensic investigator who after he got out of that world that inspired noir fiction turned into a pulp-fiction writer (who though not in that world any longer, helped immortalize it). Dave Clark was a man who went from dashing war hero turned crusading prosecutor, with movie-star good lucks and rather popular with women, into a very dark world of racketeering and murder, becoming what he used to fight. Though a number of other people are detailed in the book (listed in a four-page cast of characters near the beginning of the book) most of the book really is a biography of these two men and how their paths crossed.
Well-written and fast-reading book, it has a number of black and white photos, notes on sources, an extensive bibliography, and a thorough index. Though the Teapot Dome Scandal is not a primary focus of the book, I do recommend reading _The Teapot Dome Scandal: How Big Oil Bought the Harding White House and Tried to Steal the Country_ by Laton McCartney for a fleshing out that scandal and some of the people in _A Bright and Guilty Place_. I also recommend _The Mirage Factory: Illusion, Imagination, and the Invention of Los Angeles_ by Gary Krist for additional coverage of the St. Francis Dam disaster and Aimee Semple McPherson (the dam disaster is near the beginning of _A Bright and Guilty Place_ and McPherson is mentioned a few times early on in the book).
January 20, 2019
Learned about this non-fiction book from the Annotated Big Sleep, and enjoyed reading it. Rayner covers LA in the early 20th century, bringing to life several historical situations that formed the fabric of Los Angeles and Chandler's fictional universe. The book is stuffed with anecdotes and vivid characters woven together from meticulous research (great notes at the end) and touches on several historical situations including the syndicates that formed around water, land and oil, the graft and gangsters in government and Hollywood, to discuss the background of real events which inspired Chandler, Gardener and several of the Black Mask pulp writers. Made me curious to do follow up reading in several topics.
Great discussion of this book by reviewer Rich Cohen of the LA Times:
"In his brilliant new book, "A Bright and Guilty Place," Richard Rayner has given us, finally and definitively, the nonfiction equivalent of the Raymond Chandler classics that fell like hammer blows in the middle of last century: "Farewell, My Lovely," "The Long Goodbye," "The Big Sleep." Chandler turned fact, the criminal underworld of Depression-era Los Angeles, into fiction, and now Rayner, by a strange Didion-like alchemy, has turned fiction back into fact."
and
"the book is about the birth of noir -- it's like a diorama in which you see the underworld and graft that created the hard-bitten attitude as naturally as a cold wind creates fog.
"[N]oir is more than just a slice of cinema history," writes Rayner. "[I]t's a counter-tradition, the dark lens through which the booster myths came to be viewed, a disillusion that shadows even the best of times, an alienation that assails the senses like the harsh glitter of mica in the sidewalk on a pitiless Santa Ana day."
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment...
Great discussion of this book by reviewer Rich Cohen of the LA Times:
"In his brilliant new book, "A Bright and Guilty Place," Richard Rayner has given us, finally and definitively, the nonfiction equivalent of the Raymond Chandler classics that fell like hammer blows in the middle of last century: "Farewell, My Lovely," "The Long Goodbye," "The Big Sleep." Chandler turned fact, the criminal underworld of Depression-era Los Angeles, into fiction, and now Rayner, by a strange Didion-like alchemy, has turned fiction back into fact."
and
"the book is about the birth of noir -- it's like a diorama in which you see the underworld and graft that created the hard-bitten attitude as naturally as a cold wind creates fog.
"[N]oir is more than just a slice of cinema history," writes Rayner. "[I]t's a counter-tradition, the dark lens through which the booster myths came to be viewed, a disillusion that shadows even the best of times, an alienation that assails the senses like the harsh glitter of mica in the sidewalk on a pitiless Santa Ana day."
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment...
February 1, 2018
It took me a while to get into this one, but by about the third or fourth chapter I was definitely captivated. I bought this books years ago after finishing "L.A. Noir". Having never visited Los Angeles before, and never even going to California, I was surprised at how wrapped-up I got in its history. It's got such a deep, colorful, oftentimes shady history that will definitely pull you in regardless of your proximity to the city. Half the time it feels like you're reading a script for a movie being filmed in its shimmery, famous Hollywood hub, and yet these are all real. Definitely fascinating, and definitely a topic I'd love to read even more about.
June 21, 2018
This absolutely fascinating book explores Los Angeles and environs from the mid 1920s into the 1930s and details the workings of The System: the intricate web of corruption and wealth that tied together the criminal underworld and police and legal networks. Real crimes--and their cover ups--are described. If this sounds like the stuff of noir authors like Raymond Chandler, Chandler himself was there and plays in own small part in the sordid goings-on. The book goes beyond the reality of graft to show how it inspired a film and literary genre that continues today.
May 18, 2022
Well written and impeccably sourced. As someone who has lived and worked in Los Angeles, I love learning more about the history of familiar venues.
March 5, 2010
While this narrative nonfiction tome is set in 20s and 30s Los Angeles, my soundtrack for reading was 60s and 70s California Soul. For whatever reason, it fits perfectly in my mind with what is essentially the true story of the birth of noir in America. It probably has to do with my own indoctrination into a love of noir through Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins tales. That fictional Los Angeles is dripping with soul. A Black soul. California Soul.
A Bright and Guilty Place, however, is about the creation of Los Angeles's soul and, as I've spent a good amount of time in the last few years in other American cities, this is what I'm interested in. What makes my home the way it is? What makes other places the way they are? What I find most unique about Los Angeles is it's kind of pathological desire to look forward. We don't make much of history here. Buildings get put up and pulled down without much concern for their place in time. With the sun shining bright on us nearly every day, there's a nearly constant belief that things will be better tomorrow so you can forget yesterday. There's a wonderfulness to this kind of outlook. It supports our population of dreamers and creators in a way that I haven't quite seen elsewhere.
But there's also a dark side. Dreamers are also risk-takers, sometimes to a fault. Forward thinking breeds confidence and, with it, confidence men and women who seek to take advantage of hope and possibility. In between, there are those just trying to get along and they often are hit with the collateral damage of both the bright and the guilty. Rayner's story looks deeply at that and, it seems, attempts to answer the question of whether or not our city's duality must corrupt those who seek to stake a claim here or can "good" win out?
Fans of the likes of Mosley and Chandler or films like Chinatown and L.A. Confidential already know the answer.
Doesn't stop us from trying to come out ahead, though, does it? As Rayner notes, "on an average day, Los Angeles receives 14 times more sunlight than New York."
That means it shines on a dog's ass here more often than most places.
I like those odds.
A Bright and Guilty Place, however, is about the creation of Los Angeles's soul and, as I've spent a good amount of time in the last few years in other American cities, this is what I'm interested in. What makes my home the way it is? What makes other places the way they are? What I find most unique about Los Angeles is it's kind of pathological desire to look forward. We don't make much of history here. Buildings get put up and pulled down without much concern for their place in time. With the sun shining bright on us nearly every day, there's a nearly constant belief that things will be better tomorrow so you can forget yesterday. There's a wonderfulness to this kind of outlook. It supports our population of dreamers and creators in a way that I haven't quite seen elsewhere.
But there's also a dark side. Dreamers are also risk-takers, sometimes to a fault. Forward thinking breeds confidence and, with it, confidence men and women who seek to take advantage of hope and possibility. In between, there are those just trying to get along and they often are hit with the collateral damage of both the bright and the guilty. Rayner's story looks deeply at that and, it seems, attempts to answer the question of whether or not our city's duality must corrupt those who seek to stake a claim here or can "good" win out?
Fans of the likes of Mosley and Chandler or films like Chinatown and L.A. Confidential already know the answer.
Doesn't stop us from trying to come out ahead, though, does it? As Rayner notes, "on an average day, Los Angeles receives 14 times more sunlight than New York."
That means it shines on a dog's ass here more often than most places.
I like those odds.
July 27, 2009
Although I don't know if there's an actual category in crime fiction called "LA Noir," no reader of Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler or the countless crime writers who have followed in their footsteps would have any problem recognizing the phrase. All cities are corrupt and crime-ridden, but Los Angeles, so hot and sunny, so dark and sinful, has a paradigm all its own. And the truth about the place is equal to the fiction. Richard Rayner's account is a sharp, stark, black and white photograph of the City of Angeles on the cusp of the Great Depression, when the excesses of the Twenties are about to drive off the cliff. Crime and corruption are rampant, and politicians elected to clean the city up universally turn out to be fakes or failures or both. In short, LA at the time was a lousy place to live but a fascinating place to read about. Rayner gives us two threads to follow this increasingly complex account: the careers of a sharp-dressing, movie-star handsome DA named Dave Clark and a crime-scene expert and pulp crime writer named Leslie White, whose interconnecting careers and sharply contrasting destinies provide the story’s momentum. Clark’s rise to prosecutorial stardom leads to an addiction to the perks of privilege and money, while White’s increasing technical proficiencies lead to bitter disillusionment when his crime scene discoveries are routinely ignored or, worse, “lost” during the investigation. So, instead, after a conversation with Earl Stanley Gardner he starts writing crime stories for pulp magazines like Black Mask, Crime Busters, and Detective Action Stories, and hence becoming a forerunner of LA Noir.
May 13, 2010
Rayner tells the story of L.A. in the 1920's and early 30's as film noir. He portrays a dynamic city being built on the scrub, where the modern culture of greed and materialism rubbed shoulders with a flashy religious revivalism, all of it driven by the enthusiasms of folks who looked at their recent move to these sunny climes as a personal manifest destiny. As a former Angeleno whose family moved to the Golden State in the early 1900's, I have become fascinated with the mentality of those times. My dad used to tell a lot of odd family stories that fit right in with the mood of Rayner's tome. My one complaint is that, after setting the stage, Rayner just lets these characters drift away to their random lives. It's like reading the post-script at the end of a movie. This seems to be a pretty common way to write a book these days, and it drives me nuts.
July 7, 2009
A lot of fun for me, great to tie in to the Chandler books I've been reading. Another glimpse into how truth is stranger - and wilder - than fiction. I'm hopelessly romantic about LA so this was good background info for me, essentially a detective "story" set against the backdrop of LA becoming the city it is - with an emphasis on it's crime & corruption. While Chicago had it's Capone, LA had "the system" something that I imagine is still deeply rooted there today.
November 3, 2009
This book made me want to re-read The Big Sleep and Mike Davis's books on the history of Los Angeles. It also made me want to visit (or at least drive-by) some of the landmarks of a city that is still, to a large extent, "home." A page-turning blend of corruption, murder, politics and Hollywood in an identity-forming time in L.A.'s history. I wonder how people who have never lived here will like this book?
August 12, 2009
I loved Rayner's "A Bright and Guilty Place" about LA's murderous, coming of age, past. Chandler, Gardner & Hammett had it easy!
August 8, 2010
Bound: The City of Shady Angels - SunPost Weekly July 15, 2010
http://bit.ly/9k8i3U
John Hood
If cities are chicks – and if a city’s worth anything, it better be a chick – then L.A. is one shady lady. You might also say she’s a chick in heat. Wanton, insatiable, and faithful only as far as the next kiss, she’s the kinda chick a man will fall for, kill for and even die for, even as she’s walking out the door.
L.A. is also a city of deep and often creepy secrets. Like the hot chick, it’ll give you the cold shoulder, purely as a matter of habit. But it’s a habit born of conflicting whispers and not so subtle innuendo, rather than any natural arrogance (though there is that too). When she does warm up and talk, it’s the things that are left unsaid you’ve gotta watch out for. Because it’s the untold tale that tells all.
That’s obviously why Los Angeles is so full of story, and why nearly every story that springs from the city is shadier and more duplicitous than the last.
The good folks at Akashic Books know this, and they’ve made a point of showing us too. Back in 2008 the Brooklyn-based house added to its ever-growing arsenal of Noir series titles by luring the likes of Michael Connelly, Susan Straight and Neal Pollack and letting ‘em rip about the city each calls home. The result, Los Angeles Noir (Akashic $15.95), was a ‘hood-by-‘hood romp through the shadows, and, like the others in the series, the equivalent of being given a detailed map to the town’s teaming underbelly.
More recently Akashic went back to the city of shady angels and unleashed Los Angeles Noir 2: The Classics ($15.95). Like its predecessor, this second take was expertly edited by Denise Hamilton, a former L.A. Times reporter who’s got her own set of sprees starring the indomitable Eve Diamond. Unlike the previous edition, however, the stories contained here are some of the stories that set the stage for all the other stories to come.
Among the many highlights are Leigh Brackett’s “I Feel Bad Killing You,” Chester Himes’ “The Night’s for Cryin’” and James M. Cain’s “Dead Man.” Cain, you’ll recall, was the crack scribe behind the novels Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce and The Postman Always Rings Twice, about as dynamite a debut as possible, while Himes was the rad cat who gave the world Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones, the two gunned-up gumshoes of The Real Cool Killers and Cotton Comes to Harlem. Brackett wrote novels too, but she’s perhaps best remembered for scripting Robert Altman’s version of Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye and teaming with William Faulkner and Jules Furthman to do likewise for Howard Hawks’ adaptation of Chandler’s The Big Sleep, unquestionably one of the top ten movies of all time.
The Big Sleep also happens to be the novel that made Raymond Chandler’s name synonymous with Noir. In fact it could be said that there’d be no Noir without Chandler (The Classics kicks off with his “I’ll Be Waiting”). Oh, the bad actors that define the form were already there, of course (in fact, Chandler knew many of them), and a whole host of wise-crackin’ scribblers were already pulping it up in rags like Black Mask by the time he came to the game. But before Chandler no writer had captured the City of Shady Angels with such depth and nuance. And none had made the low-slung story into such high art.
Like the bad actors that populate his fiction, Chandler in fact had a past in fact, and Richard Rayneruses that past to thread A Bright and Guilty Place (Anchor $15.95). An oil executive of some small renown (back when forests of derricks covered the L.A. basin), Chandler was also a drunk and a bit of a skirt-chaser. When a fellow executive ratted him out to the big boss at the height of the Depression, Chandler got summarily sacked. And it was then that fate forced him to pick up a pen.
It was slow going at first. In the seven years before breaking through with The Big Sleep Chandler wrote only a total of 20 stories. The first, as Rayner recounts, was called “Blackmailer’s Don’t Shoot,” and it was structured after a novella by Erle Stanley Gardner, then a big man on the Black Mask campus. Gardner, who’d eventually go on to create the legendary Perry Mason, was also the inspiration behind the second career of Leslie T. White, an investigator with the L.A. DA’s office.
White couldn’t abide by the city’s continuous and rampant corruption, and after nearly a decade of witnessing the nefarious doings of what was then called “The System,” he bowed out and began writing of what he knew. Considering White was on hand to investigate the high profile killings of Ned Doheny (son of Teapot Dome oil baron E. L. Doheny and man of the Greystone mansion) and System boss Charlie Crawford (who ran ‘20s and ‘30s L.A. as if it were a fiefdom), he knew a lot. But it was when his boss BuronFitts dropped the prosecution against millionaire John P. Mills in what was called the Love Mart trial and instead saw to the conviction of madam Olive Day (who was testifying for the D.A.) that White decided enough was enough. And in his second life he’d leave behind a horde of stories and one minor classic called Me, Detective.
Rayner’s counterpoint in the telling of L.A.’s shady beginnings is Assistant D.A. David H. Clark, a one-time golden boy who let The System have its way with the city – and eventually with him himself. But like all good guys gone bad who commit multiple murders, karma would catch up to Clark. And Rayner uses his headlined life as a sorta cautionary tale to what can happen to man of fluid morals in a city hellbent on being illicit. With a title taken from Orson Welles, Rayner’s highly-entertaining account of the facts that led to such great fiction is kinda like being let in on the creation story itself. An inside look at the inner workings of those who lived outside and above the laws that they themselves often made.
John Buntin also takes two characters to tell his L.A. story, though in his case it’s gangster Mickey Cohen and Police Chief William H. Parker, perhaps the two best known figures in the city’s pivotal history. Like all of the above, it is the shadows that most interest Buntin, and his L.A. Noir (Three Rivers Press $16) is consumed with what wenton when “the streets were dark with something more than night.”
Buntin begins where Rayner left off, in the late ‘30s, when Parker and Cohen were just coming up. Parker, a native of Deadwood, South Dakota, fought long and hard, against seemingly insurmountable odds, to rid the LAPD of its bad elements. Cohen, who was born in Brownsville, New York, fought it out on the streets after the collapse of The System left a void in the underworld. By the ‘50s the two had become mortal enemies. And it is their ongoing battle which Buntin chronicles with such relish.
As you might suspect, it’s a knockdown, drag out, blood-soaked battle for the very soul of the city itself. People get dead. Then more people get dead. Most of them deserving of the bullets.The bold-faced names are here in force, from newspaper moguls Harry Chandler and William Randolph Hearst (who also hated each other), studio head Harry Cohn, to entertainers like Frank Sinatra, Lana Turner and Sammy Davis Jr. But it’s Buntin’s sense of place which propels this rigorously researched look back into the depths of America’s most fable-ridden town, and his ability to evoke all the madness and badness and danger as if it were yesterday.
Taken separately, any one of the aforementioned is a delightfully dark ride down some very mean streets. Taken together however, they’re the sum of the sordid cityin its entirety. If you’re at all interested in how L.A. got to be such a shady lady, in fiction and in fact, then this quartet is just what you need to get.
http://bit.ly/9k8i3U
John Hood
If cities are chicks – and if a city’s worth anything, it better be a chick – then L.A. is one shady lady. You might also say she’s a chick in heat. Wanton, insatiable, and faithful only as far as the next kiss, she’s the kinda chick a man will fall for, kill for and even die for, even as she’s walking out the door.
L.A. is also a city of deep and often creepy secrets. Like the hot chick, it’ll give you the cold shoulder, purely as a matter of habit. But it’s a habit born of conflicting whispers and not so subtle innuendo, rather than any natural arrogance (though there is that too). When she does warm up and talk, it’s the things that are left unsaid you’ve gotta watch out for. Because it’s the untold tale that tells all.
That’s obviously why Los Angeles is so full of story, and why nearly every story that springs from the city is shadier and more duplicitous than the last.
The good folks at Akashic Books know this, and they’ve made a point of showing us too. Back in 2008 the Brooklyn-based house added to its ever-growing arsenal of Noir series titles by luring the likes of Michael Connelly, Susan Straight and Neal Pollack and letting ‘em rip about the city each calls home. The result, Los Angeles Noir (Akashic $15.95), was a ‘hood-by-‘hood romp through the shadows, and, like the others in the series, the equivalent of being given a detailed map to the town’s teaming underbelly.
More recently Akashic went back to the city of shady angels and unleashed Los Angeles Noir 2: The Classics ($15.95). Like its predecessor, this second take was expertly edited by Denise Hamilton, a former L.A. Times reporter who’s got her own set of sprees starring the indomitable Eve Diamond. Unlike the previous edition, however, the stories contained here are some of the stories that set the stage for all the other stories to come.
Among the many highlights are Leigh Brackett’s “I Feel Bad Killing You,” Chester Himes’ “The Night’s for Cryin’” and James M. Cain’s “Dead Man.” Cain, you’ll recall, was the crack scribe behind the novels Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce and The Postman Always Rings Twice, about as dynamite a debut as possible, while Himes was the rad cat who gave the world Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones, the two gunned-up gumshoes of The Real Cool Killers and Cotton Comes to Harlem. Brackett wrote novels too, but she’s perhaps best remembered for scripting Robert Altman’s version of Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye and teaming with William Faulkner and Jules Furthman to do likewise for Howard Hawks’ adaptation of Chandler’s The Big Sleep, unquestionably one of the top ten movies of all time.
The Big Sleep also happens to be the novel that made Raymond Chandler’s name synonymous with Noir. In fact it could be said that there’d be no Noir without Chandler (The Classics kicks off with his “I’ll Be Waiting”). Oh, the bad actors that define the form were already there, of course (in fact, Chandler knew many of them), and a whole host of wise-crackin’ scribblers were already pulping it up in rags like Black Mask by the time he came to the game. But before Chandler no writer had captured the City of Shady Angels with such depth and nuance. And none had made the low-slung story into such high art.
Like the bad actors that populate his fiction, Chandler in fact had a past in fact, and Richard Rayneruses that past to thread A Bright and Guilty Place (Anchor $15.95). An oil executive of some small renown (back when forests of derricks covered the L.A. basin), Chandler was also a drunk and a bit of a skirt-chaser. When a fellow executive ratted him out to the big boss at the height of the Depression, Chandler got summarily sacked. And it was then that fate forced him to pick up a pen.
It was slow going at first. In the seven years before breaking through with The Big Sleep Chandler wrote only a total of 20 stories. The first, as Rayner recounts, was called “Blackmailer’s Don’t Shoot,” and it was structured after a novella by Erle Stanley Gardner, then a big man on the Black Mask campus. Gardner, who’d eventually go on to create the legendary Perry Mason, was also the inspiration behind the second career of Leslie T. White, an investigator with the L.A. DA’s office.
White couldn’t abide by the city’s continuous and rampant corruption, and after nearly a decade of witnessing the nefarious doings of what was then called “The System,” he bowed out and began writing of what he knew. Considering White was on hand to investigate the high profile killings of Ned Doheny (son of Teapot Dome oil baron E. L. Doheny and man of the Greystone mansion) and System boss Charlie Crawford (who ran ‘20s and ‘30s L.A. as if it were a fiefdom), he knew a lot. But it was when his boss BuronFitts dropped the prosecution against millionaire John P. Mills in what was called the Love Mart trial and instead saw to the conviction of madam Olive Day (who was testifying for the D.A.) that White decided enough was enough. And in his second life he’d leave behind a horde of stories and one minor classic called Me, Detective.
Rayner’s counterpoint in the telling of L.A.’s shady beginnings is Assistant D.A. David H. Clark, a one-time golden boy who let The System have its way with the city – and eventually with him himself. But like all good guys gone bad who commit multiple murders, karma would catch up to Clark. And Rayner uses his headlined life as a sorta cautionary tale to what can happen to man of fluid morals in a city hellbent on being illicit. With a title taken from Orson Welles, Rayner’s highly-entertaining account of the facts that led to such great fiction is kinda like being let in on the creation story itself. An inside look at the inner workings of those who lived outside and above the laws that they themselves often made.
John Buntin also takes two characters to tell his L.A. story, though in his case it’s gangster Mickey Cohen and Police Chief William H. Parker, perhaps the two best known figures in the city’s pivotal history. Like all of the above, it is the shadows that most interest Buntin, and his L.A. Noir (Three Rivers Press $16) is consumed with what wenton when “the streets were dark with something more than night.”
Buntin begins where Rayner left off, in the late ‘30s, when Parker and Cohen were just coming up. Parker, a native of Deadwood, South Dakota, fought long and hard, against seemingly insurmountable odds, to rid the LAPD of its bad elements. Cohen, who was born in Brownsville, New York, fought it out on the streets after the collapse of The System left a void in the underworld. By the ‘50s the two had become mortal enemies. And it is their ongoing battle which Buntin chronicles with such relish.
As you might suspect, it’s a knockdown, drag out, blood-soaked battle for the very soul of the city itself. People get dead. Then more people get dead. Most of them deserving of the bullets.The bold-faced names are here in force, from newspaper moguls Harry Chandler and William Randolph Hearst (who also hated each other), studio head Harry Cohn, to entertainers like Frank Sinatra, Lana Turner and Sammy Davis Jr. But it’s Buntin’s sense of place which propels this rigorously researched look back into the depths of America’s most fable-ridden town, and his ability to evoke all the madness and badness and danger as if it were yesterday.
Taken separately, any one of the aforementioned is a delightfully dark ride down some very mean streets. Taken together however, they’re the sum of the sordid cityin its entirety. If you’re at all interested in how L.A. got to be such a shady lady, in fiction and in fact, then this quartet is just what you need to get.
December 31, 2018
Let’s call this the anti-tourism guide, even though the book itself has nothing to do with tourism. I have a love-hate relationship with Los Angeles (usually over the course of a single day), and this book had me questioning why I ever love this city.
A non-fiction look at the actual events and people that inspired writers like Raymond Chandler and the LA noir movement, A Bright and Guilty Place shines a spotlight on the corruption embedded (and perhaps inherent) in the City of Angels. It’s a fascinating, if bleak, read.
My one complaint would be the narrative doesn’t always flow. There are a lot of separate strings in this book, and they don’t fully connect, giving the book a disjointed feeling. All the same: recommended.
A non-fiction look at the actual events and people that inspired writers like Raymond Chandler and the LA noir movement, A Bright and Guilty Place shines a spotlight on the corruption embedded (and perhaps inherent) in the City of Angels. It’s a fascinating, if bleak, read.
My one complaint would be the narrative doesn’t always flow. There are a lot of separate strings in this book, and they don’t fully connect, giving the book a disjointed feeling. All the same: recommended.
January 17, 2021
An interesting view into the corruption of Los Angeles in the 1920's and 1930's. Winds together the St. Francis Dam disaster, the Teapot Dome scandal, the downfall of Clara Bow and the emergence of Raymond Chandler as the purest expression of LA Noir. I'm not sure if I knew about the murder/suicide in Greystone Mansion before reading this. Or if I'd ever heard the names of LA crime syndicate kingpin Charles Crawford and his successor Guy McAffee (one of the key founders of the Las Vegas strip). Rayner does not write in the detail and footnote packed style of most historical non-fiction writers today. But he tells a good story. I recommend this to anybody interested in Los Angeles history or American crime in the jazz era and the great depression.
August 27, 2021
Who says LA has no history? Slow at times, dense and also very entertaining. A number of noir classics are based on real stories. And the real stories are much more insane than the fictionalized romanticism of turn of the century LA.
September 1, 2017
A strangely written book about LA during the 20's and 30's. The book needs serious focus.
February 10, 2021
Love this period of history. Lots of fascinating info. I want to meet this author. :)
December 4, 2021
Pretty good though it was hard to keep track of people and court cases
March 16, 2022
Very good if you enjoy the background and history to an event! Rayner does a great job at winding all of the people, their pasts, and all of the events together.
Read
March 20, 2022An engaging work of popular history.
May 27, 2024
Leslie White 😱😩😩
Dave Clark 👎😬🤢
Dave Clark 👎😬🤢
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