When postwar movie directors went looking for a gritty location to shoot their psychological crime thrillers, they found Bunker Hill, a neighborhood of fading Victorians, flophouses, tough bars, stairways and dark alleys in downtown Los Angeles.
But the biggest crime was going on behind the scenes, run by the city s power.
Novelist Raymond Chandler had already been there exploring the real-life Mean Streets that his hardboiled detective, Philip Marlowe, prowled in the writer s exacting prose.
When postwar movie directors went looking for a gritty location to shoot their psychological crime thrillers, they found Bunker Hill, a neighborhood of fading Victorians, flophouses, tough bars, stairways and dark alleys in downtown Los Angeles