The Blue Gardenia (1953)

The Blue Gardenia is a 1953 black-and-white film noir directed by Fritz Lang and based on a story by Vera Caspary. It stars Anne Baxter, Richard Conte, Ann Sothern and Raymond Burr.

The first installment of Lang's "newspaper noir" movie trio — with While the City Sleeps and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (both 1956) — The Blue Gardenia offers a somewhat negative look at newspaper coverage of a sensational murder case.

The film could be seen as a partial remake of Whirlpool (1949), which Conte also starred in and likewise centers on a woman who may have committed a murder but can't remember.

Nat King Cole sings the title song and appears in the movie. The theme song was written by Bob Russell and Lester Lee and arranged by Nelson Riddle.

Film director and writer Peter Bogdanovich called the film "a particularly venomous picture of American life". The director of cinematography was one of RKO Radio Pictures' regulars Nicholas Musuraca, then working at Warner Brothers.

Synopsis

In Los Angeles, California, Norah Larkin (Anne Baxter) is a single woman who works as a switchboard operator along with her roommates, Crystal Carpenter (Ann Sothern) and Sally Ellis (Jeff Donnell). On her birthday, she decides to celebrate by dining alone at home, with the picture of her fiancé, a soldier serving in the Korean War. At the candlelight dinner table, she opens the latest letter from him and learns to her shock that he instead plans to marry a nurse he met in Tokyo.

Actors