How did Elizabeth Short receive her nickname?
According to newspaper reports shortly after the murder, Short received the nickname Black Dahlia at a Long Beach drugstore in the summer of 1946, as a play on the then-current movie The Blue Dahlia, starring Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake. However, Los Angeles County district attorney investigators’ reports state the nickname was invented by newspaper reporters covering the murder. In either case, Short was not generally known as the “Black Dahlia” in life.
