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Dear Ellen,
You may recognize this as the belt of the suit that
Dorothy wore last. We were sorority sisters and, on her
last day just before she went out, she borrowed one of
my belts. It was a cheap leather belt and we both knew it
didn’t go with her suit at all. Still, she wanted it and left
this one in its place. I hope I was right waiting these
many months before sending it.
Sincerely, Annabel Koch
After reading this letter, Ellen breaks her date with Bud to enlist the help
of Dorrie’s former tutor, Gordon Grant (Jeffrey Hunter), the nephew of
the police chief who investigated her sister’s death. The “cotton dress”
that she decides to wear is pink, a “warm” color associated in the film
with Dorrie and, more generally, conventional femininity. Although
Gordon is initially skeptical (he writes off her investigative impulse to an
over-active “imagination”), he eventually relents and Ellen sets out on
her own, arranging to meet one of Dorrie’s former boyfriends, a DJ who
works at KBRI, which happens to be located at the top of the Municipal
Building.
The sequence — a classic set-piece and one of the most striking
in all of 50s color noir —^begins with a cut from Ellen talking on the
phone to a canted high-angle shot of her approaching the Esquire Club.
It’s late in the evening (the hands on a clock are clearly visible), a
jazzed-up burlesque number is playing in the background, and light spills
out of the club’s open door onto the sidewalk. A red neon sign spelling
COCKTAIL LOUNGE flashes on and off like a semaphore. In the
ensuing high-angle shot, Ellen strides into a dark alley — she’s dressed
all in white except for her black purse — as the camera cranes up and out
to the midnight blue street where a sedan pulls up, the film cutting on
action to Ellen as she turns to listen. Footsteps echo on the pavement. As
she backs deeper into the alley, a woman bangs open a blind, “What are
you doing out there, it’s too late for you!” Ellen suddenly sees a man at
the other end of the alley and starts t