Movie Description
The Blue Gardenia is a 1953 American film noir directed by Fritz Lang from a screenplay by Charles Hoffman, based on the novella The Gardenia by Vera Caspary. The film stars Anne Baxter, Richard Conte, and Ann Sothern. An independent production distributed by Warner Bros., The Blue Gardenia - a cynical take on press coverage of a sensational murder case (the Black Dahlia) - was the first installment of Lang's "newspaper noir" film trio, being followed in 1956 by both While the City Sleeps and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt. The song "Blue Gardenia" was written by Bob Russell and Lester Lee and arranged by Nelson Riddle. The director of cinematography for The Blue Gardenia was RKO regular Nicholas Musuraca, then working at Warner Brothers.
Film director and writer Peter Bogdanovich called The Blue Gardenia "a particularly venomous picture of American life".