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Sins of the City

The Real Los Angeles Noir By Jim Heimann

7-1/2 x 10 in; 144 pp ; 200 b/w photos
Paperback
Published in May, 1999
ISBN 0811823199
ISBN13 9780811823197
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$18.95  

Sins of the City -- New in town, huh? Look around, kid—palm trees, movie stars, glittering promises of fame and fortune....Now look closer, and you'll see the real action in the City of Angels: goons and thugs, backroom dice clubs, motel room cheesecake shots, crusading cops, and a few unlucky saps who didn't make it out alive. Sins of the City is a daring photographic compendium of vintage vice in Los Angeles from the '20s to the '50s, the true-life pictures of a milieu immortalized in the hard-bitten novels of Raymond Chandler, Walter Mosley, and James Ellroy, and such films as Criss Cross, Double Indemnity, Chinatown, and LA Confidential. Pore over 200 shots of the people, places, and events that only tabloids such as Hush-Hush, Confidential, and Whisper dared publish. Witness the LAPD bust a floating casino, see a dapper Bugsy Siegel "before" (living) and "after" (deeply deceased), and marvel at the criminal excess of marijuana-stuffed suitcases. Author Jim Heimann has scoured archives and newspaper morgues for prime examples of Southland's inglorious past, presenting a compelling history of its notorious corruption. Sure, it's a tough city, but thankfully someone was there to record it all.

Jim Heimann is a graphic designer, illustrator, and educator whose previous books include California Crazy: Roadside Vernacular Architecture, also published by Chronicle Books.