Page "Film noir" Paragraph 15

Raymond Chandler, who debuted as a novelist with The Big Sleep in 1939, soon became the most famous author of the hardboiled school.

Not only were Chandler's novels turned into major noirs — Murder, My Sweet ( 1944 ; adapted from Farewell, My Lovely ), The Big Sleep ( 1946 ), and Lady in the Lake ( 1947 )— he was an important screenwriter in the genre as well, producing the scripts for Double Indemnity, The Blue Dahlia ( 1946 ), and Strangers on a Train ( 1951 ).

Where Chandler, like Hammett, centered most of his novels and stories on the character of the private eye, Cain featured less heroic protagonists and focused more on psychological exposition than on crime solving ; the Cain approach has come to be identified with a subset of the hardboiled genre dubbed " noir fiction ".

For much of the 1940s, one of the most prolific and successful authors of this often downbeat brand of suspense tale was Cornell Woolrich ( sometimes under the pseudonym George Hopley or William Irish ).

No writer's published work provided the basis for more film noirs of the classic period than Woolrich's: thirteen in all, including Black Angel ( 1946 ), Deadline at Dawn ( 1946 ), and Fear in the Night ( 1947 ).