"Happiness is open to wide interpretation in this early LA noir wrought by genre masters at their peak," Kinn and Piazza write of the 1944 film directed by Billy Wilder, saying of star Barbara Stanwyck, "Unrepentant wickedness as refreshing and inventive as a powerful jazz riff."
According to , he movie was based on a 1943 crime novel by James M. Cain, which in turn was based on real events in 1927 鈥� the woman allegedly involved, Ruth Snyder, was sentenced to death and was the subject of the famous photo which showed her being killed by the electric chair, taken by a reporter who'd snuck in a camera.
Wilder often worked with screenwriter Charles Brackett but Brackett would not work on "Indemnity," according to TCM, because he objected to the film's content.
