Abstract
Our essay studies the exchanges between tabloid news and the entertainment media's representations of crime during the 1930s and 1940s. Section One considers how tabloid photographers, including Weegee, recast news-work hardships as "hard boiled" prose autobiographies. Meanwhile, Hollywood crime films were borrowing representational tropes directly from the tabloids. Part Two argues that Weegee's seminal 1945 photo-essay Naked City must be reconsidered as autobiography. Part Three posits that film noir's current popularity derives from a middlebrow desire to enjoy crime imagery while distinguishing such images from contemporary tabloid media. By neglecting crime films' allegiance with the tabloids, however, film scholarship has overlooked a major influence upon the noir canon.
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