The behind-the-scenes story of the quintessential film noir and cult classic, Billy Wilders Double Indemnityits true crime origins and crucial impact on film historyis told for the first time in this riveting narrative published for the film's 80th anniversary. From actual murder to magazine fiction to movie, the history of Double Indemnity is as complex as anything that hit the screen during film noirs classic period. A 1927 tabloid sensationcrime of the centuryinspired journalist and would-be crime-fiction writer James M. Cain to pen a novella. Hollywood quickly bid on the film rights, but throughout the 1930s a strict code of censorship made certain that no studio could green-light a murder melodrama based on real events. Then in 1943 veteran scriptwriter and newly minted director Billy Wilder wanted the story for his third movie. With tentative approval from the studio he hired hardboiled novelist Raymond Chandler to co-write a script that would be acceptable to industr