4/28/19
Los Angeles
Only in Hollywood’s Dreamland using the words “Based On” or “Inspired By” can you see a simultaneous blocking (eclipse) of both the Sun and Moon. This rare phenomenon occurred on March 4, 2019, with the airing of TNT’s television miniseries, “I AM THE NIGHT,” Finale, Episode 6, “Queen’s Gambit.”
The dual eclipse, fortunately, was short-lived lasting less than an hour and has now mercifully “moved on” to allow sun and moonlight (truth) to again fall to the earth’s surface.
Full Disclaimer– I have not seen any of the six episodes of “I Am the Night” and based on comments from friends and family members, along with a few online reviews I’ve read, I doubt that I ever will. I did view a trailer, which was enough to tell me where they were going and what they had done.
Apparently, the IATN script took factual truths from my niece, Fauna Hodel’s biography, “One Day She’ll Darken: The Mysterious Beginnings of Fauna Hodel” (Outskirts Press 2008) along with biographical and investigative crime signatures and summaries from my book, “Black Dahlia Avenger: A Genius for Murder” (Arcade 2003) and Skyhorse Press 2015) and presented them in a fictional six-part fabrication or “reimagining” of the truth.
For those that have seen the miniseries, and wonder what is true and what is fiction? Here is a partial list of biographical FACTS to “set the record straight”:
FACT– Fauna’s book “One Day She’ll Darken” published in 2008 ends with her meeting her mother, my half-sister Tamar.
FACT– Fauna never met her grandfather (my father) Dr. George Hill Hodel in his lifetime.
FACT– Fauna never visited our home in Hollywood, the Sowden/Franklin House until after George Hodel’s death in 1999.
FACT– Three “verbatim” letters attributed as written by my mother, Dorothy (“Dorero”) to Fauna’s adopted mother in Sparks, Nevada were never written. In Fauna’s biography, she invented them (though claiming they were true). I confronted Fauna in 2009 asking why she had detailed, lengthy untruths in a purported true biography? Her answer, “Well Steven, sometimes you have to take creative license in a story for dramatic effect.” The truth being, my mother never had contact with Fauna’s family in life, nor was she aware of Fauna or her story until meeting her only one time in 1974 after Fauna met her biological mother, Tamar.
FACT– Dr. George Hill Hodel never followed or surveilled Fauna in life, nor did he have anything to do with stopping the making of “Pretty Hattie’s Baby” a film documenting Fauna’s life story made in 1990 that was stopped in production due to “financial disputes.”
FACT– The film, “Pretty Hattie’s Baby”, Fauna’s biography, was completed in 1990. However, there was no reference or mention of the “Black Dahlia” nor was there any reference to my father being revealed as the killer, until my book was published twelve years later in 2003.
FACT– Dr. George Hill Hodel had nothing to do with the alleged Los Angeles murder of Fauna’s cousin, “Johnny” nor did he (nor I) have any knowledge of that crime. Nor do I to this day? Full name, location, circumstances?
FACT- The character “Jay Singletary” (Chris Pine) is purely fictional and had no real role in Fauna Hodel or George Hodel’s life or in the real Black Dahlia investigation.
FACT- The large “treatment room” in the basement where George is seen painting Fauna does not exist. There is no large room in the basement. Nada. This was filmed in an off location clinic or hospital? At the time George and my family lived there the basement was only a small storage area with dirt floors. Open support beams. Barely enough floor room to bury a body. George used the open dirt area to store a few boxes and it was the “punishment room” when we three boys misbehaved. “Go to the basement, I’ll be there shortly.” A leather razor strap on a nail was used to spank us.
FACT– Dr. George Hill Hodel sold the Sowden House in 1950 and never again returned to the residence. He was not in Los Angeles during the Watts Riots of August 1965 and was living full time in Manila, Philippines.
FACT– Dr. George Hill Hodel was not a “gynecologist” he specialized in the treatment of venereal disease. Mostly as Head of L.A. County Health Department and served as an administrator as “V.D. Czar.”
FACT– Dr. Hodel, though a major fan of surrealism, had no “surrealist” or “modern art” on display at the Sowden/Franklin House.
FACT– Tamar Hodel, my half-sister as relates to the Black Dahlia Murder only knew and was able to communicate two facts to her children, including Fauna after reuniting in 1972. Those two facts were:
FACT- a) Police detectives in transporting her to the court during the incest trial in 1949, mentioned: “they suspected her father, George Hodel might be the killer of the Black Dahlia.”
FACT- b) Her stepmother, Dorothy Hodel (my mother) told her about an incident where “George Hodel might have overdosed his personal secretary because she had written some manuscripts about him.” (Tamar had no further information or name on the secretary. Only later in my investigation post-publication 2003 and updated in a later edition, would I identify her as Ruth Spaulding and discover that LAPD investigated our father as a murder suspect in her OD.) These two facts, “George Hodel possible Dahlia Suspect and OD secretary) were the sum total of her personal knowledge about our father and all that Tamar could truthfully have communicated to her children prior to the publication and findings in my book, Black Dahlia Avenger.
FACT– In my conversations with Tamar as late as 2003, it was her stated belief that our father “did not kill Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia.” She informed me that she had spoken with “a good friend who is one of the best psychics in the world and he checked it out and said, ‘No, your father didn’t kill her.'” Tamar also in 1998 communicated by email online with Janice Knowlton, the author of, “My Daddy Is The Black Dahlia Killer” and was assured by Knowlton that her father, (also named George) “did it.”
Based on her communications with Janice Knowlton which were reinforced by Tamar’s psychic friend, Tamar believed our father innocent. (Of course, she had no idea of my ongoing investigation at that time and what I had discovered.)
FACT– Tamar was adamant, and never in doubt, that Fauna Hodel’s father was “a White, Italian Male in San Francisco who gave me drinks at his house and raped me after I returned and was transferred up there from Juvenile Hall in Los Angeles. “(November 1950).
FACT- George Hodel at that time of Fauna’s conception (early November 1950) was living in Territorial Hawaii and teaching at the University of Hawaii and could not have parented Fauna Hodel.
FACT– ROOT OF EVIL: The True Story of the Hodel Family and the Black Dahlia was created to counterbalance the fictional TNT produced I AM The Night (IATN) television mini-series.
FACT- Root of Evil, a separate podcast, was produced by Zak Levitt and Cadence 13 though it was sponsored by TNT, who produced IATN. The final installment of the podcast, Episode No. 8 “You Only Have One Family” aired April 3, 2019, answered the question, “Was Dr. George Hodel the father of Tamar’s daughter, Fauna Hodel?”
FACT- Root of Evil Producer Levitt in a dramatic taped sit-down with Tamar’s children (Peace, Love, Fauna Elizabeth, Yvette, and Rasha) presented DNA results proving that GEORGE HODEL WAS NOT THE FATHER OF FAUNA HODEL TO A SCIENTIFIC CERTAINTY.
Incredibly, as reported in an earlier blog, TNT Producers after listening to the final episode of the Root of Evil, podcast, which included the sit-down Q&A with Tamar’s children and the revelations of the DNA results, insisted that those truths be removed from the already finalized podcast.
They insisted that the truth that Fauna was not the daughter of George Hodel be edited out as it currently existed in the final episode and withheld from public knowledge even though the final episode of the fictional TV series I Am The Night had aired one month prior on March 4, 2019, and the complete IATN series was CONCLUDED.
Root of Evil -The True Story, Episode 8, with the dramatic DNA results that Fauna was not George’s daughter was not scheduled to air for another full month- April 3, 2019.
Because of TNT’s insistence, that information (Fauna’s real parentage) be withheld from the public, sadly hundreds of thousands of listener’s (Root of Evil was rated NO. 1 podcast in the nation last week) who wanted to know the truth of it, have been denied.
See Fauna Elizabeth Wilson (Fauna II) Facebook comment below on April 11, 2019 and author/journalist Sheila Weller’s response to Fauna.
As indicated, hosts of the “Root of Evil” podcast Tamar’s daughters, Rasha and Yvette were present and interviewed at the sit-down DNA disclosure and at that time were informed “to a scientific certainty” that George Hodel was not their mother’s father.
While it has been nearly two months since both daughters were informed of the removal of the DNA results from the podcast, we are still waiting for both Rasha and Yvette, as the podcast’s ” spokeswomen” to voice their public condemnations of TNT’s decision to withhold the truth of their mother’s known paternity.
I am informed that both of Fauna’s daughters, as the primary hosts of “Root of Evil: The True Story of the Hodel Family and the Black Dahlia” will soon be providing a public statement of condemnation as relates to TNT’s decision to withhold the truth that GEORGE HODEL IS NOT THEIR MOTHER’S FATHER and their further conviction that the public has the right to know that truth.
Rasha (lt) and Yvette (center) with their mother Fauna Hodel
(Fauna died from terminal cancer on September 30, 2017)
Closing Scene from I Am The Night Episode 6 Fauna Hodel (India Eisley) pointing a gun at George Hodel (Jefferson Mays)
In this scene Fauna asks him:
“AM I YOUR DAUGHTER GEORGE?
The room depicted in this scene is not located at the Hodel Franklin/Sowden House.
Appears to be a hospital or clinic room probably somewhere in L.A.?
AV/TV CLUB REVIEW
by Noel Murray 3/4/19
Fauna Hodel (India Eisley) in a scene from “I Am The Night” Finale Episode 6 “Queens Gambit”
“I Am The Night ends on a flat note”
…
It [“I Am The Night miniseries] also wildly fabricates incidents, to an extent that borders on the irresponsible, given that a lot of people who watch this show won’t know anything about the real Fauna Hodel, and will come away thinking she was actually abducted and nearly murdered by her own grandfather/father. None of that happened.
Noel Murray
AV/TV Review of TNT’s miniseries, “I Am The Night”
…
I Am The Night is nominally based on the late Hodel’s memoir One Day She’ll Darken, which is why the miniseries is framed as her story. But it’s not her story. It’s only barely related to the narrative in One Day She’ll Darken. Aside from a scene or two, and aside from the basic facts of Fauna’s life—that she was given away at birth to a black woman in Nevada, raised as biracial, and later found out about her real family’s scandalous part when she went looking for her biological mother, Tamar—I Am the Night either ignores or grossly distorts its source material.
It also wildly fabricates incidents, to an extent that borders on the irresponsible, given that a lot of people who watch this show won’t know anything about the real Fauna Hodel, and will come away thinking she was actually abducted and nearly murdered by her own grandfather/father. None of that happened.
It might’ve better if Sheridan had ditched the book altogether. This becomes especially obvious in the finale, which tries (and largely fails) to pay off what’s been the weakest element of I Am The Night’s premise: Fauna’s search for self.
…
The post Hollywood Fictional Miniseries “I Am The Night” Eclipses The Truth As Presented In Two Hodel True Story Family Biographies: “One Day She’ll Darken” and “Black Dahlia Avenger: A Genius for Murder” appeared first on Steve Hodel.