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Released
1995 · FILM

Devil in a Blue Dress

Unemployed WWII vet Easy Rawlins takes a desperate job locating a vanished socialite in post‑war Los Angeles, only to be thrust into a web of murder, racism and political corruption that threatens his life and his family's future.

“Private detective Easy Rawlins has been caught on the wrong side of the most dangerous secret in town.”

Directed by
Carl Franklin
Written by
Walter Mosley, Carl Franklin
Runtime
102 min
CrimeDramaMystery
Streaming on
  • Paramount+

Synopsis

In late 1940s Los Angeles, Easy Rawlins is an unemployed Black World War II veteran struggling to find work. At a bar, he meets DeWitt Albright, a white man who offers him a job investigating the disappearance of a white woman named Daphne Monet, whom he believes may be hiding in one of the city's Black jazz clubs. Facing financial pressure and the need to make house payments, Easy accepts the assignment, only to find himself drawn into a dangerous and complicated situation.

Credits

Actors
Editor
Production Designer
Director of Photography
Writers
Director

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 19

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by Carole Kravetz AykanianShot by Tak FujimotoScored by Elmer BernsteinDesigned by Gary Frutkoff

Box Office

1995 · Box office

📉 Underperformed — grossed 0.6× its budget

Why 2.5×?

Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).

Worldwide gross

$16.1M

Budget$27.0M
Worldwide gross$16.1M
break-even (2.5×)

Opening weekend: $5.4M — 34% of its US run.

Opening week (7-day): $7.0M — 43% of its US & Canada run.

Peak 1,432 theaters

Also known as

  • Teufel in blaude
  • Le Diable en robe bleuefr
  • Il diavolo in bluit

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