No one in Hollywood knew they were making film noirs. That name came from a French critic two years after Laura and Double Indemnity and the other hard-boiled melodramas of 1944.
LAURA
Otto Preminger
1944
Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb, Vincent Price, Judith Anderson
Screenplay by Jay Dratler, Samuel Hoffenstein and Elizabeth Reinhardt; adapted from the novel Laura by Vera Caspary