Day 7 of our Disney World vacation.

Fans of Walt Disney films will remember Fred MacMurray as the dog-hating father in Disney's first live-action comedy, The Shaggy Dog (1959). What some may not know is that he played bad guy roles in the 1940s and was one of Hollywood's highest paid actors in 1943 with a salary of $420,000.

1943 was also the year that changed Billy Wilder's reputation: before then he was primarily known as a screenwriter. Then came along the film Double Indemnity, based on the book by James M. Cain, and Wilder became one of America's preeminent directors. But the subject matter was quite unsavory for the times and many in the industry doubted the film would pass the Hays Code which prohibited murder scenes that might encourage imitations in real life or scenes that attacked the sanctity of marriage or that implied that low forms of sex relationship are the accepted or common thing.

The film's content is mild by today's standards: no real violence, sex or nudity at all. The story is about an insurance salesman who falls for a married woman and plots with her to kill her husband for the insurance money. This was not a role that actors of the time were eager to play so Wilder had a hard time filling the role but eventually it would be played by Fred MacMurray.

One of my favorite lines in the novel: "That's all takes, one drop of fear, to curdle love into hate."

If you like noir, no one writes noir better than James Cain.

Although very few books carry well into film, Double Indemnity the film feels very much like the book because screenwriter Raymond Chandler was already an accomplished writer of hard-boiled detective and crime fiction by that time. Here's a typical Chandler line from the film: "It was a hot afternoon and I can still remember the smell of honeysuckle all along that street. How could I have known that murder can sometimes smell like honeysuckle."

With this kind of writing, a blind man can enjoy the film.