What became of film noir was the fifties. In so far as it represented merely a congerie of fashions, its formal possibilities, or at least those that were formalizable and profitable, were soon exhausted ; the studios, for whom it had always represented simply a device to hold a skittish audience, turned to other devices (and eventually returned to old ones, as late film noir became neo-). Snubbed by Hitchcock in 1955, Woolrich was a whiskey-sodden wreck and beyond caring when Francois Truffaut, eager to lionize, invited him to the premiere of The B ride Ware Black in 1968. Woolrich died a millionaire, and one of the five mourners at his funeral was a representative from Chase Manhattan Bank, who brought flowers. As for the infernal machines, his plots, which profitably live on - movie adaptations in Italy, Argentina, Japan, Germany, and endless television reruns - Habeant sua lata libelli.