Like her character Mavis, Constance Dowling would die at a relatively young age. She passed away at age 49 due to cardiac arrest. The same fate would befall her son Peter Tors, who died in 1998 at age 41.
Black Angel (1946) is set in Los Angeles and broadly adapted from the novel of the same title by Cornell Woolrich (New York, 1943).
Black Angel (1946) was the last film of director Roy William Neill. Neill had just produced and directed most of the Sherlock Holmes films starring Basil Rathbone, and any classic movie fan knows that those pictures are gorgeous to look at. Black Angel looks very similar. Tragically, Neill died of a heart attack, at age 59, just months after the release of Black Angel. It was his last film but a fine conclusion to a career that boasted over 100 directing credits dating back to 1917.
The line "Will I love wisely or too well?" (in the song performed by Dan Duryea and June Vincent) is an allusion to William Shakespeare's Othello. Othello, having murdered his wife, claims to have loved "not wisely but too well," a reference to his jealousy.
At the beginning, there is a framed photo of an older man (presumably her father) on Mavis' dressing table; the man in the photo is actor Samuel S. Hinds (who is not in the film).