[Paal Gulli]

What the American film industry labels as "Film Noir" is a bunch of dreary B&W "B" films (or even "C") that they otherwise couldn't have got audiences to buy tickets to, so they stuck "FILM NOIR!" on the marquee to make Joe Sixpack feel like he's doing something sophisticated when he goes to see it.

Nino Frank would not have approved.

[Cecily]

French film critics called these movies “film noir,” not the American film industry.

[urtax$@work]

Wiki (FWIW)..... The term film noir, .... was first applied to Hollywood films by French critic Nino Frank in 1946, but was unrecognized by most American film industry professionals of that era.[3] .....Before the notion was widely adopted in the 1970s, many of the classic films noir[a] were referred to as "melodramas"

I dont think Joe 6PK or Joe McDoakes would have known what it was being called by the French, during the theater runs.Probalby called them "crime movies" or "gangster "movies.