In a Lonely Place ***** (1950, Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Grahame, Frank Lovejoy) – Classic Movie Review 758

Director Nicholas Ray’s classic 1950 film noir thriller is still essential viewing, with a scalding performance by Humphrey Bogart that’s a highlight of his illustrious career.

Bogart relishes one of his most complex, intricate and satisfying roles as quick-tempered, potentially violent Hollywood screenwriter Dixon Steele, who tries to show his innocence in the murder of hat-check girl Mildred Atkinson. He’s just interviewed her earlier the same night to help him write a script adapting a trashy bestseller.

The number one murder suspect in the case, he quickly gets involved in a new romance with his lovely neighbour, starlet Laurel Gray (Gloria Grahame). To help him out of the jam, she gives him a false alibi, but she begins to have doubts as he may be the killer after all.

The well-matched stars are on top, edgy form, with Grahame showing herself easily the match and equal of the great Bogart, and there is commendably hard work in support from the usual fine character actor cast of the era, Frank Lovejoy (as the cop, Detective Sergeant Brub Nicolai), Carl Benton Reid, Art Smith, Jeff Donnell, Robert Warwick, Martha Stewart, Steven Geray and Morris Ankrum among them.

Director Ray cranks up the tension, suspense and emotional heat, while casting his cynical look over the underbelly of Tinseltown and driving dynamically along to the surprise finish. Andrew Solt’s expert screenplay is freely based on Dorothy B Hughes’s novel, providing a new spin on Hitchcock’s Suspicion (1941). Burnett Guffey’s atmospheric black and white cinematography gives it just the right smoky noir look.

Grahame (real name Gloria Hallward) had won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 1953 for The Bad and the Beautiful (1952). In the Fifties, she played half a dozen shady ladies in famous film-noir classics, including especially The Big Heat (1953). She died of cancer on 5 October 1981 at the age of only 57. Her story is told in Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool (2017).

Producer Robert Lord was concerned about having Ray and Grahame, then husband and wife in a failing marriage, working together. He got Grahame to sign a bizarre contract agreeing that ‘my husband shall be entitled to direct, control, advise, instruct and even command my actions during the hours from 9am to 6pm, every day except Sunday… I acknowledge that in every conceivable situations his will and judgment shall be considered superior to mine and shall prevail.’ Grahame also agreed not to ‘nag, cajole, tease or in any other feminine fashion seek to distract or influence him.’ She eventually married her stepson, Ray’s son from a previous marriage.

Creepily, the apartment complex in which Dixon and Laurel live in is a studio-made replica of Ray’s own residence when he first moved to Hollywood.

Bogart remembered the kindness Warwick showed to him as a young actor and got Solt write a role for him as he was then struggling. Bogart wanted his wife Lauren Bacall to star with him but Warner Bros wouldn’t release her from her contract, so Ray was free to cast his own wife.

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