In a Lonely Place (1950)

Director:

Nicholas Ray

Writers:

Andrew Solt (screenplay)
Edmund H. North (adaptation)

Release Date:

17 May 1950 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Film-Noir | Mystery | Romance | Thriller

Tagline:

THE BOGART SUSPENSE PICTURE WITH THE SURPRISE FINISH - (original poster)

Plot:

A potentially violent screenwriter is a murder suspect until his lovely neighbor clears him. But she begins to have doubts...

Plot Keywords:

Screenwriter | Neighbor | Hat Check Girl | Murder | Alibi

Awards:

1 win

Cast

Humphrey Bogart	...	Dixon Steele
Gloria Grahame	...	Laurel Gray
Frank Lovejoy	...	Det. Sgt. Brub Nicolai
Carl Benton Reid	...	Capt. Lochner
Art Smith	...	Agent Mel Lippman
Jeff Donnell	...	Sylvia Nicolai
Martha Stewart	...	Mildred Atkinson
Robert Warwick	...	Charlie Waterman
Morris Ankrum	...	Lloyd Barnes
William Ching	...	Ted Barton
Steven Geray	...	Paul, Headwaiter
Hadda Brooks	...	Singer

Also Known As:

Behind the Mask (USA) (working title)
Late at Night (USA) (working title)

Runtime:

94 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Recording)

Certification:

Norway:16 | USA:Approved (certificate #14256) | UK:PG (video rating) (1990) | UK:A (original rating) (passed with cuts) | UK:PG (tv rating) | Australia:PG | Finland:K-16 | Spain:18

Filming Locations:

Beverly Hills, California, USA

Company:

Columbia Pictures Corporation

Trivia:

David Bond, as the doctor, has the first part of his one line dubbed by another actor - with a non-American accent - while the remainder of his line is in Bond's own very American voice.

Goofs:

Continuity: When Dixon and Laurel are in the car, the window glass of his left hand-side is up. But after he stops the car, in the shots from the left, the window glass disappears.

Quotes:

Frances Randolph: Do you look down on all women or just the ones you know?
Dixon Steele: I was pretty nice to you.
Frances Randolph: No, not to me. But you were pretty nice.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in "Californication: In a Lonely Place (#2.7)" (2008)

Soundtrack:

I Hadn't Anyone Till You

A brave and smart twist to the "man alone" theme...

There was a brave and smart twist to the 'man alone' theme in an unusually literate thriller which isolated its ambivalent hero having conflicting feelings inside his own negative personality... This man was not physically isolated as Robert Ryan ('Inferno') had been: he was an embittered Hollywood screenwriter who needed self-discipline and trust… The lonely place in which he was trapped was his own mind...

Perhaps some people thought Bogart over-acted, played the writer like a criminal aggressively apt to be easily offended... but he played his role well. No gangster this time, or cop, or private eye... He was a Hollywood screenwriter—strong, easily annoyed, depressed; his nerve-ends constantly steaming; living alone with his talent, his reputation and his typewriter; impulsive rather than strengthened by a diet of alcohol and nicotine… His savage temper was uncontrollable: anything, it seemed, could explode it; and his violence was more than merely verbal…

Bogart found himself capable of murder... He might have been anti-social... But the stress within him, reacting to the pressures without, built up so strongly that his rages, always near boiling point, became explosive... He hit people without good reason...

One watched the reactions of his dream girl, the beautiful blonde Gloria Grahame, and his two close friends... With them, one came to wonder if he was not really a murderer after all...