Humphrey Bogart was a justifiably legendary and singularly distinctive actor who I suspect I have unintentionally avoided learning more about. I get the impression he was largely a mercurial and adversarial presence. I wasn’t surprised to learn some described his performance in 1950’s In a Lonely Place as being the closest to his real-life persona.
If that’s true, then he was a rather unpleasant individual. In this film, he plays a Hollywood screenwriter with a short fuse and a violent streak. We first see him try to pick a fight with a driver of the car next to him at a red light. Later, he will nearly send another car off the road through his own reckless driving. He was going 70 MPH which, when adjusted for inflation, is 200 MPH in today’s cars. That driver only yells at Bogie, but that is enough to have our star beat the guy unconscious and stop just shy of bashing the guy’s head in with a rock.
It is no surprise Bogie has an extensive record, which Carl Benton Reid’s police captain goes through with a detective played by Frank Lovejoy. I found it interesting the outcome of one incident after another is the charges being dismissed. Presumably they will be dropped once again for that driver he pummeled, as we see Bogie send him money.
The reason the police are going through his history is because of the death of Martha Stewart shortly after she left his apartment. This is not the Martha Stewart which will immediately come to anybody’s mind nowadays, but an actress with bit parts in several films of this vintage. She looks like Angela Lansbury from several angles, which I found more confusing than there being a more famous person with the same name decades later.
Bogie had brought this coat check girl back to his place only because he needed her to give him the synopsis on a bestseller she read and which he needs to have read for a meeting at a studio the next day. His instincts tell him the book is garbage and her dramatic retelling of it only confirms those suspicions. I was amused by her pronouncing “risqué” as “risky” and thinking a microscope is a called a microbe.
Her dramatic retelling of the text becomes so enthusiastic that Bogie hushes her as she starts screaming “Help!” repeatedly. He’s seen neighbor Gloria Grahame on her balcony observing them, so he closes the windows. Then he sends Stewart on her way, directing her to the taxi stand on the corner.
The next morning, Lovejoy arrives to take Bogie down to the precinct, as Reid wants to talk to him. Lovejoy had been sent because the two had served together in the war. Bogie thinks he’s being brought in for a minor punch-up the night before in a club, and is blindsided to learn of Stewart’s death. But that doesn’t mean the news will curtail his blasé demeanor, which infuriates Reid. Bogie flippantly replies they can’t arrest him for lack of emotion.
The police also bring in Grahame, who provides an alibi for Bogie, saying she saw Stewart leave his apartment alone. She also says that, while she had not formally met him before, she likes his face.
With that, a romance builds between Bogie and Grahame. His writer’s block clears and he starts enthusiastically working on an adaptation of that horrible book, thrilling his agent (Art Smith, who will eternally be in my mind the prison doctor in Brute Force).
But Grahame should take note of at least one incident in Bogie’s history of offenses in the police archive, and that is a girlfriend of his who ended up with a broken nose. Go figure, charges were once again dismissed, with the woman claiming she walked into a door. Grahame’s rather butch masseuse (something odd to see in a film of the era) knows of that incident and also tries to warn her off of him.
The dialogue is sharp throughout, and perhaps a hair too much on occasion. I like how the characters themselves even seem to know this at times, such as the waiter who just says, “Yes, sir”, and rolls his eyes in response to Bogie informing him, “There’s no risk too great for a chance at immortality.” In Bogie’s seduction of Grahame, he finds her a bit hard-to-get, such as her response when he invites her to dine with him: “We’ll have dinner tonight but not together.” One of my favorite lines of his is directed towards Robert Warwick’s alcoholic fallen actor: “Charlie, my friend who speaks but poetry and borrows but money.” Then, when we hear the thud offscreen of that man failing to notice the step between the foyer and living room: “There he goes. Never could figure out that step.”
Admittedly, Bogie’s place is rather odd, with not just that step between rooms, but wrought-iron gates dividing the apartment into different spaces. I like the look of the apartment complex where Bogie and Grahame reside, as it one of those Spanish-influenced places popular in Los Angeles at the time. I wonder how many of these buildings remain, as I know that area has little commitment to preserving its architectural history.
In a Lonely Place is directed by Nicholas Ray, who went on to do Rebel Without a Cause, so you know the tone of this going to be downbeat. I can’t say I loved this noir, but I highly respect it, a film which I’m surprised wasn’t largely rejected by audiences of the time whom I assume were seeking a more conventional entertainment. I was even more struck by how, if this is the closest the screen came to portraying the real Bogie, then he was indeed a lonely man, even though he had Bacall.
Dir: Nicholas Ray,
Starring Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Grahame, Frank Lovejoy
Watched on Criterion Collection blu-ray