Humphrey Bogart cast himself in a different light with IN A LONELY PLACE, a noir gem directed by Nicholas Ray and photographed by Burnett Guffey, ASC.
For years, Humphrey Bogart carried on a running feud with his boss, Jack L. Warner, chief executive of Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc. This clash of titans led to the Columbia production In a Lonely Place, one of the finest pictures the actor made on a different backlot.
Bogart had an enviable situation at Warners. By 1947, after almost a dozen years under contract, the studio had built him into a major star and, at $400,000 per year, the industry's highest-paid actor. He was, however, something of a stormy petrel who protested most of his assignments and referred to Warner as "the creep." Bogart was determined to break away, so with his business manager, A. Morgan Maree, he formed a company to make one picture a year for the recently established Mark Hellinger Productions.
Some of Bogart's better Warner pictures, including They Drive By Night and High Sierra, were produced by Hellinger, a husky, hard-living ex-crime reporter, war correspondent, newspaper columnist and radio personality who had a knack for making successful hard-boiled crime dramas. After leaving Warners and starting his own company, he had made The Killers, Brute Force, Swell Guy and Naked City for Universal.
Bogart's deal with Hellinger ended abruptly on December 21, 1947, when the producer died of a heart attack at the age of 44. He and Maree then formed a partnership with writer-producer Robert Lord to purchase Hellinger's stock and film properties. On April 12, 1948, they officially established Santana Productions. The new company, named after Bogart's beloved yacht, was headquartered at Columbia Studio in Hollywood. Columbia contracted to release the company's pictures and agreed to provide studio facilities for 25 percent of production costs.
Santana made five features in six years, all starring Bogart. The first was Knock on Any Door, for which a talented but rebellious young director Nicholas Ray was borrowed from RKO-Radio in a deal which included an option for a second production. The picture, which got underway in August 1948, starred Bogart and introduced young John Derek. Ray was keyed-up and nervous on the set, worrying himself sick over each day's work and seeking solace in alcohol and drugs. Bogart thought at first that Ray was crazy, but soon found that they had much in common.
Santana exercised its option to borrow Ray for their fourth and finest production, In a Lonely Place, based on a novel by Dorothy B. Hughes, a leading mystery writer and a literary critic for the Los Angeles Times. The story concerns Dixon Steele, a young, war-battered serial killer who preys on women in the Santa Monica area. By the time the tale had been adapted by Edmund H. North and scripted by Andrew Solt, it had undergone drastic revisions and was given the working title of Behind This Mask. It had become a Hollywood story in which screenwriter Steele was not a murderer yet. Solt called him a "portrait of a future killer." The role was no longer suitable for the smooth-faced Derek, demanding a cynical, middle-aged man with a lived-in face in other words, Bogart.
In his program notes for a 1982 American Film Institute screening, Solt admitted that he was initially worried about Bogart being both star and boss. "I'd had previous experience with star-producers. In the final stage, it was always the star whose personal interests had to be served 'But before you start the screenplay,' [Bogart] said, 'I have one very important request. Something I absolutely insist upon.' Here it comes, my inner voice said to me. The star's request that will ruin the whole thing Then he told me about an old actor friend who was very nice to him when he first started on Broadway 'Now he is out here, struggling, living on canned beans, too proud to accept my help. I want you to write him a part in the picture one that will give him a few weeks' work.'" Thus was the character of Charlie Waterman, a down-and-out thespian, written into the script.
The old actor was Robert Warwick, star of the 1922 John Colton and Daisy Andrews play Drifting, in which the nervous young Bogart had a supporting role. At that time, Warwick was a movie headliner as well, starring for several of the East Coast companies. Although he had a superb voice, he had been reduced to supporting roles by 1931, when he appeared in Fox Films' George O'Brien Western A Holy Terror. Again he was helpful to young Bogart, who played a villainous ranch foreman. Warwick was actually working steadily in Hollywood at the time of In a Lonely Place, but only in minor roles.
The role of Bogart's lover was intended for his wife, Lauren Bacall, who had been teamed with him with great success at Warner Bros. in her first movie, To Have and Have Not (1945), and then in The Big Sleep (1946). She was under contract to Warners and it is not difficult to imagine the satisfaction Jack Warner must have derived from refusing to loan Mrs. Bogart to her own husband. Conceding that Warner had won this round, Bogart sought out Ginger Rogers for the part. She was willing, but Ray couldn't imagine her in the role and argued against it.
In 1948, Ray had married a blonde actress with an ability to project the sex appeal and smart-mouthed insolence that had worked so well with Bacall. She was Gloria Grahame, as eccentric and talented as her husband and also under contract to RKO-Radio. Ray made a good case that she was right for the part, but Howard Hughes, then owner of RKO, balked at loaning her out. Harry Cohn, president and production chief of Columbia, intervened and talked Hughes into making a deal. Grahame was loaned to Santana for $3,750 a week with an eight-week guarantee.
The Ray marriage was coming apart by the time production commenced at Columbia on October 25, 1949. The Rays managed to keep it a secret, knowing that if the producers suspected the truth the actress would be replaced.
The production crew was made up of Columbia contractees, with the exception of composer George Anthiel, a prolific symphonist who only occasionally ventured into film scoring, and Rod Amateau, a pal of Ray's who is listed as technical advisor. Amateau, who later became a director, was actually an all-around assistant to Ray during production.
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