Humphrey Bogart struggles In a Lonely Place; terrorizes in The Desperate Hours

From The Petrified Forest to The Harder They Fall, Humphrey Bogart was the undisputed King of Film Noir. As Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, Bogey set the tone for hard-boiled gumshoes navigating “the great wrong place” and surviving the intrigues of the deadly femme fatale. In Key Largo, he embodied the soul-dead weariness of a disillusioned crusader, who’d concluded the world was just too rotten to save. Bogart was so noir, he could shed the shadows and fog, defying the disinfecting powers of sunlight, to play betrayal, corruption and revenge on the picturesque streets of San Francisco. In Dark Passage, with the help of a fortuitous self-defenestration, and after the necessary extermination of underworld vermin no one would miss, Bogart extricates himself from peril and achieves one of the rare happy endings in a film that is nevertheless truly noir.

That said, despite Humphrey Bogart’s curriculum vitae—or perhaps because of it—I have trouble accepting the following films as full-blooded noir. They’re missing too many elements I consider essential: the femme fatale, the underworld lurking beneath the respectable world, and the false step the hero takes to plunge himself into danger we know will ultimately be fatal. I know, I know, Dark Passage broke some rules, but it cleaved to others. In my admittedly subjective opinion, these films are not scrupulously noir; although noir—ish, they are more mainstream suspense thrillers. I welcome contrary opinions in the comment section below.

So, without further ado, let’s get started.

In a Lonely Place — Directed by Nicholas Ray, and loosely based on the 1947 novel by Dorothy B. Hughes, In a Lonely Place (1950) features the best performance of Gloria Grahame’s career and what many have called the most complex performance of Humphrey Bogart’s career. Ray first. A reliable and often interesting director, Ray is generally not recognized as a great director. His most famous film is Rebel Without a Cause, which for me grows more tedious with each viewing. Essentially The Breakfast Club with blood, Rebel tells a cloying tale of misunderstood/ mistreated teens who bond as outcasts, and is only elevated from obscurity by its talented cast, Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo, who went on to better things before dying tragically (one a definite homicide, the other…eeeehhhhh), and James Dean, who achieved legendary status with fine acting, prematurely truncated by reckless driving.

Ray also directed a string of notable films, including They Live by Night (not They Drive by Night with Bogart), Knock on Any Door (with Bogart), The Flying Leathernecks (a serviceable John Wayne vehicle), The Lusty Men (not a porno, but an insightful look at rodeo performers with a great cast), The True Story of Jesse James (which no one really believes is true, but at least veers off the beaten Hollywood path of Robin Hood redux to depict James, played by Robert Wagner, as a murderous psychopath), 55 Days at Peking (in which 54 days are spent waiting for something to happen) and King of Kings (unfairly maligned as I Was a Teenage Jesus—Jeffrey Hunter was 36, older than Jesus himself). A solid career that deserves props if not effusive accolades. There may be underappreciated gems in Ray’s career that I haven’t yet discovered, but of the films I’ve seen, In a Lonely Place is the best.

Reclusive Dickson (Dix) Steele is a Hollywood, crime-film screenwriter, so absorbed in his work that he’s teetering on the brink between passionate romantic and psychotic strangler. When he’s linked to the victim of a late night murder, his new paramour, Grahame, is rightly unnerved. Complicating matters is Dix’s relationship with a homicide detective and his wife, who wonder if he might have slipped the rail.

Bogart, who practically owned the patent on cynical detachment, plumbs depths unimaginable from his prior roles. Scratch Rick Blaine, you’ll find a wounded narcissist; but you’d have to rent a backhoe to unearth Dix Steele (which, yes, I know is porno name to rival Dirk Diggler, but I’m trying not to go there). My point is that tough guy Bogey was more vulnerable as Dix than in any other role I’ve seen. And that’s not to say Bogart was an actor who relied on machismo or braggadocio. He often conceded the false facades of his characters to enrich the role. Remarkably enough, Louise Brooks, an actress who claimed to be an intimate of Bogart, said that Dix Steele came closest to the real Bogart she knew.

For her part, Gloria Grahame had a wide ranging and mostly underappreciated career playing supporting roles. Most moviegoers will recognize her as Violet Bix in It’s a Wonderful Life or Ado Annie in Oklahoma! An imperfect beauty, Grahame was relegated to secondary roles, but her skills shined in such noteworthy films as The Bad and the Beautiful (my favorite Kirk Douglas film) and Crossfire, an intense psychological drama centered around antisemitism. Grahame met Ray when she played in his second film, A Woman’s Secret. The two later married after an adulterous affair resulted in pregnancy. Thanks to Ray’s insistence that Grahame play the part of Laurel Grey, In a Lonely Place gave her the rare chance at a lead female. Judging by her superb handling of the nuances of her character, she should have had more. Grahame died young at age 57, a death sensitively portrayed by the lovely Annette Benning in a film worth viewing.

Yet the script from which Ray worked and the roles Bogart and Graham play are departures from the novel. In a Lonely Place was Hughes’ third book adapted to the screen. Her 1942 novel, The Fallen Sparrow was filmed in 1943, and her 1946 novel Ride the Pink Horse, also filmed with alacrity in 1947, produced a minor noir gem. Published in 1947, In a Lonely Place had too may sharp edges for classic Hollywood, thus, changes to the plot and characterizations were necessary.

In Hughes’ novel, Dix is not a waning screenwriter in need of a hit. He’s a poseur, much like Ripley in Patricia Highsmith’s popular series of novels, but without being light in the loafers. It’s also clear from the very first pages that Dix is hiding a deep secret related to a series of stranglings in the West Hollywood area. Laurel, the Grahame role, is less important to this narrative, which consists mostly of Dix’s internal monologue as he concedes, denies, admits, retracts, and rationalizes thoughts related to the homicides his best friend Brub is investigating. Dix is the classic unreliable narrator, and the dramatic irony between what he admits and what we readers come to realize creates an unnerving air of suspense.

While the movie is certainly worth viewing, Hughes’ novel is a masterpiece in crime fiction. Hughes invites the reader into the disturbed psyche of her protagonist and proceeds to tease, titillate, disappoint, cajole, offend, frighten and evoke pity. I must admit that, early in, I wondered if I could keep reading, because the lonely place that Dix inhabited was bringing me to a dark place that I didn’t want to be in. My fertile imagination was filling in the gaps that Hughes had tastefully left empty. I’m glad I stuck with this book, although I now need to take a break from noir-ish reading for mental health reasons. My recommendation: dive in. A short stay In A Lonely Place is well worth the visit.

The Desperate Hours — Twenty-five-year-old writer Joseph Hayes won the Trifecta with this 1954 thriller. His first novel, it was a bestseller. The next year, he adapted it as a stage play which starred Paul Newman and Karl Malden, ran for 212 performances on Broadway, and won the 1955 Tony Award for Best Play. That same year, producer/director William Wyler had Hayes adapt that stage play as a film starring Humphrey Bogart and Frederick March. That’s a lot of mileage from a single idea, reportedly based on a real-life incident. But if that wasn’t enough, the movie was remade for TV in 1967 and got a theatrical reboot as Desperate Hours in 1990, this time starring Mickey Rourke and Anthony Hopkins.

The original film is a taut thriller about a suburban household invaded by three escaped convicts who hold a family hostage for a couple of days. The tension in the story relies heavily on the unlikely decision by the ringleader to keep up appearances by letting the head of the household and his 19-year-old daughter go about their business outside the home, while he keeps a gun poised over the wife and 10-year-old son. Wyler also goes a bit far out of his way to make the Liberal orthodox point that good people don’t settle their differences with guns. But for the most part, given the fine performances by the cast, led by Bogart and Frederick March, the film works as a suburban nightmare. 

As for the book, I found it engrossing, with much more depth of character and many more moving parts than the film. The characterizations in the book are very different from the actors chosen for the film. Glenn Griffin, the ringleader, is described as young and tall, which is hardly the impression a viewer gets from the 54-year-old Bogart. (And though Paul Newman was young when he originated the role on Broadway, he’s also on the short side.) Jesse Webb, the Sheriff’s Deputy hunting the fugitives is described as young, tall and lean. One gets the impression of a young James Stewart, not the middle-aged Arthur Kennedy we get in the movie. But perhaps the greatest difference is the depth of character and consequential action taken by the daughter’s young boyfriend. Played in the film by Gig Young, he basically exists to be annoyed by the girl’s odd behavior. In the book, he’s a combat veteran who’s spurred to action.

The book suffers a bit by relying on characters making silly decisions to elevate the tension, but overall, it’s a fun escapist read that will surprise you here and there and draw you into the conflict, even if you’ve seen the film.

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My unexpected rendezvous with a saint I already should have known

I don’t like being stuck in traffic. Who does? So when my digital GPS lady warned me about a tie-up on I-81 and offered me a diversion onto U.S. Route 15 South, I took it. Just to keep moving towards my goal for the day, a cozy AirBNB room on a farmhouse at the lower end of the Shenandoah Valley. That’s where my quest for history was scheduled to start, with a few battlefield markers, remnants of Stonewall Jackson’s legendary campaign. But as so often happens, God had other plans, and for me that meant encountering a different hero.

After about 20 minutes on Rt. 15, I saw a brown sign for a point of interest: the National Shrine of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton. Since it was right along my way, I decided to make the stop. I’d stretch my legs, make a courtesy visit to the Blessed Sacrament, and maybe get a few snapshots of a nice-looking church. I’m a huge church nerd when I travel. I feel they tell the people’s history, their devotion, their struggle for a better life, better than any collection of museum artifacts. But I had low expectations for Mother Seton, especially out in the nowhere of Emmitsburg, Maryland.  

Did I know who she was? Vaguely. I was in eighth grade at St. Aloysius School in Jersey City, NJ in 1973-4 when the drive for her canonization had reached a fever pitch. She would be the first American-born saint in the Catholic Church. The nuns were elated; they were Daughters—or Sisters—of Charity, and Mother Seton had been their Foundress. But we students, at least at the too-cool-for-school junior high level, didn’t share their euphoria. Not that I had anything against nuns generally or Sisters of Charity in particular. They didn’t hit us like the Sisters of St. Joseph in Bayonne had, but they were boring ladies living dull lives. They taught grammar school all day, then went back to the convent to grade papers while watching The Mod Squad, and who knows what they did during the summer? Now, tell me Roberto Clemente is going into the Baseball Hall of Fame, a player I watched on TV and in person, whose death I read about in the sports pages and even cried over, that’s the kind of induction that would mean something to 13-year-old me.

Plus, there had been an unfortunate changing of the guard at our school. We’d gotten a new principal the previous year, who had canceled a few vaunted traditions, such as honors at graduation. I didn’t care; as a bespectacled runt at the head of the class, I preferred to downplay academics and score social points as a joker. But some kids on the cusp of smartness would really like to have had their smartness affirmed in some small way. Then there was the Spring Musical, an elaborate production which the previous principal had staged as a fundraiser. Every musical number sung by the leads got an encore by a particular class. Thus, every student in the school appeared on stage and parents packed the gym-auditorium to glimpse their little darlings. Well, the new principal put the kibosh on the extravaganza after a dismal staging of The Red Mill flopped badly. There would be no musical for my graduating class. Our Eight Grade teacher, Sister Barbara Ann, not the inspiration for the Beach Boys, offered a compromise: we could do a small play on Mother Seton.

I still remember Connie D. huffing as she pushed past me in crimson indignation, “Every class gets a musical; we get Mother Seton!” I don’t know whether Connie had set her heart on playing Dolly Levi, but she didn’t want the parade to pass her by, and in her mind, Mother Seton had just rained on it. Again, I was totally neutral. For one thing, my lovely boy soprano had gone rogue last year, and I never knew when Alfalfa would show up. For another, I had played Friedrich in The Sound of Music in sixth grade, which had been enough. I still remember Sister Catherine Maurice, who had not studied Stanislavski, bellowing, “You can’t cross in front of her, she’s a lead! Cross behind! There’s no crossing in front of a lead!” and the tearful girl answering, “But then no one will hear me!” It was not an experience I yearned to repeat. The matter soon became moot, as Sr. Barbara forgot all about the Seton play, and the students didn’t dare remind her.

In the fall of 1975, I vaguely remember time set aside to celebrate Mother Seton’s canonization. But aside from “First American Saint,” I don’t recall the Jesuits at my high school filling us in on any details. Maybe there was some chauvinism in the slight. If we wanted inspiration from a saint who had founded an order, we already had St. Ignatius. Mother Seton was a nun who had founded an order of nuns. End of boring story. But how wrong. And how tragically so.

What I found at the Shrine was the life story of a courageous woman, whose courage was at turns genetic, instilled and grasped for desperately at the edge of despair. Elizabeth Ann Bayley was the daughter of a crusading New York physician Richard Bayley, who fought heroically to curb yellow fever outbreaks that periodically ravaged quarters of Manhattan. He travelled to England to study infectious diseases, and returned with vital information about draining swamps to reduce mosquito-borne contagion. Dr. Bayley succumbed to yellow fever, but his work saved countless lives.

Elizabeth’s mother died when she was three, perhaps from complications of childbirth. Her stepmother brought her on charitable rounds, delivering food to the poor. She eventually separated from Elizabeth’s father, taking the five children of their marriage and rejecting the two children of his first marriage. Thus, Elizabeth’s early life was marked by painful separations, a trend that was destined to continue.

In 1794, at the age of 19, Elizabeth married William Magee Seton, a wealthy but sickly trade merchant. His business declined as Jefferson’s embargo on trade and the subsequent War of 1812 devastated the overseas shipping industry. But the worse decline was in his health; as tuberculosis ravaged Seton’s lungs, he desperately sought a cure in the fair climate of Italy. Elizabeth was at his side throughout, reading her Bible and praying ceaselessly. At age 29, she became a widow with five children and no visible means of support. Yet, encouraged by Italian friends, the Protestant Elizabeth felt the call to convert to Catholicism, which she did upon her husband’s death, even though it meant ostracism from a family network that could provide financial support for herself and her children. That decision also placed her in real physical danger, as evidenced by a Protestant attack on her Catholic Church. On Christmas Eve, less than two years after her conversion, a mob was thwarted in its attempt to burn the church.

I could go on. About her children who also died from tuberculosis, and her personal struggle with the disease that took her at age 44. And how in spite of all that was bleak around her, she maintained the optimism and drive to found a religious order in a country where Catholicism was widely reviled. At the tender age of 13, when I was so much more certain about what I knew than I am now, I wouldn’t have granted much credit for starting an organization or keeping it running despite financial hardships. In the years since, I’ve gained an appreciation for those leadership and administrative skills that I sorely lack, and which are sorely lacking in society as a whole.

All of what I saw at the Shrine made me grieve for the lukewarm catechesis of my formative years. I had been reared on heroes, real and fictional. I idolized Patrick Henry, Robin Hood, King Arthur, Davy Crockett, Abe Lincoln, Jackie Robinson, and the aforementioned Roberto Clemente, who in my lifetime died tragically attempting to deliver relief supplies to impoverished earthquake victims. But in my formation, the heroism of saints got short shrift. They were generally portrayed as well-behaved, pious and dull, maybe because that’s how our parochial schoolteachers would have preferred us. But how much more enriching it would have been to have been told the gritty details of Elizabeth Ann Seton, how she had fought the perils of this Earth to beat a path towards her and our eternal reward?

I was heading to Shenandoah hoping to rekindle my fascination with Stonewall Jackson and his display of tactical brilliance in a lost cause. What I found was a tactically brilliant saint who fought for a winning cause and whose legacy lived on in the women her convent schools trained as nurses and teachers. At the outbreak of the Civil War, 600 battlefield nurses had been commissioned, all of whom were Catholic nuns. Somewhere Elizabeth Seton must have been smiling as her sisters responded to the red landscape of Antietam to nurse the wounded of either side. These “angels of the battlefield” labored tirelessly in an era of bone saws sans antibiotics to give young combatants comfort when they were beyond hope. Among the casualties was a captain of the Forty-first New York Volunteers, French’s Division, Sumner’s Corps. His upward gaze at his angel of mercy must have had profound meaning. For his name was William Seton III, and he was the grandson of Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton.   

There’s a saying I’ve heard often lately, that no one goes to hell or heaven alone; wherever we go, we take others with us. That’s why one saint’s canonization should be a moment of joy for all believers. And as Christians, we should share that joy at every opportunity, especially with the young who don’t know what they don’t know.

For your consideration:

To learn more about St. Elizabeth Ann Seton’s life, legacy and writings, click this link.

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