Introduction to Volume III

Abstract In 1949, Nicholas Ray directed In a Lonely Place (1950), the second film produced by Santana, Humphrey Bogart's production company. Bogart plays Dixon Steele, a cynical Hollywood screenwriter at a desperate point in his career whose romance with a beautiful neighbor, Laurel Grey, played by Gloria Grahame, restores not only his creativity but also his passion for life. In a Lonely Place , however, is not a story of revival but one of self‐destruction. Wrongly accused of a murder but displaying the kind of wild mood swings and violent tendencies that make him a likely suspect, Steele frightens his lover into mistrust. His paranoia and violence strangle their love just as Steele almost strangles Laurel in the closing scene. After a couple weeks of intense love and work, the protagonist finds himself no better, and perhaps much worse, than before, still confined in a lonely place.