Dix retorts, “when they get to be big stars they usually do.” Dix doesn’t even bother reading the potboiler he’s supposed to be adapting because it’s obviously like every other contemporary epic about love affairs in what passes for high society, a suspicion confirmed by Mildred and her repeated mispronunciation of ‘Al-e-thea’ Bruce when she sums up the lousy plot: in meta-cinematic fashion we might even detect here a reference to Ray’s most recent film, the woman’s melodrama, Born to Be Bad (1950) an adaptation of a popular novel which boasted a male character, Curtis (Zachary Scott) undone by a bad woman, Christabel (Joan Fontaine) and who blames his own loucheness and stupidity on his having given up flying (albeit not in wartime) rather like the Dixon Steele character in the Hughes novel. When Mildred gets to Dix’s apartment she claims she thought actors made up their own lines. Selznick by Lippman, a reel-life example of the phenomenon of the son-in-law rising department of the studios.) There’s a reference to the El Morocco, a famous Hollywood nightclub. Industry in-jokes dot the screenplay: the first scene at Paul’s has a silly autograph hunter look for Dix’s signature only for a similarly pre-teen hound to inform him that Dix is a nobody two old dames request souvenir matchbooks so they can show off their visit to a famed Hollywood haunt when they get back home to Nowheresville and the vile studio executive insults Waterman, who retorts that he’s put the son-in-law business back by 50 years. Here it’s an act of empathetic imagination that solves the crime, and therein lies the problem: the police simply lack the brainpower – as Sylvia sympathetically tells her husband, he’s average. In the noir film, the problems within the institutions of policing and the law are also highlighted in the narrative. (It’s too late to save Dix and Laurel’s relationship, but it’s the afterthought that counts). in the war – and this is partly why Chief Lochner gives Dix the benefit of the doubt and telephones him with the apology after Kesler survives surgery long enough to confess to Mildred’s murder. He has to explode sometime.” He is clearly convinced of Dix’s worth. When Laurel asks him why Dix can’t be like other people, Mel explains, “You knew he was dynamite. Agent Mel Lippman (Art Smith, whose career would shortly be ended by being named both by Elia Kazan and Clifford Odets) is another nice guy – who takes a punch from Dix during dinner and doesn’t tell him to get a new agent. Dix’s remark about income tax is a swipe at Bogart’s own high-earning status offscreen. Mildred’s killer, Kesler, is named after one of the film’s producers. Dix must be a nice guy when you look at who’s on his payroll: Charlie ‘The Thespian’ Waterman (Robert Warwick), a down on his luck, brandy-swilling actor who looks as if he’s in costume when celebrating the engagement of The Princess to his chief benefactor. We are presented with the artefacts and effects of the industry and its malcontents. The film In a Lonely Place is a clarification of the culture of the film business and Hollywood.
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