Of all three features, The Fallen Sparrow is by far the most faithful to its source. Her work had been brought to the big screen twice by that point, first by way of 1943’s The Fallen Sparrow (adapted from her novel of the same name from one-year prior), and then 1947’s Ride the Pink Horse (ditto). Hughes-who passed away 30 years ago this May-penned In a Lonely Place in 1947, she had already published 10 mystery novels prior, and Rays film was not her first spin on the Hollywood carousel.

In fact, when it comes to the original novel, Ray (who rewrote most of the script, officially credited to Edmund North and Andrew Solt, as shooting commenced) may as well have throttled it and left its corpse by the side of the road.īy the time Dorothy B. For while In a Lonely Place is an undeniable masterpiece-arguably the greatest of all films noirs-as adaptations go, it’s one of the least faithful ever made. This scene is one of several meta-layers that helps set In a Lonely Place apart from other LA-set noirs, with Dix’s casual disregard for the book he’s tasked to translate to screen mirroring that of director Ray’s. During a key scene early in Nicholas Ray’s romantic thriller In a Lonely Place (1950), our hero, brilliant but volatile Hollywood screenwriter Dixon Steele (Humphrey Bogart), presses a starry-eyed hat check girl-whose strangulation a few hours hence will place Dix under a cloud of suspicion that won’t lift until he’s already sealed his dire fate-into service by having her recount the plot of a novel she’s just finished reading and which he’s been hired to adapt.

In a lonely place by dorothy b hughes