In the book, however, there are numerous murders that Dix may be responsible for, including that of a woman he fell in love with while overseas during the war.

He has a long police record of incidents that involve him physically attacking other people, including women.Īs the investigation of the killing commences, Dix meets and falls for Laurel.

He is the last known person to have been with the woman.

And, when that woman is strangled to death in the wee hours, Dix is under suspicion because: He has a good-natured, if flighty, woman come to his apartment one night to help him with a scriptwriting job he doesn’t really want to do. He is a screenwriter whose drive for artistic integrity in the face of a commercially crass movie business puts him at odds with many of the people in his field of work. In the movie, Dix-who is portrayed by Humphrey Bogart, in a role that some Bogie nuts see as one of his finest performances-is suspected of only one murder. The differences between the book and movie are plentiful. Finally, in both versions, Dix falls in love with a woman named Laurel Gray, who goes for him, but has to wonder if she might be getting involved with a murderer. Also, one of the police detectives investigating him is a man named Brub Nicolai-a former war buddy of Dix’s who is now a cop. Dix is a military vet living in post-war Los Angeles, he’s known to have volatile, physically aggressive episodes, and he is under suspicion of having committed murder.

In both the page and screen version, the primary character is a man named Dixon “Dix” Steele. Let’s talk about the couple of things that make the two alike first, and then we’ll turn to the differences. Hughes’s 1947 book and the 1950 film directed by Nicholas Ray. But really, there’s little in common between Dorothy B.

I am approaching this post on In a Lonely Place as a page-to-screen piece, where I’ll compare notes on the novel of that title and the movie that goes by the same name.

Lonely screen doesnt work