As soon as Humphrey Bogart’s contract with Warner Bros. was up, he didn’t determine to signal a take care of MGM, Fox, or one of many different studios. As an alternative, he began his personal manufacturing firm known as Santana Productions. This gave Bogart a freedom to make the initiatives he wished to with out the stress from a studio. Nevertheless, having a manufacturing firm does not get your movies distributed, and as an alternative of constructing a take care of Warner Bros. for that — the place he had spent his profession because the early Thirties and have become the king of movie noir – he went to Columbia Footage. In response to the e book “Robust And not using a Gun: The Life and Extraordinary Afterlife of Humphrey Bogart,” studio head Jack Warner was none too happy about what he noticed as throwing loyalty within the rubbish.
Although Bogart was completed along with his Warner contract, Lauren Bacall was not. She had the facility of script approval, however that was just for films throughout the WB system. If she was going to do one thing else, she wanted Jack Warner’s approval. Bogart might have wished Bacall to play the position of Laurel Grey in Nicholas Ray’s “In a Lonely Place,” however Warner was by no means going to let that occur as a result of studio-jumping betrayal.
Ultimately, Gloria Grahame took on the position because the aspiring actress who begins a relationship with Bogart’s alcoholic screenwriter Dix Steele. Dramatically, I feel this was truly the smarter transfer, as a result of we now have no historical past between Bogart and Grahame, making the combustions of that relationship over the course of the movie way more unpredictable. We all know Bogart and Bacall belong collectively, and a film actually known as “In a Lonely Place” cannot have that sort of security internet.