"Do me a favor, will you, pal?": a brief moment of tenderness from In a Lonely Place
I recently rewatched Nicholas Ray’s romantic-murder drama In a Lonely Place, based on a novel by Dorothy B. Hughes, and was reminded of a slight yet evocative scene that captured my imagination the first time I saw it.
It’s the end of the first act. Humphrey Bogart is strolling down a sidewalk in the early morning. He’s playing Dix Steele, an out-of-work screenwriter with a violent temper, who, in this particular scene, is returning home from a police station. He’s just been questioned by detectives about a woman he’d met the night before; it seems the young lady was murdered shortly after they’d said goodnight to one another.
As he comes up the sidewalk, Dix passes a florist’s shop window. Outside, on the sidewalk beside him, a young Black man is watering the ground with a hose; presumably he’s just swept this little stretch of concrete, and is now giving it a final wash before opening the store for the day.
Bogart is wearing modest yet elegant black shoes, slacks and collared shirt, with what one imagines to be a camel hair blazer. The young man is wearing boots, jeans, and a checkered flannel shirt. In other words, one of these men is distinctly prosperous; the other, working class.
They are both handsome – Bogart’s grand, acidulated head rendered elegant by his simple yet tailored ensemble, the young man’s fresh hardiness complimented by his comfortable yet clean working clothes.
In the soft light of dawn, there is a magisterial beauty to these men. Their ordinariness, along with the casual good taste of their attire and the interpersonal juxtaposition of not only race, not only of class, but of star power, infuses their ensuing interaction with elegance. And with grandeur, even.
As Dix passes the shop window, he hesitates, and then calls over to the florist:
“I say – do me a favor, will you, pal?”
The young man stands, turning off the hose. “Yes, sir?”
Dix pulls a few bills from his pocket. “I want to send two dozen white roses to a girl.”
The young man smiles at the request. He takes the money, and his face is bashful – almost blushing. One notices all the more clearly in this mid-shot just how handsome, just how graceful he is: slim yet sturdy, with a fine profile and charming grin. Who is this person? Who is this stranger who has suddenly been entrusted with the delivery of flowers?
It turns out, if one does a little research, that the actor is named Davis Roberts. His name isn’t listed during the opening titles of In a Lonely Place, but time and other onlookers’ diligence have ensured that you can look him up if you feel inclined to do so.
Knowing Roberts’ name, however, only prompts further questions: who is he? What is his motivation? Is this young actor feeling shy at playing a scene alongside such an enormous star? Is his florist meant to be struck by the civility of this white man who is speaking to him? Is his bashfulness a spontaneous reaction, or a choice for the character? Is it organic, or intentional?
Roberts doesn’t let us know. “Yes, sir,” is all he says. “You want to write a card?”
“No, there’s no card,” Bogart replies. “Just send them.”
Bogart continues to look Roberts in the eye as the scene goes on. Indeed, this whole interaction is striking, in part, for how Bogart speaks to Roberts as an equal – no condescension, no posturing at superiority. Just two men exchanging the necessary words to complete a minor task.
Bogart, as Dix, gives the woman’s name, and Roberts’ florist asks if he knows her address.
Here, Bogart finally glances away. “I don’t know. Look it up in the papers.”
Then he pulls a few more bills from his pocket, and hands them to Roberts. “She was murdered last night.”
With that, he leaves, and Roberts stares after him. It’s a distressing note on which to close this scene – but, then again, nothing happens that isn't in the script. Neither actor is surprised by what Bogart says, even if they must play it that way.
Truly, the plot is the least essential part of their exchange; it is merely a prop, much like the dollar bills that Bogart pushes into Roberts’ hand. What strikes me, what keeps my imagination lingering over this fragment of film, this scene that lasts scarcely more than thirty seconds, is its intimacy.
These two men are complete strangers; they do not know one another, and they will not see one another again. Dix Steele is a temperamental and bitter character – yet there is a tenderness, a quiet sensitivity he shows toward this anonymous young man that we never witness at any other point in the movie.
He is gentle, and that appears to make an impression, however fleeting, on the nice young man, a florist, who is otherwise occupied with the watering of an infertile ground.
Whether or not Bogart or Roberts or Ray intended it, I cannot help but sense a certain amount of desire flowing between the two men in this scene. Is this desire queer? It is, in the sense that two people of different socioeconomic realities are speaking to one another, helping one another, in a world that wants them separated. The terms of their “relationship,” if one can even call it that, may be transactional, but so are many same-sex activities; who’s to say what Bogart has in mind when he first takes the wad of bills out of his pocket?
Is it the ambiguity of such a gesture, its proximity to tricking, that makes Roberts blush? Is there a part of him that wishes their brief interaction could’ve moved in that direction instead? Dix says that flowers are for a girl; it is the young man, though, who intercepts this romantic tribute. The flowers may be “for” someone else, but he is one with the man who sends them.
And they are his flowers, after all. It is the labor and care of a young Black man that makes this whole moment possible.
In a Lonely Place is a movie that is keenly interested in the unsettled. The strangeness of violence, the disturbance of romantic love. It is preoccupied with characters who care for, yet cannot help but hurt or manipulate one another. The flowers that Dix pays for are not meant to be admired; rather, they are being sent to a dead woman. A woman whose death will tear at the minds of everyone in Dix’s life – including his fiancèe, until he is once again as alone as we find him on this early morning stroll.
In other words, the prospect of heteronormativity is dormant, or destroyed. Meanwhile, and for this fleeting moment, Bogart’s humility and Davis Roberts’ graciousness are vital. They have each other. And we’ll always have their moment, together.
