Titus Techera, who hosts a podcast for the American Cinema Foundation on which he and his guests discuss important films of the past and present, invited me back to talk about Nicholas Ray’s In a Lonely Place on his latest episode. Our hour-long chat is now available on line.

Titus and I spoke at length and in detail about the 1950 film, produced by Humphrey Bogart’s Santana Productions, which starred Bogart and Gloria Grahame and was very freely adapted by Andrew Solt from Dorothy B. Hughes’ 1947 novel of the same name. It is, in my opinion, Ray’s masterpiece, a movie that is universally and rightly regarded as one of the half-dozen greatest examples of the film noir genre even though it fails to conform to many of the stock conventions of noir filmmaking (about which we talk in the podcast).

Here’s part of Titus’ summary of our conversation:

Titus and Terry Teachout discuss In a Lonely Place, the 1950 Nicholas Ray noir, Bogart’s most daring performance—a movie with a modern feel, with sophisticated adult characters, men and women, who nevertheless suffer great misery. We talk about Ray’s talent for bending genre to tell stories that feel true to characters he establishes within genre. We also talk about film noir’s connection to tragedy, to post-war America, and to our own times….

To listen to or download this episode, go here.

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The original theatrical trailer for In a Lonely Place:

A scene from the film:

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more information, click on the title.

BROADWAY:
• The Band’s Visit (musical, PG-13, most shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Dear Evan Hansen (musical, PG-13, all shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Hamilton (musical, PG-13, Broadway transfer of off-Broadway production, all shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• My Fair Lady (musical, G, most shows sold out last week, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:
• Girl from the North Country (jukebox musical, PG-13, closes Dec. 23, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON OFF BROADWAY:
• Uncle Romeo Vanya Juliet (drama, PG-13, closes Oct. 28, reviewed here)
• Uncle Vanya (drama, G, not suitable for children, extended through Oct. 28, reviewed here)

“In the war of ideas, it is the crudest and the most simplified ideology that wins. During our own lifetimes we have seen spectacular examples of this. We have seen great and highly civilized countries becoming infected by epidemics of ideological insanity, and whole populations being destroyed for the sake of some irrational slogan.”

Christopher Dawson, The Movement of World Revolution

Life, I’m told, is supposed to slow down as you grow older, but the opposite has happened to me. Instead, it’s become more hectic—and more fulfilling. I spent a few minutes the other day scribbling down some notes about what’s happened to me in the past decade and a half. Here are some of the high points:

• In 2003, I became the Journal’s drama critic and launched this blog.

• In 2005, I fell in love at first sight with the future Mrs. T and, a month later, nearly died of congestive heart failure.

• In 2006, I turned fifty.

• In 2007, Mrs. T and I got married.

• In 2009, The Letter, my first operatic collaboration with Paul Moravec, was premiered in Santa Fe. A few weeks after that, Pops, my Louis Armstrong biography, was published.

• In 2010, I started writing my first play, Satchmo at the Waldorf.

• In 2011, Satchmo was premiered in Florida.

• In 2012, I received a Guggenheim Fellowship. A month later, my mother died. I then spent six weeks working on Satchmo and Duke, my Duke Ellington biography, at the MacDowell Colony, after which Satchmo received its first major productions in Massachusetts and Philadelphia.

• In 2013, Duke was published.

• In 2014, Satchmo was produced off Broadway.

• In 2016, I turned sixty and made my professional debut as a stage director.

• In 2017, Billy and Me, my second play, was premiered.

I’m sixty-two years old. I wonder what will happen to me between now and 2033?

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Jimmy Durante sings “September Song,” by Kurt Weill and Maxwell Anderson, on TV in 1955, the year before I was born:

“Man Against the World,” the first episode of My World…and Welcome to It, a sitcom in which William Windom played John Monroe, a writer modeled after James Thurber. The designers of the show made use of animated drawings based on Thurber’s New Yorker cartoons, and the scripts were inspired by Thurber’s stories. This episode, written and directed by Melville Shavelson, was originally telecast by NBC on September 15, 1969:

(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)

“I think the worst woman that ever existed would have made a man of very passable reputation—they are all better than us—& their faults such as they are must originate with ourselves.”

Lord Byron, letter to Annabella Milbanke, September 6, 1813

From 2008:

Time: near the end of a leisurely dinner. Place: Restaurant 15 Main, Narrowsburg, New York. Frank Sinatra’s recording of “Thanks for the Memory” is playing in the background.

SHE I never liked that song.

HE Well—

SHE Don’t say it—I already know what you’re going to say. “Well, I like it.” Of course you like it. You’re got more in common with your parents’ generation than with ours.

HE What do you mean? I know twice as much about rock and roll as you do.

SHE Yeah, but you never hung out in bars and danced with girls when you were in high school….

Read the whole thing here.

“I don’t do autobiographical. I don’t really approve of that. I never thought about it until young people started getting onstage, and it’s supposed to be a dance concert and they kept telling us about their horrible mother or what a hard time they had and all of this true stuff, and I went: Oh, keep it to yourself. No, I don’t do that. I make up dreams.”

Paul Taylor (quoted in Gia Kourlas, “Inside the Wild Mind of Paul Taylor,” New York Times, September 4, 2018)