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| Director Jack Smight |
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| Smight on the set |
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| Screenwriter William Goldman |
HARPER B USA (121 mi) 1966 ‘Scope d: Jack Smight
Just an infinitely lingering disease… —Susan Harper (Janet Leigh), referring to Harper walking out the door as she angrily sticks a fork into the egg yolks she had been cooking for him
Your husband keeps lousy company, Mrs. Sampson, as bad as there is in LA. And that’s as bad as there is. —Lew Harper (Paul Newman)
By the mid 60’s the private eye genre was dead in the water after Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly (1955), and this film more or less revived it, as it was relegated to television shows like 77 Sunset Strip, Peter Gunn, Hawaiian Eye, Honey West, and Johnny Staccato, which are just a few of the better known shows that began in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. The template for Altman’s The Long Goodbye (1973) and Polanski’s CHINATOWN (1974), with Elliot Gould and Jack Nicholson channeling Newman, not Bogart, in these mood driven private eye flicks set in Los Angeles where the larger-than-life atmosphere of the seamy city itself swells to become one of the leading characters. It would be hard not to mention Lee Marvin in John Boorman’s Point Blank (1967), whose single-minded purpose he shares, similarly offering a nihilistic sense of despair in one of the most extraordinarily bleak visions of Los Angeles. Curiously, Johnny Mandel wrote the musical score for both. One could add Steve McQueen’s Bullitt (1968) or Eastwood’s DIRTY HARRY (1971) to that list as well, with both set in San Francisco, as this film predates the rebirth of cool and sophisticated crime thrillers, using arrogant, updated modernized characters who are sick of the world and sarcastically throw off memorable one-liners with ease, fully integrated into the complexities of wealth, corruption, and urban ennui. Not exactly film noir, the film instead exploits the lifestyles of the wealthy, featuring the Beverly House in Beverly Hills (Legendary Beverly House, Where JFK and Jackie O. ...), later used as the home of movie producer Jack Woltz (John Marley) in THE GODFATHER (1972), with Italian style columns and statues leading to the backyard pool, creating an idealized picture of decadence for Lauren Bacall, the crippled wife of millionaire Ralph Sampson, Harper (1966) -- (Movie Clip) A Poor Thing But Mine Own YouTube (3:48), or Harper’s car, an old beat up black-top gray/silver Porsche 356 A Speedster (one of only 140 made), perhaps a 1956 model which was the predecessor to the 911 series, which he can take for a spin off road at a moment’s notice. In addition, there is prevalent use of Malibu beach on Southern California’s Pacific Coast Highway, but also fully integrated after hours joints that highlight the quirkiness of the youth movement in the mid 60’s, with the Shindig! and Hullabaloo style dancers. Paul Newman plays gum chewing Lew Harper, changing the last name from the Ross Macdonald novel of 1949, The Moving Target (they only bought the rights to one book, not the character franchise), where private investigator Lew Archer, unlike Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade or Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, was not so much a man of action as he was a cerebral thinker who figured things out by listening to people, often times feigning a character in order to interact with unsuspecting witnesses. Following the success of earlier movies THE HUSTLER (1961) and Hud (1963), it was Newman who endorsed the name change from Archer to Harper, continuing a series of 60’s movies beginning with the letter “H,” which also included HOMBRE (1967). One quirky gesture to his personality is creating characters on the phone when he calls his separated wife, Janet Leigh, who is tired of his false promises and quick disappearances and wants a divorce, but by using a fake personality he can actually hear her voice and talk with her awhile, even if it’s something nonsensical that he completely made up. This is an endearing aspect to his nature, as otherwise he’s all business.
Screenwriter William Goldman had long been an admirer of Ross Macdonald (the pseudonym used by Kenneth Millar), especially his Lew Archer novels, filled with melancholy at a disappointing world, writing eighteen Archer novels between 1949 and 1976, and a handful of short story collections, but despite being one of the most prolific and admired of all twentieth-century American crime novelists, his work remains largely untouched by filmmakers. Known for adding psychological depth to the detective genre, Goldman offered to write an adaptation, where this early script was tight and amusing, with Newman acknowledging that Harper was one of his favorite characters to play, becoming a box office hit, eventually earning Academy Awards for his screenplays of BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID (1969), the likeable buddy movie with Paul Newman and Robert Redford, and ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN (1976), a Woodward and Bernstein journalistic exposé of the Watergate era. “Well, you’re not very hip... but you’ve got cop’s eyes.” While completely unconvincing as an addict, jazz singer Betty Frayley’s (Julie Harris) description of Harper lures him into a kidnapping scheme, Harper (1966) -- (Movie Clip) You've Got Cops' Eyes - TCM YouTube (4:14), where Lauren Bacall’s drunk but filthy rich husband goes missing, and she could care less, as she’s more interested in inheriting his millions, so she hires Harper to find him, not exactly losing a tear over it. Add to the equation Miranda (Pamela Tiffin), the scantily clad, drop dead gorgeous daughter who’s not exactly broken up over daddy’s disappearance either. Instead she’s dancing on the diving board without a care in the world as poolboy gigolo and Sampson’s personal pilot Allan Taggert (Robert Wagner) looks on with a mixture of boredom and cynicism, apparently a reflection of that LA state of mind, Harper (1966) -- (Movie Clip) I'm A Very Modern Type Fellow YouTube (3:10). From this family love fest Harper must determine the rest, starting with an utterly captivating performance by Fay Estabrook (Shelly Winters), an aging movie star who can’t stop drinking and eating, a lethal combination in show business, (“She got fat” revels Wagner) but her charming performance pokes fun at her own weight problem. Harper feeds her liquor to get a good look around her house, as she’s a drinking partner of the missing husband and the gauche astrological designer of his gaudy bachelor pad on the side. But he runs into her slimy gun toting husband Dwight Troy (Robert Webber), making a hasty retreat. Not so complex as it is perpetually perplexing, there are enough twists and turns here to keep anyone’s head on a swivel, but it reveals a dense landscape steeped in murky atmosphere. As he gets closer to the scene of the crime and its major players, Harper discovers what he’s always suspected, a world of greed and corruption have replaced long-lost dreams and ambitions, where Los Angeles becomes associated with a vibrant sense of artificiality and empty sterile space, little more than a façade for what’s lurking underneath.
In a contemporary homage to Humphrey Bogart and THE BIG SLEEP (1946), which incidentally also starred Lauren Bacall, director Jack Smight was mostly a director of television dramas, which impressed Newman enough to want to work with him, but others found him lacking confidence on the set, requiring the constant presence of his reassuring wife, but it was a strong cast and a well-written story, packed full of scintillating dialogue, where the cynical and overly detached Newman is effortlessly cool with his constant wisecracks, literally carrying the picture in a film that helped establish his reputation as one of the screen’s biggest stars, never getting rattled, even as he constantly finds himself drawn into a complicated web of deceit in an underworld of trouble. But there are little compassionate touches that make him feel more familiar, like living out of his office, where he dunks his head in a sinkful of ice cubes to rouse himself awake in the opening sequence, something he repeated in THE STING (1973), or re-using day-old coffee grinds out of the garbage when he discovers he’s run out, so he’s an ordinary guy in that sense, ill-equipped to be living on his own, but by the time he steps out the door he looks like a million bucks. The role became so associated with Newman that he would play Harper nine years later in THE DROWNING POOL (1975). Having won a Tony for his lead role in the original Broadway production of Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf, the straightlaced Arthur Hill as gun-toting lawyer Albert Graves is Newman’s best friend, an old war buddy, seen doing isometric exercises at his desk when introduced, normally smart and dependable, but he has a weakness for Miranda, with Harper acknowledging he’s old enough to be her grandfather. Imaginatively shot in ‘Scope by Conrad Hall, who disliked the artificial style of Hollywood lighting, favoring a naturalistic or impressionist approach, making clever use of offbeat locations as well as dangerous and eccentric characters, including Strother Martin as the leader of nutty religious order “Temple Of The Clouds” that covers as an illegal human trafficking operation, Harper (1966) -- (Movie Clip) Disciples For Supper YouTube (4:04). Equally clever, the man who hired Phillip Marlowe in THE BIG SLEEP was confined to a wheelchair, as is Lauren Bacall, the one hiring Harper in this film. The addition of Janet Leigh in the ex-wife scenes may seem superfluous, as they were not in the novel, and this sort of thing would never have happened in 40’s film noir, but they add a mysterious vulnerability to Harper’s personality, as we see his continued devotion to her, not ready to let her go, still in love, apparently, whatever that’s worth, and he’s perfectly willing to try to repair the damage, though that train left the station ages ago, and all he’s left with is just a pipe dream. This humanization of his world-weary character offers a sense of moral decency, beautifully contrasted against an underground cesspool of criminal entrepreneurs, where Los Angeles is seen as a feverish den of illicit immorality, all supposedly tucked carefully out of sight, where Harper is forced to look head-on into the gloom and doom of society’s lost ideals. Paul Newman’s last line in Hud (1963) would seem appropriate here: “This world is so full of crap, a man’s gonna get into it sooner or later whether he’s careful or not.”
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