Harper (1966)

February 23, 1966, release date

Directed by Jack Smight

Screenplay by William Goldman

Based on The Moving Target by Ross Macdonald

Music by Johnny Mandel

Edited by Stefan Arnsten

Cinematography by Conrad L. Hall

Paul Newman as Lew Harper

Lauren Bacall as Elaine Sampson

Julie Harris as Betty Fraley

Arthur Hill as Albert Graves

Janet Leigh as Susan Harper

Pamela Tiffin as Miranda Sampson

Robert Wagner as Allan Taggert

Robert Webber as Dwight Troy

Shelley Winters as Fay Estabrook

Harold Gould as Sheriff Spanner

Martin West as the deputy

Roy Jenson as Puddler, the bouncer at the Piano bar

Strother Martin as Claude, the priest at the Temple of the Clouds

Distributed by Warner Bros.

Produced by Warner Bros.

There’s a lot to like about Harper, not the least of which is Paul Newman in the starring role. He’s a lot of fun to watch, so much so that I also saw The Drowning Pool, in which he plays the same character in another story also based on a Ross Macdonald novel. It seems obvious—at least to me—that he enjoys his work and has a lot of fun doing it. In some respects, he reminds me of Lloyd Nolan in the Michael Shayne roles. The list of stars in supporting roles in Harper is impressive and adds to the fun.

The film starts with Lew Harper, a down-on-his-luck private investigator, beginning his day. The opening credits appear over his morning ritual. He is in bed ignoring an alarm clock and then finally turning it off. The camera pulls back to reveal a small, cramped one-room apartment. The television, on a mobile pushcart, is still on but with a test pattern from the 1960s. (Remember those from the earlier days of television?) Harper gets out of bed, turns off the television, pushes it out of the way, and opens the shade on one of his windows. He finds the sunlight so blinding that he doesn’t bother with the others. He reuses coffee grounds that he retrieves from a wastebasket to make some bad coffee. When he leaves his living quarters, we learn that he is residing in his office: The front door that shuts behind him is an office door showing the lettering of his name and business.

Harper drives off in a beat-up convertible in need of a paint job to meet with Elaine Sampson, who wants Harper to find her husband Ralph. The initial meeting between Harper and Sampson is a bit cryptic and mysterious. Elaine Sampson doesn’t much care about bringing her husband back; she just wants to make sure that he isn’t squandering his (their) money. Some of their conversation is amusing, and Lew Harper gets to show his cynical humor:

• Elaine Sampson: “. . . Actually, I have no intention of divorcing him [her husband Ralph]. I only intend to outlive him. I only want to see him in his grave.” [short pause] “What a terrible thing to say.”

• Lew Harper: “People in love will say anything.”

(This blog post about Harper contains some spoilers.)

Later in the film, Harper tracks Fay Estabrook, someone he wants to question about Ralph Sampson’s whereabouts. He finds her at the Bel-Air Hotel. Once again, Harper gets to show a bit of humor in the following exchange with the bartender in the hotel’s lounge:

• Lew Harper: “Give me another one of those, will you?”

• Bartender at the Bel-Air Hotel: “It’s two after six. We don’t serve domestic after six. Only imported.”

• Harper: “Terrific.” [throws some bills on the bar] “Keep the change.”

• Bartender: “There is no change.”

• Harper: [looks up at the bartender] “Keep it anyway.”

Once he introduces himself to Fay Estabrook, Harper goes to great lengths to keep her attention long enough to get information from her, even go-go dancing with her when the band starts to play in the hotel lounge.

The story has so many elements of noir. In addition to Ralph Sampson’s disappearance, the film features murder, smuggling of illegal immigrants and narcotics, blackmail, torture, and a religious cult called Temple of the Clouds. Harper himself is something of a throwback to the detectives of the 1940s, a bit like Sam Spade, because he has his own peculiar code of ethics, which apply only to his business. For Harper, that means seeing an assignment to the bitter end. It doesn’t apply to his wife, however, who wants a divorce but is willing to consider reconciliation when Harper shows up on her doorstep looking for some carnal comfort. The next morning, when he leaves her stranded because he is a cad and because he insists on seeing the assignment through, she realizes that her decision to divorce Harper is the right one.

Some of the most interesting features of the film admittedly do not have much to do with noir. In addition to the occasional humor, the film uses Technicolor to its advantage. The color in Harper is not garish at all, which is sometimes true of other Technicolor films from the 1960s; rather, it is muted and subdued. At times, color fills the screen, making some shots feel cramped almost to the point of suffocation.

The details in the film that did start to grate on me were the running jokes about Fay Estabrook once being a beautiful starlet who got old and fat. Shelley Winters does a great job in the role of Estabrook, and these references about the character’s shortcomings make the film seem a little mean-spirited. And I suppose Harper doesn’t break any new ground. The main character is a struggling private investigator, looking for a big payoff and treating women badly, all in the pursuit of his own version of justice.

I still enjoyed the film. I found it intriguing that all the different elements seem like they have nothing to do with one another, but the plot eventually reveals that all of them, even the Temple of the Clouds, are interrelated. It’s one of those movies where paying attention to the details makes a big difference.

The DVD that I watched came with audio commentary by William Goldman, the screenwriter. I found his observations interesting and well worth a listen. He made the point that Paul Newman, in the title role, has to carry the film and does a great job. I couldn’t agree more. And it is a great story. Lew Harper finds more than one mystery to solve and survives them all.

I wondered if the music (“The Big Heist” by Henry Mancini) for the opening sequence of Harper was the same as the music used in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) for the scene in which Holly Golightly and Paul Varjak are deciding what to shoplift at a five and dime store in Manhattan. If you know, please leave a comment.