The Drowning Pool (1975)

July 10, 1975, release date

Directed by Stuart Rosenberg

Screenplay by Tracy Keenan Wynn, Lorenzo Semple Jr., Walter Hill

Based on The Drowning Pool by Ross Macdonald

Music by Michael Small

Edited by John C. Howard

Cinematography by Gordon Willis

Paul Newman as Lew Harper

Joanne Woodward as Iris Devereaux

Anthony (“Tony”) Franciosa as Chief Broussard

Murray Hamilton as J. J. Kilbourne

Gail Strickland as Mavis (“May-May”) Kilbourne

Melanie Griffith as Schuyler Devereaux

Linda Haynes as Gretchen, the working girl

Andre Trottier as the hydrotherapist

Richard Jaeckel as Lieutenant Franks

Paul Koslo as Candy, one of Kilbourne’s henchmen

Joe Canutt as Glo, one of Kilbourne’s henchmen

Andrew (“Andy”) Robinson as Pat Reavis

Coral Browne as Olivia Devereaux, the matriarch

Helena Kallianiotes as Elaine Reavis

Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures

Produced by First Artists

The Drowning Pool is a lot of fun to watch for all the reasons that I thought Harper, also starring Paul Newman, was fun. Both are based on Ross Macdonald books that feature Lew Harper, private investigator. It seems obvious—at least to me—that Paul Newman enjoys his work and has a lot of fun doing it. In both of his roles as Lew Harper, he reminds me of Lloyd Nolan in the Michael Shayne roles.

This is the second time that Paul Newman portrayed the character Lew Harper. He portrayed him the first time in the 1966 film Harper. Click here for my blog post about Harper.

The credits appear over the opening sequence of The Drowning Pool, as they did in Harper. In this sequence, Harper gets into his rental car at the New Orleans International Airport. Right away, he has a bit of trouble with the car: He can’t get the seat belt to work and thus get the buzzing—and annoying—alarm to stop. The credits roll as he resolves the problem. He finally gets the buzzing alarm to stop when he disconnects the wires behind the driver’s seat.

Iris Devereaux has hired Lew Harper for some investigative work in New Orleans. They meet on the sly in an antiques store in downtown New Orleans. Her telegram read “Mrs. James Devereaux” according to Harper, and he assumed that she was a stranger, but when he sees her, he realizes that he does know her. They had a week-long affair when she visited Los Angeles, which is where Harper lives and works. Here is their first conversation:

• Lew: “Boy, you look terrific.”

• Iris: “So do you. Except you got a little gray over your ears there.”

• Lew: “It’s the only difference. Everything else works about the same.”

• Iris: “That was six years ago. That really was a voluptuous week, wasn’t it?”

• Lew: “Aside from the good times, you didn’t give away much, did you? Why did you drop us like that? I turned around to wind my watch and turned back and you slipped out of L.A.”

• Iris: [with some regret] “It was time to go home.”

Iris has flown Harper to New Orleans for business, “strictly business,” as she tells him. This first conversation makes no mention of business or any of Iris’s reasons for bringing Harper to New Orleans. She has gotten Harper a room at the Town House Motor Hotel, and he is to call before meeting her at her home.

While Harper gets himself settled into his motel room, Iris’s daughter Schuyler tries to seduce him. She lets herself into the room when she finds his door unlocked. At this point, Harper and viewers are not aware of Schuyler’s relationship to Iris. This scene gives viewers a chance to see the complicated nature of Harper’s business ethics, which were part of his character in Harper. Harper wants nothing to do with Schuyler because he knows she is probably too young for legal consent. When she balks at leaving the room because she is not used to taking no for an answer, however, he is not above slapping her across the face.

The chief of police, Chief Broussard, has Harper picked up by Lieutenant Franks and a couple of officers on trumped-up charges. Someone on the police force must have known that Schuyler had visited Harper at the motel. This incident raises a lot of questions for both Harper and the viewer. Is Schuyler being followed? If it’s Harper who is being followed, how would anyone besides Iris have known of his arrival?

When Harper goes to Iris’s home, she shows him a letter that she received threatening blackmail about her infidelities. She tells Harper that it’s not her husband that she’s afraid of; it’s his mother, Olivia Devereaux. She thinks that the letter came from Pat Reavis, the family chauffeur, whom Iris fired.

Again, as in Harper, The Drowning Pool has a lot of seemingly unrelated threads that are part of the mystery surrounding Iris Devereaux and her family. Jay Hue Kilbourne is an oil man in Louisiana. He also runs illegal dogfighting, a business for which he has a lot of unsavory employees. He wants the Devereaux land because of the oil underneath it, and he wants Harper to convince the Devereaux, especially Olivia Devereaux, to sell. Kilbourne has a lot influence in the town, and he is only too happy to turn it into pressure if it suits his purposes.

The Drowning Pool (1975) is a sequel of sorts for Harper (1966) because it features the same detective in the lead role, and both stories are based on novels by Ross Macdonald. Harper is based on The Moving Target, which was published in 1949, and The Drowning Pool is based on the novel of the same name, published in 1950. I haven’t read the novels, not yet at least, but there are points of continuity that I thought showed the care that everyone felt toward both film projects:

◊ Each film begins with Lew Harper. The credits appear over an opening sequence that allows viewers to learn a bit about Harper and even to identify with him. In Harper, he starts his day in his office-slash-apartment; in The Drowning Pool, he has to figure out how to turn off the buzzing alarm when the seat belt in his car won’t work.

◊ Harper chews gum in both films; he doesn’t smoke.

◊ The seemingly unrelated threads of the plot in both films are all interrelated, which is made apparent when the mysteries are solved.

◊ Each film ends with a freeze frame of Lew Harper.

◊ In both films, Lew Harper has to see the assignment to the very end, even if it means that he won’t be paid and even if he creates more hardship for himself and others.

I guess I could say, as I did about Harper, that The Drowning Pool doesn’t really break any new ground. But it is so much fun to watch Paul Newman, perhaps even a bit more so in The Drowning Pool because his costar is his wife Joanne Woodward. And after uncovering one mystery after another in New Orleans, Harper does finally bring all the facts and evidence together to solve them all. A very satisfying ending, once again.

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.