Taglines: Harper takes a case – and the payoff is murder.
Harper movie synopsis. Lew Harper (Paul Newman) is a Los Angeles based private investigator whose marriage to Susan Harper, who he still loves, is ending in imminent divorce since she can’t stand being second fiddle to his work, which is always taking him away at the most inopportune of times. His latest client is tough talking and physically disabled Elaine Sampson, who wants him to find her wealthy husband, Ralph Sampson, missing now for twenty-four hours, ever since he disappeared at Van Nuys Airport after having just arrived from Vegas.
No one seems to like Ralph, Elaine included. She believes he is cavorting with some woman, which to her would be more a fact than a problem. Harper got the case on the recommendation of the Sampsons’ lawyer and Harper’s personal friend, milquetoast Albert Graves, who is unrequitedly in love with Sampson’s seductive daughter, Miranda Sampson. Miranda, who Harper later states throws herself at anything “pretty in pants”, also has a decidedly cold relationship with her stepmother, Elaine.
As Harper begins his investigation, he is often joined by one or two new sidekicks, Miranda, and/or Allan Taggert, Sampson’s private pilot who was the last person to see him before his disappearance. Living on the Sampson estate, Allan is also Miranda’s casual boyfriend who Harper coins “Beauty” because of his preppy good looks.
They discover that Sampson has indeed been kidnapped as they receive a ransom note. As Harper follows leads, he ends up in the underbelly of Los Angeles society, which includes encounters with Betty Fraley, a junkie lounge singer, Fay Estabrook, an ex-movie ingénue now overweight alcoholic, and Claude, a religious cult leader. At each of Harper’s stops, people seem to want to beat him up or worse kill him. The case takes a slight turn after they decide to pay the $500,000 ransom to see where it leads.
Harper (released in the UK as The Moving Target) is a 1966 American Technicolor mystery film in Panavision based on Ross Macdonald’s novel The Moving Target and adapted for the screen by novelist William Goldman, who admired MacDonald’s writings. The film stars Paul Newman as Lew Harper (Lew Archer in the novel). It is directed by Jack Smight, with an ensemble cast that includes Robert Wagner, Julie Harris, Janet Leigh, Shelley Winters and Arthur Hill. Goldman received a 1967 Edgar Award for Best Motion Picture Screenplay.
The film pays homage to Humphrey Bogart’s portrayals of Sam Spade and Phillip Marlowe by featuring Bogart’s widow, Lauren Bacall, who plays a wounded wife searching for her missing husband, a role similar to General Sternwood in the 1946 Bogart-and-Bacall film, The Big Sleep. In 1975, Newman reprised the role in The Drowning Pool.
In the title sequence, Newman dunks his head into a sinkful of ice cubes to rouse himself awake; a bit that he repeated in the 1973 film The Sting. Newman reportedly followed this routine every morning in real life.
Robert Wagner later recalled Jack Smight “lacked confidence; his wife was with him on the set for the entire shoot and seemed to function as a kind of security blanket. This was annoying because a film set derives its specific temperature from the star and the director. Our director was nervous, which can make the cast and crew nervous. But Paul pretended not to notice and his confidence spread to the rest of the cast. The reason he was confident was because William Goldman’s script was tight and amusing and the cast kept things bubbling.”
Harper (1966)
Directed by: Jack Smight
Starring: Paul Newman, Lauren Bacall, Julie Harris, Arthur Hill, Janet Leigh, Pamela Tiffin, Eugene Iglesias, Shelley Winters, Harold Gould, Strother Martin, Jacqueline deWit
Screenplay by: William Goldman
Cinematography by: Conrad L. Hall
Film Editing by: Stefan Arnsten
Set Decoration by: Claude E. Carpenter
Art Direction by: Alfred Sweeney
Music by: Johnny Mandel
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Warner Bros. Pictures
Release Date: February 23, 1966
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