1966 Drama
From Warner Bros
Directed by Jack Smight
Starring
Paul Newman
Lauren Bacall
Julie Harris
Arthur Hill
Janet Leigh
Pamela Tiffin
Robert Wagner
Robert Webber
Shelley Winters
Strother Martin
Roy Jenson
Harold Gould
I am not sure anyone thought it would pull in the kind of bucks it did. After all, it was a detective caper and while they're popcorn-chomping entertaining, no one confuses them with Shakespeare or John Ford. But Paul Newman needed a hit since his last five movies were not received as enthusiastically as had been hoped for. It was smart, too. to hire four name actresses to bring in the patrons and give the whole thing a lively, lovely look.
It brought Newman back to Warner Bros, a place he left some years earlier with hatred in his heart. He loathed how he was treated at the studio regarding scripts, pay and respect. He later said a feud should live a full and colorful life and then it should die a natural death and be forgotten.
Worn out from his detective work and from an estranged wife who hates that he gives so much more attention to his work than he does her, L.A. private eye Lew Harper (Newman) is asked by a lawyer friend (Hill) to see a snarky, disabled rich snob (Bacall) about investigating the disappearance of the husband she hates. Never mind that he has been missing for fewer than 24 hours. Apparently Harper says no to nothing.
It soon becomes apparent that no one likes the missing man anymore than they like his wife. There's a toxic environment at the wealthy estate that includes the man's daughter (Tiffin) who has a boiling hatred for her stepmother, and the family's pilot (Wagner) who doesn't seem to do much more than hang out at the pool with Tiffin who has the hots for him. Hill has the hots for her but she can't see him for anything.
Almost as soon as he's on the case, Harper becomes aware that there's a ransom request so now the missing man has been kidnapped. As he dives into the case, he realizes the man and his business activities are not what anyone suspects and everyone he comes across is a suspect.
First up is an alcoholic former actress (Winters) and her gun-toting husband (Webber) who has little interest in her except to keep her quiet. He tracks down a druggie lounge singer (Harris) and then winds up at an open-air mountaintop estate run by a bogus holy man (Martin). Harper's time with each of these people, all shady, tells him that there is involvement of some sort. But the way a second ransom note is written tells Harper that the culprit is someone very close to the estate... the wife, the daughter, the pilot or even the lawyer. No one here is very clean, just the way a good detective story should be.
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| Janet Leigh |
Well, Leigh as the soon-to-be ex-wife, is clean but she's sure not happy. Her couple of scenes with Newman sparkle partly, I suppose, because they take us away from the main thrust of the story and partly because these two actors have a lot of chemistry. How sad they made no other movies together. Leigh has no scenes with any actors other than Newman and her role was written especially for the screen version.
Newman is the only name to appear before the title and it is understandable not just because his character's name is the title but because no one else has a very large part. Webber has a very small part but knows his way around gentlemanly thug parts. Winters makes the most of her zaftig floozie role as does Wagner as a hanger-on enjoying the good life, roles each actor could have phoned in.
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| Lauren Bacall |
Tiffin, never to chase an Oscar and lucky to be in this esteemed company, is convincing as the horny daughter and her bitchy scenes with Bacall are kind of fun. Bacall, by the way, is probably aboard because this whole thing has a feel of Bogie's 1940s' detective yarns with Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade and having her here is just kind of fun.
Harris was a clever bit of offbeat casting and a character we get to know a little better than the rest. The actress and Newman were old Actors' Studio buddies. Hill seems so clean he squeaks, but is he? Martin, of course, is great but wasn't he always? You need a bogus holy man for your movie? Why not see if Strother Martin is available?
Newman, of course, is all he needs to be. It's certainly not one of his great acting jobs but everything can't be Hud. He provided all the cynicism, smartass comments and breezy humor that came so easily for him. He said he took the part because it would be smooth sailing, something he was looking forward to after making a dreadful period piece (Lady L with Sophia Loren.)
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| Julie Harris |
Goldman was a novelist, playwright and screenwriter. You have seen movies based on his writing before... No Way to Treat a Lady, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Papillon, All the President's Men, The Princess Bride, Misery and several others.
Goldman turned Harper into a polished screenplay... very involving, multi-layered, atmospheric (loved the Southern California locales), lots of twists and turns and colorful characters. Had the film been made in black and white and added some venetian blinds, they'd have called it a film noir and it had little reminders of that genre throughout.
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| Shelley Winters |
Smight made a few films in the 60s and 70s that garnered some attention but he was mainly a television director. He was certainly pleased that this film with its glittering cast made a bundle although he is largely forgotten as its director.
There's a funny anecdote involving Newman and Winters when they appeared on The Tonight Show some years after Harper was made. Johnny Carson asked them if they'd ever worked together. Winters said no, we haven't had the opportunity. Newman did a double-take and said what was I in Harper, chopped liver? He then continued as she looked flummoxed... I made love to you for two days in front of
the camera and you forgot about THAT?
Here's the trailer:
Next posting:
The dancer who became a gun moll
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