Harper (1966) – John's Green Blog

This is the first of two Ross MacDonald books that were made into movies. TCM in their infinite wisdom elected to show them back to back this week, and I ate it up!

Both movies feature Paul Newman as detective Lew Archer. Well, that’s what his name is in the books, but for some reason the movie people changed it to Lew Harper for the movies.

This movie is based on the book The Moving Target.

Interesting to me is that this movie came out the year I graduated from high school! 🙂 I think I saw it at the time, based on Newman’s star power.
But I didn’t get turned on to the MacDonald books until the 70’s, when a friend of a friend turned me on to them … I read them all!

Featured in this movie:

Paul Newman (Harper) is hired by super wealthy Lauren Bacall on the advice of her lawyer, Albert Graves (Arthur Hill) to find her alcoholic and increasingly erratic husband. He gave away an entire mountain to a religious crank, and so now they’re worried. To be clear, they are way more about the money than him.

Their daughter, the very hot but very young Miranda (Pamela Tiffin), is out by the pool flirting with Allan Taggart (Robert Wagner), the all-purpose errand boy for the rich folks.

Harper goes to the old guy’s haunts looking for him. He unearths old flame Shelly Winters, and they spend a hilarious 10 minutes getting drunk together.

She passes out, Harper gets caught rifling her bedroom.

He goes to an even seedier bar looking for more connections. He pisses people off, as he tends to do, and gets beat up. Back to Shelly’s place where a truck comes thru.

Miranda takes Harper up the mountain now owned by the religious nut in his sweet little rusted out Porsche coupe. It’s a long, curvy, dusty dirt road that we end up going go up and down a number of times during the movie.

Quick summary

Sorry to say, I didn’t really enjoy the movie so much this time around, it wasn’t as fun as I remembered. In fact, except for that charming interlude getting drunk with Shelley Winters it wasn’t really fun at all. They were all pretty rotten people.

One little cool thing: Since it’s in the 60’s … they are actually doing the frug on the dance floor!!

Everybody double crossed everybody before it was over.

Taggart saved Harper early in the movie, but then later, turns out he was in on it. He and Betty the jazz singer actually were in love.

They did NOT match as people even a little bit, but that’s what the plot said.

They kidnapped the old guy to get money to run away.

There was a whole other sub plot where that crew was smuggling in Mexican laborers in the mysterious truck and stashing them at the mountaintop retreat.

Taggart double-crosses Harper, then is shot by Albert as he tries to shoot Harper.
At their beach house hideaway, Betty is being tortured to tell where the money is hidden by the religious crank and his smuggling buddies (and Shelly Winters for some reason!)
Harper shoots a smuggler and makes Betty take him to where an abandoned oil tanker where the rich guy is stashed.
Harper gets klonked on the head again.
- When he comes to, the rich guy is dead and Albert is just arriving.
Betty has taken off in his little Porsche.
He and Albert retrieve the money.
They catch up with Betty on the remote but well-travelled road to the mountain retreat.
- She wipes out on a curve, so now she’s dead too.
- The Porsche is not looking so good either.
While they are driving the money back to the (not) grieving widow Lauren Bacall, Harper lets on that he knows that Albert double-crossed him!
- It was Albert that slugged him on the ship and shot the old guy.
- Everyone agrees the old guy was an awful person.

This leads up to the end of the movie, which is an utterly memorable bit where Harper gets out of the car with the bag of money.

He’s told Albert that he has to turn him in.
He gets out of the car with the bag of money and starts up the walkway to return it to Lauren Bacall.
Albert makes as if to shoot him, sittin in the car, taking careful aim with his pistol.

Harper walks a few steps, it’s very dramatic, then he drops the bag.

Albert lower the gun, and they both say “oh hell” at the same time …

THE END!

GOOD stuff == things I liked:

The 60’s vibe:
- his cool little Roadster
- all the other Mercurys and Fords that were like land yachts
- Frugging!
- How underdeveloped the beach side communities were.
- Even the abandoned oil tanker was cool in it’s way. Prime waterfront real estate being wasted!
The seersucker shirt!
- Harper borrows a shirt from Allan (long story) right before he gets killed.
- It is a short sleeved “casual dress” type shirt that he wears for the rest of the movie.
- He drapes his arm over the car seat and you see that the shirt was striped, and ribbed as if it were seersucker!
- You sure don’t hear about seersucker any more!
  - That took me back to the 60’s!
That last scene is so charming!
- Albert is maybe the only genuinely likable, honest and reliable person in the whole damn movie, expelt for that little detail that he murdered his boss.
- After the scene with his ex, Harper was certainly none of those things.

BAD stuff == things I didn’t like so much:

Harper’s annoying habit of taking out his chewing gum and just tossing to the side no matter where he is!
The really shameful way Harper used his soon-to-be former wife (Janet Leigh) after he got beat up one night. It really mad me angry at him.
- Janet Leigh sure is a babe though….