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Harper Overview:

Harper (1966) was a Crime - Mystery Film directed by Jack Smight and produced by Elliott Kastner and Jerry Gershwin.

Harper BlogHub Articles:

The Deadly Affair and Harper

By Rick29 on Aug 7, 2023 From Classic Film & TV Cafe

James Mason as Charles Dobbs.The Deadly Affair (1967). James Mason stars as Charles Dobbs--a renamed George Smiley--in Sidney Lumet's moderately successful adaptation of John Le Carre's novel Call for the Dead. The plot is more mystery than espionage as Dobbs tries to discover whether a diplomat (re... Read full article

book: The Lost Man (2018) by Jane Harper

By John Grant on Apr 7, 2019 From Noirish

I hugely enjoyed Jane Harper’s first novel, The Dry, then enjoyed her second, Force of Nature, even more than that. I think her third, The Lost Man, somehow manages to be the best of the three. I’m awestruck by the talents of this UK/Australian author. The setting is the Australian Out... Read full article

O Caçador de Aventuras / Harper (1966)

By Lê on Sep 16, 2018 From Critica Retro

O Caçador de Aventuras / Harper (1966) Um fato pouco conhecido na comunidade de cinema clássico é que eu queria ser detetive quando era criança. OK, esse pode não ser um fato relevante para a comunidade de cinema clássico, mas é importante para este artigo. Quando criança, minha úni... Read full article

book: Force of Nature (2017) by Jane Harper

By John Grant on Apr 25, 2018 From Noirish

I read Jane Harper’s debut novel The Dry last year and enjoyed it very much, so when I spotted its successor I grabbed it. And quite rightly so, as I discovered: if anything I like Force of Nature the better of the two novels, which is saying something. A Melbourne company sends ten of its em... Read full article

On Blu-ray: Paul Newman is Detective Lew Harper in Harper (1966) and The Drowning Pool (1975)

By KC on Mar 28, 2018 From Classic Movies

Paul Newman took a crack at playing a gumshoe for the first time in Harper (1966), following that success years later with the sequel, The Drowning Pool (1975). This pair of films was inspired by Ross MacDonald’s novels about the detective Lew Archer, which was changed to Harper for the adapt... Read full article

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Harper Quotes:

Albert Graves: Did you meet Sampson's daughter?
Lew Harper: That ugly, skinny kid? Yeah, we passed in the night.
Albert Graves: [Takes out a cheesecake picture of Miranda] Oh, Lew, isn't she incredible?
Lew Harper: Oh boy, you dirty old man.
Albert Graves: Go on. You think I'm too old.
Lew Harper: Nah. When she's a hundred, you only be a hundred and twenty-four.
Albert Graves: You think I'm old enough to be her father.
Lew Harper: You're old enough to be her *grandfather*.
Albert Graves: Ah, go to hell.
Lew Harper: Solid Citizen Albert, hung up on a chick at your age. That's a hoot!
Claude: I'm sorry. You may not come onto holy ground. You've not been purified. I was once a lost and evil man, blind-hearted and sinful. Miranda, here, can tell you that. But then the sword of the blessed sun slew the black beast of the flesh, and I was purified at last.
Lew Harper: Can't I just look around?
Claude: You'll be risking the wrath of the sun god.
Lew Harper: I'm lionhearted.
Lew Harper: Your husband keeps lousy company, Mrs. Sampson, as bad as there is in LA. And that's as bad as there is.
Fay Estabrook: [Eyes wide with misplaced modesty] What is it with me that men all the time want to possess me?
Miranda Sampson: What do you do this kind of crummy work for, anyway?
Lew Harper: What, are you trying to be funny? I do it because I believe in the United Nations and Southeast Asia, and - you think it's funny if your life depends on what goes through the Panama Canal? What about the English pound? I'll tell you something - as long as there's a Siberia, you'll find Lew Harper on the job.
Miranda Sampson: Are you putting me on?
Lew Harper: Jeez, I don't think so.
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Harper Facts
Average Shot Length = ~8.5 seconds. Median Shot Length = ~7.9 seconds.
Paul Newman:  [H]  The character Lew Harper is based on novelist Ross Macdonald's character Lew Archer. The name was changed for the film supposedly because Paul Newman had recently enjoyed success with Hud (one of his many successful films beginning with H) and the producers wanted the movie's title to begin with "H". Also, the Macdonald estate did not want the name "Archer" used in the movie. There may have been fear of legal complications because Macdonald got the name "Archer" in the first place from Miles Archer, Sam Spade's partner who is killed early on in Dashiell Hammett's "The Maltese Falcon."
The opening credits sequence (where Harper makes himself a terrible cup of coffee, among other things) was written and shot after the first cut of the film had already been delivered to the studio.
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