Harper (1966) watch online HD

The opening credits sequence: William Goldman later said he knew he'd succeed as a screenwriter as soon as he wrote the opening scene in Harper (1966) in which Harper is forced to recycle used coffee grounds from the trash for his morning cup of coffee. Harper's dismay at the result, as realized by Paul Newman on screen, immediately created empathy between the character and the audience. Ironically, that opening sequence was the last thing he wrote for that script.

According to Frank Miller at the TCMDb, the success of source novelist Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer detective series "didn't stop [actor Paul] Newman from changing the name of Macdonald's most famous detective, however. Struck by his success in two films beginning with the letter "h" - Бильярдист (1961) and Hud (1963), Newman asked that the private eye's name be changed from Archer to Harper". However, alternatively, Wikipedia states "The name of the lead character was changed from Lew Archer to [Lew] Harper because the producers had not bought the rights to the series, just to 'The Moving Target'. [Screenwriter William] Goldman later wrote 'so we needed a different name and Harper seemed OK, the guy harps on things, it's essentially what he does for a living'."

The 356 Speedster that Harper drives was one of only 140 made. A fully restored one has sold for $300,000 in auction.

The title of the Ross Macdonald's source novel "The Moving Target" was this picture's title in Great Britain.

The make and model of Lew Harper (Paul Newman)' s car was a black-top gray / silver Porsche 356 A Speedster.

According to the TCMDb, this film was "one of Newman's biggest hits of the '60s and a film that helped establish his reputation as one of the screen's coolest stars".

Screen-writer William Goldman won the Edgar Award for "Best Motion Picture Screenplay" for this movie in 1967.

The bird that the "priest" Claude (Strother Martin) holds on his arm at the mountaintop religious retreat is a Harris's Hawk. The bird is native to the southwest United States and parts of South America. The Harris Hawk is a very popular bird for use in falconry, the practice of hunting by training birds of prey.

According to Wikipedia, "The film pays homage to the Humphrey Bogart private-eye films by bringing Bogart's [former] wife Lauren Bacall into the story. She plays a wounded and woeful wife, the person most concerned with a missing husband, a role similar to the character of General Sternwood in the Bogart-and-Bacall 1946 movie Глубокий сон (1946)". Moreover, the TCMDb states "the producers cast Lauren Bacall, who had starred in one of the classics of the genre, Глубокий сон (1946). In fact, the man who had hired detective Phillip Marlowe in that film, General Sternwood, was confined to a wheelchair, just like Bacall's character in Harper (1966)".

Frank Sinatra was the first choice for the title role of Lew Archer (Lew Harper) which went in the end to Paul Newman.

First of two collaborations of actor Paul Newman and director Jack Smight who together would make The Secret War of Harry Frigg (1968) a couple of years later in 1968.

The movie was made and released around nine years before its one and only sequel, The Drowning Pool (1975), debuted in 1975.

According to Allmovie, "Screenwriter William Goldman has claimed that Paul Newman agreed to do Harper (1966), the film that established the grateful writer's career, only because he was working unhappily on _Lady L_ (1965) in Europe, and was looking for something as unlike that film as possible".

Some movie posters for the film featured a preamble that read: "Paul Newman is 'Harper' - and Harper is just not to be believed!!! Girls think Harper is kicky. But sometimes he makes them feel funny. See Harper make girls feel funny. See Harper.".

The original title of Ross Macdonald's source novel "The Moving Target" was "The Snatch".

According to Dennis Brown in Shoptalk (1992), writer William Goldman later adapted for film another Ross Macdonald novel called "The Chill" but the screenplay has never been filmed and remains unproduced.

First of two "Lew Harper" movies. The second was The Drowning Pool (1975). Newman hoped to do Macdonald's novel "The Instant Enemy," but the film never materialized.

The ship near the end of the film is a T2-SE-A1 tanker built in 1943 by the Sun Shipbuilding Co. at Chester, Pennsylvania for use in WWII. Its original name was "Seven Pines". It was subsequently sold to a private firm in 1948 and changed hands a couple more times before becoming the "Zephyrhills" in 1959 as seen in this film. It was scrapped in Taiwan in 1969. There were 533 of these T2-type ships built between 1940 and 1945.

The house used as the Sampson estate, Beverly House, is the same place used as Jack Woltz's mansion in "The Godfather".

Average Shot Length = ~8.5 seconds. Median Shot Length = ~7.9 seconds.

The film was the "first solo script credit" of screen-writer William Goldman according to Time Out.

The film was made and released about seventeen years after its source novel "The Moving Target" by Ross Macdonald had been first published in 1949.

Lew Harper (Paul Newman)'s fee was $100 per day plus expenses, though he also states, perhaps jokingly, that his going rate was $2000 flat against that. ($1.00 then is equivalent to $7.25 in 2014.)

The picture was a big success at the international box-office.

Script-writer William Goldman was a big fan of the work of source novelist Ross Macdonald.

The name of the bar on the match-sticks packet was "The Corner". It's slogan was "The Place in Castle Beach".

The movie and its sequel The Drowning Pool (1975) both had a connection to Alfred Hitchcock. This movie co-starred Janet Leigh who had starred in Психо (1960) whereas the other movie co-starred Melanie Griffith who was the daughter of Tippi Hedren who co-starred in Птицы (1963).

The character Albert Graves (Arthur Hill) is caught doing a static tension exercise by Harper. He says that he likes to stay in shape from when he served in the Royal Canadian Air Force. Arthur Hill served with the Royal Canadian Air Force during WWII.

$100 per day that Harper charges is worth $776 in 2018; the $1/2 million dollar ransom is worth $3.88 million; the $20 million that Sampson is worth is $155 million.

This is the first of three movies that Paul Newman made with Strother Martin. It was followed by Cool Hand Luke, (1967) and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, (1969.)

The name of the movie star that Allan Taggert (Robert Wagner) impersonated was James Cagney.

Rating the Movies states that this film is a "...detective yarn similar to the hard-boiled capers of the 1940s".

Star Billing: Paul Newman (1st), Lauren Bacall (2nd), Julie Harris (3rd), Arthur Hill (4th) and Janet Leigh (5th).

The movie's main cast featured two actors with the first name "Robert": Robert Wagner and Robert Webber.

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 (1963) and Бильярдист (1961) (two of his successful films beginning with the letter "H", a later one after Harper (1966) was 1967's Hombre (1967)) 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 Мальтийский сокол (1941).