Harper (film)

Harper
Original cinema poster
Directed by	Jack Smight
Produced by	Elliott Kastner Jerry Gershwin
Screenplay by	William Goldman
Based on	The Moving Target 1949 novel by Ross Macdonald
Starring	Paul Newman Lauren Bacall Julie Harris Arthur Hill Janet Leigh
Music by	Johnny Mandel
Cinematography	Conrad L. Hall
Distributed by	Warner Bros.
Release date	February 23, 1966 (1966-02-23)
Running time	121 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$3.5 million
Box office	$12,000,000

Harper (released in the UK as The Moving Target) is a 1966 Technicolor film based on Ross Macdonald's novel The Moving Target in Panavision and adapted for the screen by novelist William Goldman, who admired MacDonald's writings. The film stars Paul Newman as the eponymous 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.

Private investigator Lew Harper's (Paul Newman) marriage to Susan (Janet Leigh) is on the rocks and he doesn't have many friends, but one of them, mild-mannered attorney Albert Graves (Arthur Hill), brings him a case in Santa Theresa, 90 miles up the coast from Los Angeles. Ralph Sampson, the millionaire husband of hard-boiled Elaine Sampson (Lauren Bacall), has disappeared after flying from Las Vegas to L.A. Ralph, worth $20 million, is described as money-driven, crazy, alcoholic and egotistical. Elaine, physically disabled from a horseback riding accident, doesn't even seem to like her husband and believes he is off with another woman. She just wants to know where he is.