FILM · 1966
Harper
45 archived facts 4 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
All facts (45)
- #001
The producers used Marion Davies's famous mansion for the Sampson estate. They paid $7,000 for some renovations and gave Davies's widower, Horace G. Brown, a small sum even though he did not appear as a bartender.
- #002
The character "Susan Harper," played by Janet Leigh, was added to the film; although she is named, she does not appear in the source novel. In the book, Lew Archer tells a friend that he and Susan have separated.
- #003
Beverly House, used as the Sampson estate, is the same location as Jack Woltz's mansion in The Godfather (1972).
- #004
Albert Graves (Arthur Hill) is caught by Harper doing a static tension exercise. He says he has liked staying fit since his time serving in the Royal Canadian Air Force. Arthur Hill served in the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II.
- #005
The 356 Speedster Harper drives was one of only 140 produced. A fully restored example sold at auction for $300,000.
- #006
Sampson's limousine is a 1959 Rolls-Royce Phantom V. In 2020, this car in excellent condition could be worth well over $100,000.
- #007
Paul Newman said he based his portrayal on Robert Kennedy, who had a habit of standing slightly apart from people and, while listening to them, looking away with his head bowed.
- #008
According to TCMDb, the film was "one of Newman's biggest hits of the '60s and a film that helped earn him a reputation as one of the coolest stars on the silver screen."
- #009
In the opening sequence, Paul Newman (Harper) starts the day by plunging his whole face into a sink filled with ice cubes and water. As Henry Gondorf in The Sting (1973), Newman did the same thing after Johnny Hooker tries to sober him up. Newman woke up this way almost every day of his life.
- #010
The bird that "Priest" Claude (Strother Martin) holds on his arm at the mountaintop religious retreat is a Harris's Hawk. The bird is native to the southwestern United States and parts of South America. The Harris's Hawk is a very popular bird in falconry, the practice of training birds of prey to hunt.
- #011
According to Wikipedia, "The film pays homage to Humphrey Bogart's private detective films by involving Bogart's widow, Lauren Bacall, in the story. She plays a wounded, grieving wife who is the person most concerned about a missing husband, a role similar to that of General Sternwood in Bogart and Bacall's 1946 film The Big Sleep (1946)." Moreover, the TCMDb states, "The producers cast Lauren Bacall; one of the classics of the genre, The Big Sleep (1946). In fact, in that film the man who hires detective Phillip Marlowe, General Sternwood, was confined to a wheelchair, just like Bacall's character in Harper (1966)."
- #012
Screenwriter William Goldman won the Edgar Award for "Best Motion Picture Screenplay" in 1967 for this film. It was his second screenplay to be produced and his first solo work as a writer. He was paid $80,000 for his services.
- #013
This is the first of the two "Lew Harper" films. The second was The Drowning Pool (1975). Newman hoped to adapt Macdonald's novel "The Instant Enemy," but the film never came to be.
- #014
According to AllMovie, "Screenwriter William Goldman claimed that Paul Newman agreed to make Harper (1966), the film that established the grateful writer's career, only because he had been unhappily working on Lady L (1965) in Europe and was looking for something as unlike that film as possible."
- #015
The make and model of Lew Harper's (Paul Newman) car was a gray/silver Porsche 356 A Speedster with a black roof.
- #016
The beer the bartender at The Corner gives Harper is served in a steel can, which required a special tool called a "church key" to punch holes in the top. The pull-tab aluminum can was just coming into use during filming. Very few examples of the church keys used in the film exist.
- #017
Frank Sinatra was the first choice for the lead role of Lew Archer (Lew Harper) but turned it down. Shortly after the film's success, he made up for it by appearing as another private detective in Tony Rome (1967).
- #018
Although Roy Jenson is mistakenly credited as Roy Jensen in the opening title sequence, his name is spelled correctly in the end credits.
- #019
Lew Harper's (Paul Newman) fee was $100 a day plus expenses, though he also notes, perhaps jokingly, that his going rate is a flat $2,000 against that. ($1.00 in 2014 is equivalent to $7.25.)
- #020
The film was a success at the international box office.
- #021
The $100 per day Harper is paid is worth $776 in 2018; the $1/2 million ransom is worth $3.88 million; and Sampson's $20 million is worth $155 million.
- #022
The ship seen near the end of the film is a T2-SE-A1 tanker built in 1943 by the Sun Shipbuilding Co. in Chester, Pennsylvania, for use in World War II. Its original name was "Seven Pines." It was later sold to a private company in 1948 and changed hands several more times before becoming "Zephyrhills" in 1959, as seen in the film. It was scrapped in Taiwan in 1969. Between 1940 and 1945, 533 of these T2-type ships were built.
- #023
The film was made and released about nine years before its only sequel, The Drowning Pool (1975).
- #024
Some of the film's posters carried the following preamble: "Paul Newman 'Harper' - and Harper is not a thing to be believed! The girls think Harper is great. But sometimes he makes them feel funny. See Harper make the girls feel funny. See Harper."
- #025
Paul Newman and Harold Gould would act together again as con men in The Sting, released in 1973.
- #026
Screenwriter William Goldman was a great admirer of the work of Ross Macdonald, the novelist who wrote the source material.
- #027
It was the first of two collaborations between actor Paul Newman and director Jack Smight, who would go on to make The Secret War of Harry Frigg (1968) a few years later.
- #028
According to Dennis Brown in Shoptalk (1992), writer William Goldman later adapted another Ross Macdonald novel, "The Chill," for the screen, but the script was never filmed or produced.
- #029
The film holds a 95% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 21 critics' reviews.
- #030
According to Time Out, the film was screenwriter William Goldman's "first solo script credit."
- #031
When Harper stops for directions at the gas station seen on the gasoline pump, a "CONTAINS LEAD" notice appears. By 1975, unleaded gasoline was universally available. Effective January 1, 1996, the Clean Air Act banned the use of leaded gasoline in new vehicles other than aircraft, race cars, agricultural equipment and marine engines.
- #032
In the years before 24-hour TV broadcasting and cable networks, most stations went off the air at night to resume in the morning. During that time a 'test pattern' would remain on screen, as Harper sees when he wakes up.
- #033
The imported beer served to Harper in the film is Lowenbrau. Harper also orders champagne. At the Corner Bar, the square neon sign of a probably fictional Bester's Beer appears for the second time in the film. The Corner Bar also has a Valley Brew sign. Both the Corner Bar and Allan "Beauty" Taggert serve a fictional Tabu beer in Harper cans. Taggert's home bar also holds a bottle of Hennessy.
- #034
The name of the bar on the matchbox is "The Corner." Its slogan is "The Place in Castle Beach."
- #035
The film star Allan Taggert (Robert Wagner) imitates was James Cagney.
- #036
Harper checks out of the hotel early; at the time it was the Hotel Miramar in Santa Monica. It was known for its poolside bungalows that may have inspired the lyrics of The Doors' "L. A. Woman." The hotel still exists as the ultra-luxurious Fairmont Miramar, with equally exclusive poolside bungalows.
- #037
Paul Newman and Robert Wagner also appeared together in Winning (1969) and The Towering Inferno (1974).
- #038
The beer served to Harper by the bartender required a can opener. The actual opening of the can is not shown, although the opener ("church key") is used to punch the top twice. The exact method of opening a steel can was shown in the 1956 film "A Catered Affair," when Ernest Borgnine (Tom Hurley) is shown opening a can of beer by punching two holes in the top.
- #039
Wilhelm scream: Harper (Paul Newman) hits Puddler (Roy Jenson) over the head with a file.
- #040
The Park Plaza shopping center in Arlington, Texas, opened without a theater in 1959. In 1965, General Cinema announced that a 1,200-seat theater would be added to the north side of the property and that the center would continue eastward with additional properties. The delayed project came to fruition with the theater's grand opening ribbon-cutting on May 26, 1966, and its first film was "Harper" with Paul Newman. It was General Cinema's 15th Texas theater and the fourth in the area, alongside Big Town, NorthPark and Lochwood, which had opened only a month earlier. It was operated by General Cinema Corp. until May 19, 1988. The Park Plaza Cinema closed on February 28, 2002, and remained closed until it was demolished in 2008.
- #041
The film and its sequel, The Drowning Pool (1975), had connections to Alfred Hitchcock. This film co-starred Janet Leigh, who appeared in Psycho (1960), while the other film featured Melanie Griffith, the daughter of Tippi Hedren, who starred in The Birds (1963). Paul Newman also appeared with Julie Andrews in Hitchcock's Torn Curtain (1966).
- #042
Star billing: Paul Newman (1st), Lauren Bacall (2nd), Julie Harris (3rd), Arthur Hill (4th) and Janet Leigh (5th).
- #043
Allan Taggert, played by Robert Wagner, jokes about how easy it is to be a detective after saving Lew's life, thinking around the middle of the film that he has what it takes to do a relatively easy job. A dozen years later, he played a bored millionaire who becomes a private detective with his wife in the series Hart to Hart (1979).
- #044
Allan (Robert Wagner) does a James Cagney impression. Pamela Tiffin (Miranda) appeared alongside Cagney in the satire One, Two, Three. In that film, Red Buttons does a Cagney impression in front of Cagney.
- #045
The film's main cast included two actors named "Robert": Robert Wagner and Robert Webber.
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