The 29 Mar 1965 DV announced that producer and Raymond Chandler aficionado Jerry Bick had acquired film rights to mystery writer Ross MacDonald’s The Moving Target, the first of eighteen novels that featured Southern California private detective “Lew Archer.” Published in 1949, The Moving Target had introduced Archer as a successor to Raymond Chandler’s “Philip Marlowe,” the subject at that time of four 1940s films, including The Big Sleep (1946, see entry). The 18 Aug 1965 LAT described MacDonald as “Chandler’s heir apparent as master of the complex plot and the eloquent evocation of the Southern California scene, high life and low life.” Jack Smight, who was picked to direct, told the 21 Apr 1965 Var that The Moving Target “will have flavor and style of mid-40s features.” It was set to be shot on the Warner Bros.’s Studio lot in Burbank, CA, where The Big Sleep, starring Humphrey Bogart as Marlowe, was filmed twenty years earlier, and would feature that film’s co-star, Lauren Bacall. Other locations would include the CA beach cities of Santa Barbara, CA (where Lew Archer was based), Newport Beach, and Hermosa Beach (where Smight hoped to film a jazz scene at the famous Lighthouse Club)—although none of them were ultimately used. The budget was $3 million, according to the 19 May 1965 Var, and Paul Newman was slated to star as Lew Archer at a salary of $750,000 “against 10%” of the film. By that time, the title had been changed to Archer. Producer Jerry Bick left the project during pre-production.
       Principal photography began 7 Jun 1965 on the Warner Bros. lot, according to that day’s DV and a studio production chart in the 4 Jun 1965 DV. More than two months later, Jack Smight told the 20 Aug 1965 DV he expected to finish shooting that day. Smight claimed he filmed on twenty-three locations in the Los Angeles area and used the Burbank studio mostly for interiors. Among the locations were Malibu Canyon and “the old Marion Davies mansion” at 1011 N. Beverly Drive in Beverly Hills, whose grounds the production refurbished at a cost of $7,000 instead of paying rental. (Also, Davies’s widower, Horace Brown, was given a small role as a bartender.) Other Los Angeles-area locations, as listed in the 14 Jul 1965 DV, 4 Aug 1965 Var, and 23 Feb 1966 LAT, included the Moonfire Temple at 2200 Tuna Canyon Road in Topanga Canyon, Westwood, Bel-Air, Trancas Beach in Malibu, Wrigley Field (a minor league baseball stadium south of downtown Los Angeles), Newhall, San Pedro, Terminal Island, and the Huntington Beach oil fields. Some location action scenes were filmed by assistant director James H. Brown with a second unit crew, while Smight filmed interiors with the “first unit” at the studio. By the time the film was completed, the budget had increased to $3.5 million.
       Harper was William Goldman’s first American-produced screenplay. He created Janet Leigh’s “Susan Harper” character, which did not exist in MacDonald’s book.
       Andre Previn was originally signed to score the film, but he stepped aside for Johnny Mandel, according to the 8 Sep 1965 DV. However, the film used Previn’s song, “Livin’ Alone,” written with his wife, Dory Previn.
       The 22 Oct 1965 DV reported that Warner Bros. retitled the film Paul Newman Is Harper, although this may have been a misprint. The name of Paul Newman’s character had in fact been changed from Lew Archer to “Lew Harper,” and the studio would use the tag line “Paul Newman Is Harper” to echo Paramount Pictures’ earlier “Paul Newman Is Hud” line promoting Hud (1963, see entry). Screenwriter William Goldman later suggested that the producers did not own the Lew Archer name beyond the one novel, and therefore could not have used it in sequels without buying the rights to further books. In any event, the title was ultimately shortened to Harper for the North American market, but remained The Moving Target elsewhere.
       The film opened in Los Angeles on 22 Feb 1966, as listed in the 20 Feb 1966 LAT, and in New York City on 30 Mar 1966, according to the review in the following day’s NYT.
       According to a 4 Jan 1967 Var list of “Big Rental Pictures of 1966,” Harper grossed $5.3 million in its first ten months of release.
       The hoped-for series of Lew Harper films did not materialize, and Newman reprised the role in only one other film, 1975’s The Drowning Pool, based on a Lew Archer novel of the same title. Producer Elliott Kastner later joined Jerry Bick, the original producer of The Moving Target, to make three Philip Marlowe films adapted from Chandler’s novels: The Long Goodbye (1973), Farewell, My Lovely (1975), and The Big Sleep (a 1978 remake, see entries).