On this day in movie history – Harper a.k.a. The Moving Target (1966 movie & novel):

Harper

directed by Jack Smight,

written by William Goldman,

based on the novel The Moving Target by Ross Macdonald,

was released in the United States on February 23, 1966.

Music by Johnny Mandel.

Cast:

Paul Newman, Lauren Bacall, Julie Harris, Arthur Hill, Janet Leigh, Pamela Tiffin, Robert Wagner, Robert Webber, Shelley Winters, Harold Gould, Roy Jenson, Strother Martin.

Recommended reading:

The Moving Target

aka Harper.

By Ross MacDonald.

ISBN-10: 037570146X

ISBN-13: 978-0375701467

Published 1949.

Back cover description:

CRIME FICTION

“Ross Macdonald remains the grandmaster, taking the crime novel to new heights by imbuing it with psychological resonance, complexity of story, and richness of style that remain awe-inspiring. Those of us in his wake owe a debt that can never be paid. – Jonathan Kellerman.

Like many Southern California millionaires, Ralph Sampson keeps odd company. There’s the sun-worshipping holy man whom Sampson once gave his very own mountain; the fading actress with sidelines in astrology and S&M. Now one of Sampson’s friends may have arranged his kidnapping. And as Lew Archer follows the clues from the canyon sanctuaries of the megarich to jazz joints where you get beaten up between sets, The Moving Target blends sex, greed, and family hatred into an explosively readable crime novel.

“Macdonald is one of a handful of writers in the [mystery] genre whose worth and quality surpass the limitations of the form.” – Los Angeles Times.

If any writer can be said to have inherited the mantle of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, it was Ross Macdonald. Between the later 1940s and his death in 1983, he gave the American crime novel a psychological depth and moral complexity that his predecessors had only hinted at. And in the character of Lew Archer, Macdonald redefined the private eye as a roving conscience whop walks the treacherous frontier between criminal guilt and human sin.

VINTAGE CRIME / BLACK LIZARD

On this day in movie history - Misery (1990):

Misery

directed by Rob Reiner,

written by William Goldman,

based on the novel by Stephen King,

was released in the United States on November 30, 1990.
Music by Marc Shaiman.

Cast:

James Caan, Kathy Bates, Richard Farnsworth, Frances Sternhagen, Lauren Bacall, Graham Jarvis, Jerry Potter, J. T. Walsh, Rob Reiner.

On this day in movie history - Dark Passage (1947):

Dark Passage

directed and written by Delmer Daves,

based on the novel by David Goodis,

was released in the United States on September 27, 1947.
Music by Franz Waxman.

Cast:

Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Bruce Bennett, Agnes Moorehead, Tom D'Andrea, Clifton Young, Douglas Kennedy, Rory Mallinson, Houseley Stevenson, John Arledge, Frank Wilcox.

Born on this day – Lauren Bacall:

Lauren Bacall

Actress

September 16, 1924 – August 12, 2014

On this day in movie history - The Big Sleep (1946):

The Big Sleep

directed by Howard Hawks,

written by William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett and Jules Furthman,

based on the novel by Raymond Chandler,

was released in the United States on August 23, 1946.
Music by Max Steiner.

Cast:

Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, John Ridgely, Martha Vickers, Sonia Darrin, Dorothy Malone, Regis Toomey, Peggy Knudsen, Charles Waldron, Charles D. Brown, Bob Steele, Elisha Cook, Jr., Louis Jean Heydt, Trevor Bardette, Tommy Rafferty, Ben Welden, Tom Fadden, Theodore von Eltz.

On this day in movie history - The Shootist (1976 movie & novel):

The Shootist

directed by Don Siegel,

written by Miles Hood Swarthout and Scott Hale,

based on the novel by Glendon Swarthout,

was released in the United States on July 21, 1976.
Music by Elmer Bernstein.

Cast:

John Wayne, Lauren Bacall, Ron Howard, James Stewart, Richard Boone, Hugh O'Brian, Bill McKinney, Harry Morgan, John Carradine, Sheree North, Rick Lenz, Scatman Crothers, Gregg Palmer, Alfred Dennis, Dick Winslow, Melody Thomas Scott, Kathleen O'Malley, Jack Berle, Johnny Crawford, Chuck Dawson, George Dunn, Duke Fishman, Christopher George, Jonathan Goldsmith, Leo Gordon, Charles G. Martin, Jim Michael, Ernesto Molinari, Ricky Nelson, James Nolan, Nick Raymond, Henry Slate, Bob Steele, Ralph Volkie, John Zimeas.

Recommended reading:

The Shootist

By Glendon Swarthout.

Introduction by Miles Swarthout.

Filmed as The Shootist (1976), directed by Don Siegel.

Published by Bison Books.

First published 1975.

ISBN-10: 0803238231

ISBN-13: 9780803238237

Description:

"Such style...such a strong central idea...the showdown is an unremitting as the build-up." – Sunday Times of London.

"This is an extremely well-written Western and gives the reader vivid insight into the workings of the mind of a wanderer and gunman." – Baton Rouge, Louisiana Sunday Advocate.

"The Shootist by Glendon Swarthout is the taleof the Old West's version of the modern 'hit man'. It is a splendid story, well-told and with a really satisfying ending." – Charleston, South Carolina Evening Post.

The Shootist is John Bernard Books, a man of principle and the only surviving gunfighter in a vanishing American West. He rides into El Paso in the year 1901, on the day Queen Victoria died, there to be told by a doctor that he must soon confront the greatest shootist of all: Death. In such a showdown, against such an antagonist, he cannot win. Most men may end their days in bed or take their own lives, but a man-killer has a 3rd option, one which Books decides to exercise. He may choose his own executioner.

As word spreads that the famous assassin has reached the end of his rope, an assortment of vultures gathers to feast upon his corpse--among them a gambler, a rustler, an undertaker, an old love, a reporter, even a boy. Books outwits them, however, by selecting the where, when, who, and why of his death, and writing in fire from a pair of Remingtons the last courageous act of his own legend. The climatic gunfight itself is an incredible performance by an incredible man, and by his creator, Glendon Swarthout.

The Shootist will rank with such classics as Shane and The Ox-Bow Incident, but it is much more than a Western. When, in the final afternoon of his life, J. B. Books crosses a street and enters a saloon to make something of his death, we cross, we enter, with him. He is us.

From a corner of the south window Gillom Rogers spied on the new lodger. The man unpacked his valise and put things in a drawer of the chiffonier, then hung his Price Albert coat in the closet. When he turned from the closet he was in shirt and vest. The boy's eyes rounded. Sewn to each side of the vest was a holster, reversed, and in each holster was a pistol, butt forward. As he watched, sucking in his breath, the man took the weapons out, revolved the cylinders, filled a chamber in one he had evidently fired, and replaced them before hanging the vest, too, in the closet. The pistols were a pair of nickel-plated, short-barreled, unsighted, single-action .44 Remingtons, obviously manufactured to order. The handle of one was black gutta-percha, the other pearl.

Gillom slipped away to take the horse to the livery, letting the breath of revelation out of his lungs. He was seventeen, and spent much of his time in saloons. He was not yet served, but he enjoyed himself and picked up a great deal of miscellaneous information, some of it true, some of it of doubtful authenticity. But the man in corner room was no stranger to him now. He had heard enough scalp-itch, blood-freeze tales to know that only one man carried a similar pair of guns in a similar manner...