On July 18, 1964, John Cheever published a short story in The New Yorker magazine entitled The Swimmer. The story was optioned and made into a movie released in 1968. The masterful screenplay was written by Eleanor Perry and the film was brilliantly directed by her husband, Frank Perry. The couple had already been nominated for an Oscar for their independent film David and Lisa (1962) and would go on to work on five more films together, including The Swimmer and Diary of a Mad Housewife (1970). The couple divorced in 1971, and Frank Perry later directed Mommie Dearest (1981).
The Swimmer's cast included Burt Lancaster as Ned Merrill, Janet Landgard as Julie Ann Hooper, Janice Rule as Shirley Abbott, Joan Rivers as Joan (her film debut) and Kim Hunter as Betty Graham. The film takes place on a warm Sunday afternoon in wealthy Westchester County of the 1960s, An aging but well-built Ned is over at the house of friends when he realizes he can swim home by following a river of friends' pools. [Photo still above of Janice Rule and Burt Lancaster]
We sense something is slightly off from the start, given the expressions on the faces of his friends. As Ned travels from house to house, we begin to sense there are many issues left unsaid, that the trail is a scorched path of unforgivable and ruinous indiscretions. And that's as much as I'll tell you. Ned's pool-hopping journey is a metaphor for suburbia's self-absorption, narcissism, egomania, alcohol consumption, garish taste and marital woes. None of that is discussed in the film, only insinuated in the reactions to Ned in successive scenes. [Photo still above of Burt Lancaster]
The Swimmer remains one of my favorite films for the off-beat way in which Lancaster plays the thriving and then dissolving Ned. Though the movie wasn't praised by critics initially, The Swimmer clearly was ahead of its time and above the heads of most theater audiences and many of those who reviewed it. [Photo still above of Janet Landgard and Burt Lancaster]
Notes: Cheever has a brief cameo (29:37) greeting Lancaster and Landgard at a pool party. The music is by Marvin Hamlisch.
Here's The Swimmer (1968)...
