The story was published in The New Yorker on July 18, 1964. Movie mogul Sam Spiegel quickly bought the film rights and a script of the story was eventually crafted by Eleanor Perry with her husband, Frank Perry directing the film. The role of Neddy was offered to William Holden, who turned it down. Spiegel settled for Burt Lancaster in the role, but both Frank Perry and John Cheever, who had taken an interest in the production, believed Lancaster was miscast.
In the chronology section of the Library of America edition of Cheever’s Complete Novels, it reads:
1966. That summer a film adaptation of “The Swimmer,” starring Burt Lancaster, is filmed in Westport [Connecticut]. Cheever frequently visits the set and finally gets to do a cameo in which he appears at a poolside cocktail party, greeting Lancaster and “this terrific 18-year-old dish named Janet Landgard."
When the film was finished, Spiegel wouldn’t give Perry the final cut and he was so mystified by it that, after doing nothing with it for several months except screen it at parties, he hired Sydney Pollack to shoot extra scenes - like the ludicrous horse track scene in which Lancaster and Janet Landgard run around the track, bounding over the hurdles in slow motion. Then Spiegel removed his name from the film and sold it to Columbia Pictures. The LOA Chronology continues:
1968 The Swimmer finally released in May after many problems: producer Sam Spiegel fires the original director, Frank Perry, and hires a young Sydney Pollack to reshoot a number of scenes in Beverly Hills. Cheever is mostly appalled by finished movie – particularly the overwrought score by Marvin Hamlisch (“Frank and I wanted Miles Davis for the music but instead we got a 65-piece all-girl string orchestra”), as well as the “Teamster’s Union hose-type rainstorm” through which Lancaster must stagger at the end.
I remember watching it on TV a few years after its release, long before I got around to reading Cheever. I remember finding it interestingly dream-like, somewhat like a Twilight Zone episode. Looking at it now, lovingly restored by Grindhouse, who released it on Blu-Ray in 2014, I find it an almost total failure. Frank Perry, who had already been noted for his arty touch, made far too many strategic mistakes, like allowing his cameraman (David L. Quaid) to shoot scenes through trees and foliage, zooming in and out, in and out of focus.
I never imagined Neddy Merrill as a strapping 6’2” Burt Lancaster. He was 52 when he did the film, and his blue swimming trunks must’ve been carefully chosen to show off his package to best effect. So he spends most of his time onscreen (the entire film) sucking in his gut. At one point, when he arrives at the Hallorans’, who are so unconventional that they don’t bother to wear clothes, Lancaster slips out of his trunks to oblige them, and we are treated (if that is the word) to a view of his untanned buttocks. The frequent closeups of Lancaster’s face magnify his pock marks. The only improvement in the film as it proceeds is the gradual disappearance of Lancaster’s unnerving grin.
Some characters not in the story are thrown in, like a 20-year-old blonde named Julie, played by Janet Landgard, who tags along with Neddy on his lunatic excursion until his intentions with her become obvious. He puts his hand on her bare stomach (she’s wearing a bikini) and quotes The Song of Solomon: “thy belly is like an heap of wheat set about with lilies.” Shortly thereafter, Julie wisely runs.
The only time the film works is when Neddy has to cross a highway. It comes closest to Cheever’s account:
Had you gone for a Sunday afternoon ride that day you might have seen him, close to naked, standing on the shoulders of Route 424, waiting for a chance to cross. You might have wondered if he was the victim of foul play, had his car broken down, or was he merely a fool. Standing barefoot in the deposits of the highway— beer cans, rags, and blowout patches— exposed to all kinds of ridicule, he seemed pitiful. He had known when he started that this was a part of his journey— it had been on his maps— but confronted with the lines of traffic, worming through the summery light, he found himself unprepared. He was laughed at, jeered at, a beer can was thrown at him, and he had no dignity or humor to bring to the situation. He could have gone back, back to the Westerhazys’, where Lucinda would still be sitting in the sun. He had signed nothing, vowed nothing, pledged nothing, not even to himself. Why, believing as he did, that all human obduracy was susceptible to common sense, was he unable to turn back? Why was he determined to complete his journey even if it meant putting his life in danger? At what point had this prank, this joke, this piece of horseplay become serious? He could not go back, he could not even recall with any clearness the green water at the Westerhazys’, the sense of inhaling the day’s components, the friendly and relaxed voices saying that they had drunk too much. In the space of an hour, more or less, he had covered a distance that made his return impossible.
An old man, tooling down the highway at fifteen miles an hour, let him get to the middle of the road, where there was a grass divider. Here he was exposed to the ridicule of the north bound traffic, but after ten or fifteen minutes he was able to cross.
This scene in the film is followed by Neddy’s having to swim the length of an overcrowded public swimming pool, which is suitably appalling. But the scene goes on too long, and it’s followed by the worst scene in the film, in which he hobbles to the house of his mistress, Shirley Adams. She is played by Janice Rule, who had been brought in when Spiegel decided to reshoot the scene in which the role was originally played by Barbara Loden.
When Neddy finally limps to what’s supposed to be his home, it comes as no surprise that he finds everything locked and unkempt. The disused tennis court littered with dead leaves, with its slack, sagging net, was poignant enough without Neddy having to hear ghostly laughter and and an invisible tennis match like the one at the end of Antonioni’s Blow-Up. And someone decided to throw in a rainstorm to boot.
In 1968 Roger Ebert wrote of the film: "The Swimmer," is a strange, stylized work, a brilliant and disturbing one.” He also calls Lancaster’s performance his finest. The film flopped, despite some approving critical notices. It has since developed a cult following, for reasons that escape me. If it succeeded at anything, The Swimmer sent some viewers back to Cheever’s story.
(1) I wrote a piece, "Swimming to Bullet Park," about the story six years ago.
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