The 6 Oct 1968 NYT and 9 Oct 1968 Var reported that independent writer-director Robert Downey was ready to begin filming Putney Swope in New York City the following week, on 14 Oct 1968. The $200,000 production was scheduled to last ten weeks. Floyd L. Peterson was listed as producer, and stage actor L. Errol Jaye had been hired to portray the eponymous “Putney Swope.” Calling the film “a kind of black Marx Brothers satire,” Downey claimed it would feature “about 200 actors, 80 percent of whom are Negroes.” However, according to several sources, including the 18 Oct 1968 DV and 23 Oct 1968 Var, Downey’s production company refused to sign a contract with the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), and the union threatened disciplinary action against any member involved in the film, claiming that “PS Productions is exploiting the actors by hiring them at sub-standard wages and conditions.” L. Errol Jaye, along with eight other SAG members, left the production, and non-union actor Arnold Johnson replaced him. Producer Peterson told Var that since Putney Swope required 300 extras for mostly weekend scenes, there was no way to maintain union requirements, which included “double-pay” overtime, on a $200,000 budget. He rejected SAG’s suggestion that the production severely cut its roster in order to maintain the union pay scale. Also, Laura Greene, an African-American actress who portrayed a woman that marries Putney Swope, ignored the union’s demands, according to the 27 Nov 1968 Var. Floyd L. Peterson and executive producer Arthur M. Dubow took the case to the National Labor Relations Board, claiming that since most of the film’s actors were black, SAG’s actions were discriminatory. In addition, SAG did not have enough African American members to satisfy the film’s casting requirements, nor enough of the “New York types” that Downey wanted. The producers likened Putney Swope to an off-Broadway stage show, which had a separate wage standard from mainstream Broadway. They sought a deferred payment plan with SAG actors, who would eventually receive the difference between their salaries and the union scale when the film recouped its producers’ investments.
       The 13 Nov 1968 Var broke down the list of the film’s investors, as filed with the New York County Clerk’s office on 22 Oct 1968. The “general partners” were Downey’s Goose Down Productions and Floyd L. Peterson’s Herald Productions. “Limited partners,” who would share in fifty percent of the profits, included C & S Associates of Boston ($40,000); executive producer Arthur M. Dubow of New York ($23,000); Fred Hirschborn, Jr. of Connecticut ($22,000); Thomas J. Coolidge, Jr. ($10,000) and Charles Higginson ($10,000) of Washington, D.C; Thomas Urmston, Jr. of New York ($10,000), and William Waits of New York ($3,000). It was Downing’s filing with the county clerk’s office that originally convinced the New York branch of SAG that the budget of Putney Swope was high enough to require union standards.
       According to the 29 Dec 1968 NYT, the first day of shooting took place in a trash-littered alley in the Bowery section of Lower Manhattan, where Putney Swope’s advertising agency was filming an advertisement for the “Fan-A-Way” electric fan. To lend the scene authenticity, Robert Downey hired a real derelict for $10 and four bottles of wine, and directed him to lie sleeping on a mound of trash. A Method actor at heart, the derelict passed out after drinking his wine and delivered his performance perfectly. David Rockefeller’s Chase Manhattan Bank headquarters stood in for Swope’s “Truth and Soul” advertising agency offices.
       The film was shot in black and white, and Truth and Soul’s television commercials were filmed in color.
       Near the end of the film, audio from Robert Downey’s previous film, Chafed Elbows, can be heard on a television set, as a mother repeatedly tells her son, “I love you, Walter.”
       According to various sources, Robert Downey overdubbed all of Arnold Johnson’s dialogue with his own voice.
       Don Rugoff’s Cinema V refused to confirm or deny to the 9 Jul 1969 Var that he paid Downey a $250,000 advance to distribute Putney Swope. The film was set to open at the Cinema II in New York City the following day. However, the 16 Jul 1969 Var claimed it opened a day later, on 11 Jul 1969, and was “breaking records.” Critical response was generally positive. In the 11 Jul 1969 NYT, Vincent Canby called it “funny, sophomoric, brilliant, obscene, disjointed, marvelous, unintelligible and relevant.” However, New York’s Daily News critic, Wanda Hale, quoted in the 16 Jul 1969 Var, blasted Putney Swope as “The most offensive picture I’ve ever seen…violently anti-Negro, anti-Chinese, anti white, including Jews.” The 9 Jul 1969 Var felt that “nothing much beyond marginal interest occurs.” When the film finally opened in Los Angeles six months later, on 21 Jan 1970, the next day’s LAT called it “a very gaudy and exhilarating…slam-bang satire,” and acknowledged that having already achieved “a very large overground commercial success elsewhere,” the film was “certain to be a smash here.”
       After eighteen months of distribution as “a self-imposed X”-rated picture, Putney Swope was submitted to the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and granted an R-rating, the 30 Dec 1970 DV reported.
       The U.S. Library of Congress (www.loc.gov) inducted Putney Swope into its National Film Registry on 14 Dec 2016.
       End credits contain the following acknowledgment: “Special thanks to John Simon, The Guggenheim Foundation.”