Although the film rights for the Wapshot novels and The Housebreaker of Shady Hill (1958) have been purchased, the only film made from Cheever's work has been The Swimmer based on the short story by the same title (produced by Frank Perry and Roger Lewis, directed by Perry and Sydney Pollack and written in collaboration with his wife Eleanor Perry, released by Columbia/Horizon/Dover in 1968). Created with typical Hollywood fanfare, starring Burt Lancaster, Janice Rule, and Kim Hunter, the film was considered too abstract for popular audiences and dismissed by most critics. In general, Cheever was dissatisfied with the Perrys' treatment of his story.

More successful were the three Cheever stories dramatized in 1979 for PBS television as part of the "Great Performances" series. Selected by Peter Weinberg of WNET in New York with Cheever's approval, the dramatizations included "The Sorrows of Gin," adapted by Wendy Wasserman, "O Youth...