Published on: Jul 20, 2014

 

Sad to say goodbye to a Great Star

 

James Garner, the US star of hit TV series The Rockford Files and Maverick and films including The Great Escape, has died aged 86, Garner had suffered ill health since a severe stroke in 2008. James appeared on Broadway, in 1954 a friend, Paul Gregory, whom Garner had met while attending Hollywood High School, persuaded Garner to take a non-speaking role in the Broadway production of The Caine Mutiny Court Martial, where he was able to study actor Henry Fonda night after night.

Garner starred in more than 50 films including The Great Escape (1963), Paddy Chayefsky’s The Americanization of Emily (1964), Grand Prix (1966), Blake Edwards’ Victor Victoria (1982), Murphy’s Romance (1985) for which he received an Academy Award nomination, and The Notebook (2004).

Highlights from James small screen career include from Cheyenne (TV Series) 195 5-1957, Maverick 1957-1962, The Rockford Files 1974 – 1980, Bret Maverick 1981 – 1982. During the late 1970s, James was also well know for a popular series of television commercials advertising with Mariette Hartley. The two actors had such on-screen chemistry that it was often (erroneously) believed that they were married in real life. Her biography contains a photo of her in a T-shirt proclaiming: “I am not Jim Rockford’s wife”Hartley guest-starred in a memorable episode of Garner’s TV series The Rockford Files during this period

James Garner (born James Scott Bumgarner; April 7, 1928 – July 19, 2014) was an American film and television actor, one of the first Hollywood actors to excel in both media. He starred in several television series spanning a career of more than five decades which included such popular roles as Bret Maverick in the 1950s western-comedy series, Maverick, and Jim Rockford in the 1970s detective drama, The Rockford Files.

Garner was closely advised by financial adviser Irving Leonard, who also advised Clint Eastwood in the late 1950s and 1960s. After several feature film roles, including Sayonara with Marlon Brando, Garner got his big break playing the role of professional gambler Bret Maverick in the comedy Western series Maverick from 1957 to 1960. Garner was earlier considered for the lead role in another Warner Brothers Western series, Cheyenne, but that role went to Clint Walker because the casting director couldn’t reach Garner in time (according to Garner’s autobiography), and Garner wound up playing an Army officer in the pilot instead.

Only Garner and series creator Roy Huggins thought Maverick could compete with The Ed Sullivan Show and The Steve Allen Show. The show almost immediately made Garner a household name. Various actors had recurring roles as Maverick foils, including Efrem Zimbalist, Jr as “Dandy Jim Buckley,” Richard Long as “Gentleman Jack Darby,” Leo Gordon as “Big Mike McComb,” and Diane Brewster as “Samantha Crawford” (Huggins’ mother’s maiden name) while the series veered effortlessly from comedy to adventure and back again. The relationship with Huggins, the creator and original producer of Maverick, would later pay dividends for Garner.

After his acrimonious departure from Warner Bros., in the 1960s he starred in such films as The Children’s Hour (1962) with Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine; Boys’ Night Out (1962) with Kim Novak and Tony Randall; The Thrill of It All (1963) with Doris Day; Move Over, Darling (a 1963 remake of My Favorite Wife also starring Doris Day in which Garner played Cary Grant’s role); The Great Escape (1963) with Steve McQueen; The Americanization of Emily (1964) with Julie Andrews; The Art of Love (1965) with Dick Van Dyke; Duel at Diablo (1966) with Sidney Poitier; and as Wyatt Earp in Hour of the Gun (1967) with Jason Robards, Jr. as Doc Holliday, along with nine other theatrical releases during the decade.

The Americanization of Emily with Julie Andrews, a literate anti-war D-Day comedy, featured a screenplay written by Paddy Chayefsky and has remained Garner’s favorite of all his work. In 1963 exhibitors voted him the 16th most popular star in the US. The cult racing film Grand Prix, directed by John Frankenheimer, left Garner with a fascination for car racing that he often explored by actually racing during the ensuing years. The expensive Cinerama epic did not fare as well as expected at the box office. In 1969, Garner joined a long list of actors to play Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe in Marlowe, a detective drama featuring an early karate scene with Bruce Lee. The same year, Garner scored a hit with the comedy Western Support Your Local Sheriff! featuring Walter Brennan and Jack Elam.

In the 1970s, Roy Huggins had an idea to remake Maverick, but this time as a modern-day private detective. Huggins teamed with co-creator Stephen J. Cannell, and the pair tapped Garner to attempt to rekindle the success of Maverick, eventually recycling many of the plots from the original series. Starting with the 1974 season, Garner appeared as private investigator Jim Rockford in The Rockford Files. He appeared for six seasons, for which he received an Emmy Award for Best Actor in 1977. Veteran character actor Noah Beery, Jr. (Wallace Beery’s nephew) played Rockford’s father, Joseph “Rocky” Rockford, while Gretchen Corbett portrayed Rockford’s lawyer and sometime lover, Beth Davenport, until she left the series over a salary dispute with the studio.

During the 1980s, Garner played dramatic roles in a number of TV movies, including Heartsounds (with Mary Tyler Moore), Promise (with Piper Laurie) and My Name Is Bill W. In 1984, he played the lead in Joseph Wambaugh’s The Glitter Dome for HBO Pictures, which was being directed by his Rockford Files co-star Stuart Margolin. The film generated a mild controversy for a bondage sequence featuring Garner and co-star Margot Kidder. He was nominated for his first Oscar award for Best Actor in a Leading Role in the movie Murphy’s Romance opposite Sally Field. Field, and director Martin Ritt, had to fight the studio, Columbia Pictures, to have Garner cast, since he was regarded as a TV actor by then (despite having co-starred in the box office hit Victor Victoria opposite Julie Andrews two years earlier). Columbia didn’t want to make the picture at all, because it had no “sex or violence” in it.

 

In 1991, Garner starred in Man of the People, a television series about a con man chosen to fill an empty seat on a city council, with Kate Mulgrew and Corinne Bohrer. Despite reasonably fair ratings, the show was canceled after only 10 episodes. In 1993, Garner played the lead in another well-received TV-movie, Barbarians at the Gate, and went on to reprise his role as Jim Rockford in eight The Rockford Files made-for-TV movies beginning the following year. The powerfully frenetic opening theme song from the original series was rerecorded and slowed to a mournfully funereal pace, and practically everyone in the original cast of recurring characters returned for the new episodes except Noah Beery, Jr., who had died in the interim. For the second half of the 1980s, Garner appeared in several of the North American market Mazda television commercials as an on screen spokesman.

For his contribution to the film and television industry, Garner received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (at 6927 Hollywood Boulevard). In 1990, he was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. He was also inducted into the Television Hall of Fame that same year. In February 2005, he received the Screen Actors Guild’s Lifetime Achievement Award. He was also nominated for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role that year, for The Notebook. When Morgan Freeman won that prize for his work in Million Dollar Baby, he led the audience in a sing-along of the original Maverick theme song, written by David Buttolph and Paul Francis Webster. In 2010, the Television Critics Association gave Garner its annual Career Achievement Award.

Filmography – James Garner

 

1956	Toward the Unknown	Major Joe Craven
1956	The Girl He Left Behind	Preston
1957	Shoot-Out at Medicine Bend	Sgt. John Maitland	With Randolph Scott
1957	Sayonara	Capt. Mike Bailey, USMC	With Marlon Brando
1958	Darby’s Rangers	COL (BGen, posthumous) William Orlando Darby	With Stuart Whitman
1959	Up Periscope	Lt. JG. Kenneth M. Braden	With Edmond O’Brien
1959	Alias Jesse James	Bret Maverick	(cameo)
1960	Cash McCall	Cash McCall	With Natalie Wood
1961	The Children’s Hour	Dr. Joe Cardin	With Audrey Hepburn
1962	Boys’ Night Out	Fred Williams	With Kim Novak
1963	The Great Escape	Flight Lieutenant Bob Hendley DFC RAF, “The Scrounger”	With Steve McQueen
1963	The Thrill of It All	Dr. Gerald Boyer	With Doris Day
1963	The Wheeler Dealers	Henry Tyroon	With Lee Remick
1963	Move Over, Darling	Nick Arden	With Doris Day
1964	Action on the Beach		(short subject)
1964	The Americanization of Emily	Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. “Charlie” Madison	With Julie Andrews Written by Paddy Chayevsky
1965	36 Hours	Major Jefferson F. Pike	With Eva Marie Saint
1965	The Art of Love	Casey Barnett	With Dick Van Dyke
1966	Grand Prix: Challenge of the Champions		(short subject)
1966	A Man Could Get Killed	William Beddoes	With Melina Mercouri
1966	Duel at Diablo	Jess Remsberg	With Sidney Poitier
1966	Mister Buddwing	Mr. Buddwing	With Jean Simmons
1966	Grand Prix	Pete Aron	With Eva Marie Saint
1967	Hour of the Gun	Wyatt Earp	With Jason Robards, Jr.
1968	Once Upon a Wheel		(documentary)
1968	The Man Who Makes the Difference		(short subject)
1968	How Sweet It Is!	Grif	With Debbie Reynolds
1968	The Pink Jungle		With Eva Renzi
1969	The Racing Scene		(documentary)
1969	Support Your Local Sheriff!	Jason McCullough	With Walter Brennan
1969	Marlowe		With Bruce Lee
1970	A Man Called Sledge	Sledge	With Dennis Weaver
1971	Support Your Local Gunfighter!	Latigo Smith	With Jack Elam
1971	Skin Game		With Louis Gossett, Jr.
1971	Nichols	Sheriff Jim Nichols	With Margot Kidder
1972	They Only Kill Their Masters		With Katharine Ross
1973	One Little Indian		With Vera Miles
1974	The Castaway Cowboy		With Vera Miles
1980	HealtH		With Lauren Bacall
1981	The Fan	Jake Berman	With Lauren Bacall
1982	Victor Victoria	King Marchand	With Julie Andrews
1984	Heartsounds		With Mary Tyler Moore
1984	Tank	Sgt Maj Zack Carey	With Shirley Jones
1985	Murphy’s Romance	Murphy Jones	With Sally Field
1985	Promise
1988	Sunset	Wyatt Earp	With Bruce Willis
1989	My Name is Bill W.		(TV)
1990	Decoration Day	Albert Sidney Finch
1992	The Distinguished Gentleman	Jeff Johnson
1993	Fire in the Sky
1993	Barbarians at the Gate	F. Ross Johnson	(TV)
1994	Breathing Lessons		(TV) With Joanne Woodward
1994	Maverick	Zane Cooper	With Mel Gibson
1995	Streets of Laredo	Woodrow F. Call	(TV) With Sissy Spacek
1996	Wild Bill: Hollywood Maverick		(documentary)
1996	My Fellow Americans		With Jack Lemmon
1997	The Hidden Dimension		(documentary) (narrator)
1997	Dead Silence		(TV film version of the Jeffery Deaver novel A Maiden’s Grave)
1998	Twilight		With Paul Newman
1998	Legalese		(TV)
1999	Century of Country		Host: 13 episodes
1999	One Special Night		With Julie Andrews
2000	The Last Debate		With Peter Gallagher
2000	Space Cowboys		With Clint Eastwood
2001	Atlantis: The Lost Empire	Commander Lyle Tiberius Rourke	(voice)
2002	Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood	Shepard James Walker “Shep”	with Ellen Burstyn
2003	The Land Before Time X: The Great Longneck Migration		Pat (voice) (direct-to-DVD)
2004	The Notebook	Old Noah Calhoun “Duke”	With Gena Rowlands
2004	8 Simple Rules		(2002-2005)
2004	Al Roach: Private Investigator		(short subject) (voice)
2007	The Ultimate Gift	Red Stevens
2007	Battle for Terra		(voice)
2010	Superman/Shazam!: The Return of Black Adam	Shazam	(voice)