James Garner: Rockford, the Maverick

James Scott Bumgarner, born on 07 April 1928 in Oklahoma, known to millions of film-buffs as James Garner, died on 19 July 2014, aged 86. Here’s a tribute to the TV and film-star.

It was a tough childhood, by any standards. James’ mother Mildred died when he was four. His father, Weldon (Bill), an alcoholic, remarried. The new mother was abusive. Soon, the Hollywood High School student James was a drop-out. He joined the merchant marines at age 16, and later, the army. He fought in Korea and was wounded. Those injuries earned him two Purple Hearts. After discharge from the army, he briefly attended the University of Oklahoma. Then followed a staggering string of odd-jobs: gas-station attendant, telephone installer, chauffeur, life-guard, grocery clerk, oil-field worker in Texas, carpet layer with his father, travelling salesman and model for swimming trunks.

A friend of his, Paul Gregory, had meanwhile turned producer at Broadway, and offered him a non-speaking role in the production of The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, in 1954, starring Henry Fonda. Garner held two persons in great esteem--Henry Fonda and Marlon Brando, and considers them as mentors. That was the time he started getting small roles in films and in TV (Cheyenne, 1955, directed by Richard L. Bare). In 1957, he appeared in Sayonara, starring Marlon Brando. That same year, he became a star in the TV series, Maverick, produced by Warner Bros. The character was a shy, womanising, gambler, one who tried to live by guile rather than by guns. It had comedy as well as action in equal measure, and was largely a spoof on Westerns.

Some leading roles in films followed. Darby’s Rangers was started with Charlton Heston, but when he left the film over fee issues, the role went to Garner. That became his first lead role

He later started his own production company, calling it first Maverick and then Cherokee, named after his maternal grand-father, a full-blooded Cherokee Red Indian. He invested his earnings in oil and real estate. Popular TV series were Nichols (1971-72, Garner played a reluctant Sheriff in a small town in Arizona), The Rockford Files (1974-80, for which he won an Emmy Award in 1977) and the sequel to Maverick, Bret Maverick (1981-82), The New Maverick. The Rockford Files, a crime series, had Garner playing Jim Rockford, a not too successful, smooth-talking detective who lives in a trailer with his father, and was done with a dash of humour.

He was the sixth actor to play Raymond Chandler’s legendary private eye, Marlowe, after Humphrey Bogart, George Montgomery, Dick Powell, Robert Montgomery, and Philip Carey who played the role on TV. In the 1994 version of Maverick, Mel Gibson played Maverick while Garner played a Marshall. It was directed by Richard Donner.

Garner got an Academy award nomination for Best Actor for his role in Murphy’s Romance, wherein he played a small-time druggist romancing new-in-town, divorced Mom, Sally Field. Incidentally, Garner played the legendary Wyatt Earp in two cowboy Westerns, Hour of the Gun and Sunset. His Sunset co-star was Bruce Willis, who played Tom Mix.

Viewers of that age recall the commercials he did in the late 1970s and early 1980s for Polaroid. He also promoted beef, till he had to undergo open-heart surgery, which made him a far from ideal ambassador for the meat.

More recent films of James Garner include Space Cowboys (Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland and Clint Eastwood). Garner played Tank Sullivan, a Baptist preacher. Eastwood directed. Another was The Notebook, in which at a modern-day nursing home, an elderly man named Duke (James Garner) begins to read a romantic story from his notebook to a fellow patient (Gena Rowlands).

A great car and racing enthusiast, his first car was a grey 1952 Dodge coupe. “I bought it with my mustering-out pay from the army, plus the cash I won in a poker game on the ship home from Korea.” He loved his pale-blue, 1966 Mini Cooper. “After shooting The Great Escape in Germany, Steve McQueen and I both brought Minis home with us—they had to be among the first imported to the U.S. Steve was my next-door neighbor, and we’d race them up and down our street. I loved that little car and could do anything with it.” Later, he drove the Baja 1000 off-road race several times, and he drove the pace car at the Indianapolis 500 in 1975, 1978 and 1985.

Garner married Lois Clarke in 1956 and they remained together till his demise.

Quotes

*Marriage is a lot like the army, everyone complains, but you'd be surprised at the large number that re-enlist.

*She's so fresh she opens her mouth and the whole world blooms. (On Julie Andrews, his heroine in The Americanization of Emily, Garner’s favourite among all his films)

* Everybody wants blockbusters. I like to see a few pictures now and then that have to do with people and have relationships, and that's what I want to do films about. I don't want to see these sci-fi movies, and I don't want to do one of those. I don't understand it.

*I saw my wife at a pool, flipped over her, and 14 days later we were married.

*When I started working, I didn't have a clue what I was doing, in that I was just wandering around, hoping that I could succeed. Then after I got a little under my belt, it took me about 25 years to feel like I knew what I was doing.

* (Asked if he would ever do a nude scene) I don`t do horror films.

*I’m a Spencer Tracy-type actor. His idea was to be on time, know your words, hit your marks and tell the truth. Most every actor tries to make it something it isn’t (or) looks for the easy way out. I don’t think acting is that difficult if you can put yourself aside and do what the writer wrote.

*I don’t like to speak in public. It scares the devil out of me.

*They really stuck it to me. I was young and dumb. I said a couple things about being under contract that they didn’t like, like that I felt like a ham in a smokehouse. They were waiting to get back at me by laying me off. We went to court and got out of my contract. I didn’t want somebody in an office guiding my career. If I had a failure, I wanted it to be my failure. If I had a success, I wanted it to be my success. (On his conflicts with Warner Bros, in relation to his contractual obligations to the Bret Maverick TV series.

*I got into the business to put a roof over my head. I wasn’t looking for star status. I just wanted to keep working.

*About everything I ever have done, in the way of lawsuits against studios, I’ve won them all, because I was right every time.

Selected filmography

Toward the Unknown, The Girl He Left Behind 1956

Shoot-out at Medicine Bend, Sayonara 1957

Darby’s Rangers 1958 (First lead role)

Up Periscope 1959

Boys’ Night Out 1962

The Great Escape, The Thrill of it All, Move Over Darling, The Wheeler Dealers 1963

The Americanization of Emily 1964

36 Hours 1965

Grand Prix 1966

Hour of the Gun 1967

Marlowe, Support Your Local Sheriff 1969

A Man Called Sledge 1970

The Fan 1981

Victor/Victoria 1982

Heartsounds 1984

Murphy’s Romance 1985

Sunset 1987

Fire in the Sky 1993

Maverick 1994

My Fellow Americans 1996

Twilight 1998

Space Cowboys 2000

Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood 2002

The Notebook 2004