JAMES GARNER
His daughter shares her warm memories of the actor, war hero and beloved humanitarian.
he found a way to get it,” Gigi says. “Also, he loved children, and he took care of a Korean orphan and made sure he had clothes, shoes and food.”
After James returned home, a pal got him a bit part in Broadway’s The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, starring Henry Fonda, a role model of quiet strength. He started landing larger roles and found fame with Maverick. “I never wanted to be an actor,” James claimed. “I got stuck in it, and I liked what I was doing.”
So did his co-stars. “I had tremendous respect for him,” David McCallum, his co-star in ’63’s The Great Escape, tells Closer. “Watching him work in that casual, American, brilliant comedic style was just a great pleasure.”
James remained down-to-earth throughout his life. “He never forgot where he came from,” says Gigi. “He brought Oklahoma with him, and he never let anything go to his head.” A country-music lover, he’d have pals like Waylon Jennings, Jessi Colter and John Conlee over to perform at his house. “Jim had a real good ol’ boy quality to him,” Stuart says. “But he was bright and aware politically, and he always read quality material. He was a bit of a dichotomy.”
A TRUE MAVERICK
Although James projected a breezy charm on-screen, he was dead serious when it came to important issues. “He was a humanitarian,” remembers Diahann Carroll, who joined James, Marlon Brando, and other celebrities for Martin Luther King’s 1963 March on Washington. “James was the guiding father of that moment.”
He also stood up to powerful studios when he felt mistreated, suing Warner Bros. for breach of contract on Maverick and Universal over residuals from The Rockford Files. “My dad was a champion for the underdog,” says Gigi. “He had a very strong moral character, and he believed what was right was right.”
Unlike Bret Maverick or Jim Rockford, who often tried to talk their way out of conflicts, James never backed down from a fight. “He had a temper,” says Stuart, laughing: “One time, at the front gate of Universal, a producer who had copied a lot of the Rockford Files theme song walked up to Jim and said, ‘I heard you said something about me,’ and Jim just slugged him! An old security guard named Scotty was there, and Jim said, ‘Scotty, did you see that?’ and Scotty said, ‘No, sir.’ And Jim said, ‘Watch this, Scotty,’ and he hit the guy again!”
Another of James’ deeply held beliefs was in the sanctity of marriage. “I saw my wife at a pool, flipped over her, and 14 days later, we were married,” he gushed of Lois Clarke, who had a 7-year-old daughter, Kimberly, when they wed in 1956; Gigi arrived two years later. Although James and Lois separated briefly in the ’70s, “in that generation, people stayed together and didn’t divorce at the drop of a hat,” Gigi says. They remained married for nearly 58 years, until James’ death at 86 in 2014. “They nurtured their relationship,” says Stuart. “Lois was very much a part and parcel of who Jim became.”
Equally important to James were his kids. “He was the type of dad who
got down on the floor and played with you — he was present,” Gigi says. “He was the greatest father in the world.”
He became a father figure to many of his co-stars, as well. “Working with Jim in a scene was as real as you can get,” says Tom Selleck, who guested on several episodes of The Rockford Files. “There wasn’t a false note that came out of his mouth, and that grounded everybody around him. He was not a competitive actor — he was a collaborative actor.”
James also taught Tom an important lesson about sticking to your guns. The younger actor had reservations about the pilot script for Magnum, P.I., which he considered too James Bond–like, and the showbiz veteran encouraged him to make his voice heard. “It was pretty pivotal advice, as it turned out, and he offered it with a grain of salt, but I listened,” Tom says. “It may have been pivotal to my whole future in the business.”
THE ULTIMATE GIFT
As James said, “I’ve had to work hard at that easygoing manner you see onscreen,” and his seemingly effortless performances made him somewhat underrated for many years. “I recall thinking to myself, ‘I can’t imagine my dad playing a pharmacist,’” Gigi says of his 1985 role as Sally Field’s love interest in Murphy’s Romance. “And that was the only film that got him an Oscar nomination!”
The star was better known for playing men of action — cowboys, soldiers and detectives. But the many injuries he suffered doing stunts (along with his wartime wounds) eventually caught up with him, and he battled chronic pain for much of his life. “Oh, it was awful,” Gigi says. “He had to stop doing Rockford Files because he was so beat-up.” Adds Stuart, “You could see it in his face. Sometimes he’d make a move, and you could tell it hurt like hell.” Still, James maintained his trademark sense of humor, quipping, “If I knew I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.”
No question James was a tough customer, surviving quintuple heart bypass surgery in 1988 and a stroke in 2008. In his final years, “he fell in love with Starz Encore’s Westerns channel and watched it 24/7,” Gigi says. “The only time he would change the channel was if there was a Raiders [pro football] game on or if he was in the movie! It was very comforting to watch all his friends, like Henry Fonda.”
James has been gone for three years now, but his memory lives on. “I miss him,” says Stuart. “It was an honor and a privilege to know him.” Concludes Gigi, “His legacy should be more about the man, not about the actor. Somebody asked him how he wanted to be remembered, and he said, ‘With a smile.’ That was good enough for him.” — Reporting by
Katie Bruno and Ilyssa Panitz
“When people say, ‘That’s just you — that’s not acting,’ it’s the best compliment I can get.”
— James