ACTOR JAMES GARNER DEAD AT AGE 86.
NEW YORK — Few actors could register disbelief, exasperation or annoyance with more comic subtlety.
James Garner had a way of widening his eyes while the corner of his mouth sagged ever so slightly. Maybe he would swallow once to further make his point.
This portrait of fleeting disquiet could be understood, and identified with, by every member of the audience. Never mind Garner was tall, brawny and moviestar handsome. The persona he perfected was never less than manly, good with his dukes and charming to the ladies, but his heroics were kept human-scale thanks to his gift for the comic turn. He remained one of the people.
He burst on the scene with this disarming style in the 1950s TV Western, Maverick, which led to a stellar career in TV and films such as The Rockford Files and his Oscar-nominated Murphy’s Romance.
The 86-year-old Garner, who was found dead of natural causes at his Los Angeles home on Saturday, was adept at drama and action. But he was best known for his lowkey, wisecracking style, especially on his hit TV series, Maverick and The Rockford Files.
His quick-witted avoidance of conflict offered a refreshing new take on the American hero, contrasting with the blunt toughness of John Wayne and the laconic trigger-happiness of Clint Eastwood.
There’s no better display of Garner’s Everyman majesty than the NBC series The Rockford Files (1974-80). He played an L.A. private eye and wrongly jailed ex- con who seemed to rarely get paid, or even get thanks, for the cases he took, while helplessly getting drawn into trouble to help someone who was neither a client nor maybe even a friend. Well into his ‘70s, the handsome Oklahoman remained active in both TV and film. In 2002, he was Sandra Bullock’s father in the film Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. The following year, he joined the cast of 8 Simple Rules ... For Dating My Teenage Daughter, playing the grandfather on the sitcom — and helping ground it with his reassuring presence — after star John Ritter, who played the father, died during the show’s second season.
When Garner received the Screen Actors Guild’s lifetime achievement award in 2005, he quipped, “I’m not at all sure how I got here.” But in his 2011 memoir, The Garner Files, he provided some amusing and enlightening clues, including his penchant for bluntly expressed opinions and a practice for decking people who said something nasty to his face, including an obnoxious fan and an abusive stepmother.
And when he suspected his studio of cheating him on residual payments — a not-unheard-of condition in Hollywood — Garner spoke out loudly and fought back with lawsuits.
They all deserved it, Garner declared in his book.
It was in 1957 when the ABC network, desperate to compete on ratings-rich Sunday night, scheduled Maverick against CBS’s powerhouse The Ed Sullivan Show and NBC’s The Steve Allen Show. To everyone’s surprise — except Garner’s — Maverick soon outpolled them both.
At a time when the networks were awash with hard-eyed, traditional Western heroes, Bret Maverick provided a breath of fresh air. With his sardonic tone and his eagerness to talk his way out of a squabble rather than pull out his six-shooter.
After a couple of years, Garner felt the series was losing its creative edge, and he found a legal loophole to escape his contract in 1960.
His first film after Maverick established him as a movie actor. It was The Children’s Hour, William Wyler’s remake of Lillian Hellman’s lesbian drama that co-starred Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine.
He followed in a successful comedy with Kim Novak, Boys Night Out, and then established his box-office appeal with the 1963 blockbuster war drama The Great Escape and two smash comedies with Doris Day — The Thrill of It All and Move Over Darling.