GARNER: ‘ I ’ M NOT AN ACTOR, I ’ M A REACTOR’
If James Garner hadn’t ended up as an actor, what would have he become?
Garner didn’t skip a beat in replying.
“A bum,” he replied pleasantly.
That was back in 1994, and Garner, then 66, was in a New York hotel room chatting about the new film version of Maverick, a highgloss reworking of the ’50s TV show that had made him a star. But as usual, he wasn’t doing the star thing. He was explaining why, during location shooting for the film, he had moved out of the luxury accommodation booked for himself and costars Jodie Foster and Mel Gibson.
He had checked into a nearby Best Western instead. The reason: it offered more cable outlets, meaning that he’s be able to watch the Discovery and Learning channels.
Garner, who died on the weekend in Los Angeles, always had trouble taking himself seriously. More than once, this junior high dropout famously observed that he only ended up in the acting business because he needed a roof over his head, that he had tried it as a whim after a series of dead-end jobs — carpet layer, gas jockey, dishwasher, oilfield roughneck, to name only a few.
His witty, laid-back persona enlivened two classic TV series — as an affable gambler in the western spoof, Maverick, and as trouble-prone private eye Jim Rockford in The Rockford Files.
But he also broke down barriers as one of the first television stars to make a successful transition to motion pictures. “It was tough for an actor to move from one medium to another,” he remembered back in 1994.
When Garner talked to reporters, the self-deprecation was always present. Indeed, he could be as irreverent towards himself as he was towards the big studios that employed him. But sometimes, the steel would surface.
He never forgot the furious Warner Brothers executive who told him he was finished in Hollywood after he walked out on his Maverick contract in protest against his $500-a-week salary.
“They were wrong weren’t they?” Garner told us happily four decades later. And yes, the courts did rule in the rebellious young actor’s favour.
If Garner was often dismissed as a lightweight actor, it was because he did in fact make a lot of lightweight movies. He also contributed to this perception with many of his own comments. “It ain’t gonna happen!” he firmly declared when asked about his Oscar chances.
Yet his career is sprinkled with performances of genuine substance — ranging from an unusually sombre Wyatt Earp in the 1967 Hour of The Gun to a Wall Street predator in the 1992 Barbarians At The Gate.
He also showed a remarkable stoicism in his later years.
His last major film was The Notebook in 2004 and he was terrible pain when he hobbled into the interview suite, leaning heavily on his cane. Even lowering himself into a chair was an ordeal — but then came the Garner grin and a cheerful “good morning” to reporters.