Obituary: James Garner
Longtime actor’s stellar career included “Maverick,” “The Rockford Files” and “The Great Escape.” He was 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.
This portrait of fleeting disquiet could be understood, and identified with, by every member of the audience. Never mind Mr. Garner was tall, brawny and, well, movie-star 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 Mr. 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 low-key, wisecracking style.
There’s no better display of Mr. Garner’s everyman majesty than the NBC series “The Rockford Files” (1974-80). He played an L.A. private eye and wrongly jailed excon 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. He lived in a trailer with an answering machine that, in the show’s opening titles, always took a message that had nothing to do with a paying job, but more often was a complaining call from a cranky creditor.
Through it all, Jim Rockford, however down on his luck, persevered hopefully. He wore the veneer of a cynic but led with his heart. Putting all that on screen was Mr. Garner’s magic.
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.
He even scored in commercials. During the late 1970s, he was paired with actress Mariette Hartley in a popular series of ads for Polaroid cameras. Their on-screen banter felt so authentic that many viewers mistakenly believed they were husband and wife.
When Mr. 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.
And when he suspected his studio of cheating him on residual payments — a not-unheard-of condition in Hollywood — Mr. Garner spoke out loudly and fought back with lawsuits.
They all deserved it, Mr. 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 Mr. 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, the conartist Westerner seemed to scoff at the genre’s values.
Throughout his film career, Mr. Garner demonstrated his versatility in dramas (“The Children’s Hour,” “The Great Escape”), comedies (“Boys Night Out,” “The Thrill of It All,” “The Art of Love,” “Skin Game”), suspense thrillers (“36 Hours,” “They Only Kill Their Masters,” “Marlowe”) and Westerns (“Duel at Diablo,” “Hour of the Gun,” “Support Your Local Gunfighter”).
In the 1966 racing film “Grand Prix” he starred as an American driver in the Formula One series. Mr. Garner, who loved auto racing, formed and owned the American International Racers auto racing team from 1967 through 1969, and drove the pace car at the Indianapolis 500 in 1975, 1977 and 1985.
Mr. Garner’s only Oscar nomination came for the 1985 “Murphy’s Romance,” a comedy about a smalltown love relationship in which he co-starred with Sally Field.
His favorite film was the cynical 1964 war drama “The Americanization of Emily,” which co-starred Julie Andrews.
In 1957, Mr. Garner married TV actress Lois Clarke, who survives him. She had a daughter Kimberly from a previous marriage, and the Garners had another daughter, Gretta Scott.
In the late 1990s, the Garners built a 12,000-square-foot house on a 400-acre ranch north of Santa Barbara, California.
“My wife and I felt — we’d just watch the sunset from the front porch,” Mr. Garner said in 2000. “But then the phone started ringing with all these wonderful offers, and we decided, ‘Heck, let’s stay in the business for a while.’”