When H.G. Wells met Jack the Ripper

One of my favorite actors talking about one of my very favorite actors:

I also loved working with James Garner, who is so unsung. When we were shooting the scene where we have lunch together, I'm throwing grapes up in the air, catching them with my mouth, and he's just sitting there. "Doncha want a cuppa coffee?" I ask him, and he says, "No, you're doing it all." I'd love to work with him again. He's in the same league with Olivier, Ralph Richardson, Gielgud, in a different way. All of them are coming from the inside, and all their thoughts have to be right. James Garner makes acting look effortless – that's hard work.

That's Malcolm McDowelll talking about working with Garner in Sunset. Quote's from an interview McDowell did with N.P. Thompson of The House Next Door. Thompson was focused on McDowell, naturally, so he didn't chase that down---Garner in the same league as those three great British hams? What did McDowell mean?

I'm guessing that when he says that, like those three, James Garner is "coming from the inside" he means that when you watch Garner you have to look into his eyes. He makes you read his thoughts. His characters don't move about much (neither do Olivier's but he vibrates so intensely when he's just standing still you feel as if he's moving as much as Gene Kelly does when he's dancing) but they're always thinking. You can see their minds working, which is how Garner can dominate a scene in which he has few lines, he's playing opposite an actor as volatile as McDowell, and that other actor is doing something as flamboyant as tossing grapes up in the air and catching them in his mouth. McDowell appears to have been worried about upstaging Garner but Garner knew. He can afford to give away space to anyone who's onscreen with him.

Garner once said he learned everything he knows about acting from watching Henry Fonda in the stage version of The Caine Mutiny Court Martial. It was one of Garner's first acting jobs. He played a member of the panel of naval officers trying the case and he had no lines. He kept himself occupied by studying Fonda, another actor who I'd say worked "from inside."

That's my guess. I'll find out. I'm making Sunset family movie night next week. Tonight's family movie night is, coincidentally, Time After Time, which stars McDowell as H.G. Wells who, movies being movies, turns out to have actually invented and built the time machine that's at the center of his novel. And, movies being movies, it turns out that Jack the Ripper uses the time machine to escape from the police and Wells jumps in it after him and chases him into the 20th Century to bring him back to justice. Wells, who thinks of himself as a visionary, is shocked but then enthralled by all the things he never envisioned, particularly Mary Steenburgen.

Friday, November 17, 2006 in Now Playing at Cine 1-1000 | Permalink

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Comments

I remember thinking Time After Time was a great flick, but haven't seen it in awhile. I've never seen Sunset, but don't remember ever being disappointed by James Garner's portrayals.

Malcolm McDowell always reminded me of something George Carlin said about cats... Cats he said, always looked like they were getting used to new contact lenses. I always thought Malcolm looked the same way... those kind of bloodshot, wide open eyes with deliberate blinks...

Posted by: Jennifer | Friday, November 17, 2006 at 12:49 PM

Love love love Malcom McDowell. I always thought he shot his career by doing Caligula, but apparently it didn't hurt Helen Mirren, so I don't know.

My favorite scene in Time After Time was when Wells walked into a McDonalds and imitated the redneck in front of him to order food. He picked up his fries, looked at them quizzically, and tasted one. His face lit up. "Pomme fritte!" he exclaimed joyfully.

Also, James Garner is not just an actor. He's a MAN. In all capital letters. I don't care how old he gets, he does me in every time.

Posted by: merciless | Friday, November 17, 2006 at 01:58 PM

Lance,

Watch Twilight to see Garner, Gene Hackman, Paul Newman and Susan Sarandon in a well-modulated little film about getting old in a town where being young is so important. It might not be family night material, but it's a good movie.

Posted by: apocalipstick | Friday, November 17, 2006 at 02:22 PM

Funny... I haven't seen Sunset in an age, and I didn't even remember McDowell being in it(unusual, because he's one of my favorites as well), and probably wouldn't have remembered Bruce Willis being in it if he hadn't been on the poster, but Garner... the one scene that I remember clearly from the movie is where they're shooting the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, and someone asks Earp (Garner) if they've gotten it right, and Earp remembers the way it really was... I won't spoil it for you if you haven't seen it.

Jennifer--have you seen the remake of Cat People, the one with Nastassja Kinski and the Giorgio Moroder soundtrack (Bowie sings the theme song; that version is much better than the one on Let's Dance)? McDowell plays... wait for it... a werecat. Best thing in the movie, really; McDowell can sometimes be the only thing worth watching in an otherwise shitty movie, and frankly, he's done quite a few of those, as well.

Posted by: Tom D. | Friday, November 17, 2006 at 02:42 PM

Almost 30 years on, "Time After Time" is still one of my favorite movies ever.

And as the sadly canceled "Joan of Arcadia" showed, Steenburgen is still Teh Hot.

Posted by: Lex | Friday, November 17, 2006 at 07:20 PM

James Garner really was/is the picture of a pro. If nothing else, we owe him honors for The Rockford Files, one of the first private detective shows actually made for adults. (I mean, Mannix? Come on.) A terrific show, Rockford, the best of that wave of more comedic (and occasionally existential) PI fare that included Harry O and even Cannon, a show that dared you to disbelieve in an obese man's power to fight crime as well as anyone.

But Rockford! A man who often didn't carry a gun. Burdened with no-good ex-con friends. Drove a creaky old American road monster as big as a city block. Way above-average writing for the genre, but everything rode on Garner's likablity and obvious-yet-never-overbearing masculinity. And all those episodes of a one-hour show equal how many movies?

Malcolm McDowell.... he shoulda been a contender. How I wish that someone around 1985 had shaken him by the shoulders and declared, "You're Malcolm McDowell! Stop with this (&@(*^# you're making! No more Blue Thunders!"

Posted by: KC45s | Friday, November 17, 2006 at 08:49 PM

I'm with KC45s on James Garner in the Rockford Files. I loved it as a kid and have begun watching it on DVD again. As Rockford he can make his character believable as a self-centered coward and as a reluctant, but tough hero. You always believed that he might actually give up when things got hard, even though, he never did, of course. His relationship with Noah Beery seemed natural and tender as well. I will disagree with KC on Mannix though; I used to love that show, but maybe, it was more for the theme song and Mike Connors' hair.

Posted by: OutOfContext | Friday, November 17, 2006 at 09:29 PM

Love both Malcolm McDowell and James Garner. So have put "Sunset" in my Netflix que, not having seen it. I'd expected to not care for "Time After Time" so was surprised at how much fun it was, yet haven't viewed it but once.

Posted by: Idyllopus | Friday, November 17, 2006 at 10:34 PM

The Siren did an essay on how Brit actors aged; well, McDowell did well, unlike so many of that generation. Garner to me will always be part Bret Maverick, part Charley Madison. Get Emily for a family night.

Posted by: Exiled in New Jersey | Saturday, November 18, 2006 at 05:54 AM

James Garner has always been one of my very favorite actors. Wild, Wild, West was an absolutely wonderful show, because Garner made it so easy to suspend disbelief. And The Rockford Files was just awesome. Athough, I have to admit that I enjoyed them immensly as a child. It is notable, that it is one of the few shows that I really liked when I was a child, that I can watch now and actually sit through an episode or two, or more.

I definately think it is presence. I cannot remember the nae fo the movie, it was a bad one, that we went to see as a family in the mid-eighties. He was in substantial portion of the movie - but very rarely said anything. As I say, it was a bad movie - but worth watching, just to see Garner, saying and doing very little - but dominating the screen anyway.

Posted by: DuWayne | Saturday, November 18, 2006 at 09:12 AM

Absolutely agree about James Garner. He's been my personal hfavorite since the original Maverick in 1957.

I don't care how old he gets either - James is still THE MAN!

Posted by: MorganLvr | Saturday, November 18, 2006 at 05:05 PM

ditto on garner. always a great favorite. also enjoyed very much 1994s maverick, in which he played maverick sr to mel gibson's
maverick jr. they (and jodie foster) were magical together.
i have a videotape of tombstone/butch cassidy/maverick. whenever i get too sick of things i play it and am renewed.

Posted by: daveminnj | Saturday, November 18, 2006 at 08:07 PM

James Garner, "Murphy's Romance"...sigh.

Posted by: JD | Saturday, November 18, 2006 at 08:24 PM

JD -

I think that might be the one I was thinking of. Did I say bad. . .Ummm, well, I was only nine when I saw it. . .

Posted by: DuWayne | Sunday, November 19, 2006 at 07:30 PM

Lance, I've mentioned The Rockford Files here previously, though I can't quite remember why. Perhaps my all-time favorite TV show. Superb writing and then James Garner to make it happen.

I've never seen Sunset, and have not heard good things about it (until now). Perhaps I'll give it a shot anyway...

Posted by: Kevin Wolf | Monday, November 20, 2006 at 09:15 AM

More 'Nam

Enlargement: Jeanne A. Markle: Experiencing War: Veterans History Project (Library of Congress

Unidentified patient and actor James Garner, Post Op 2, 24th Evacuation Hospital, Long Binh, Vietnam.




Stars & Stripes: From the S&S archives:

U.S. foils 'burglar' in Vietnam, says actor James Garner


U.S. foils 'burglar' in Vietnam, says actor James Garner

By Wally Beene, S&S staff writer

Pacific edition, Monday, April 17, 1967

Bill Becker / S&S Actor James Garner, interviewed in Saigon in April, 1967. Garner, a Korean War veteran, was visiting servicemembers in South Vietnam.

SAIGON — James Garner, the latest Hollywood actor to play the USO Borscht Circuit in Vietnam, feels that the main reason the U.S. public hasn't been sold on the war is because the United States was not attacked.

Garner, a Purple Heart veteran of Korea, says that he personally feels the situation is much like it was in Korea when General Matthew Ridgway addressed the troops and asked, "If you see a burglar coming, do you want to stop him at the back fence or wait until he gets into the house?"

"Here in Vietnam we couldn't wait for some sensational incident to happen or it would have been too late to help these people save their country from communism," Garner added.

The prospect of making a Vietnam tour caught Garner off guard, he readily admits. "I asked them what they thought I could do — no songs, no dances, no jokes. But here I am."

Traveling solo around the country, he has arrived at the conclusion that "the morale here is about 100 percent higher than it was in Korea."

Occasionally Garner runs across a GI who wants to try him for size. "They might ask if I was over here on some tax writeoff, or how much I get paid. When I explain that I'm an ex-rifleman private with the 24th Inf. Div.'s 5th Regimental Combat: Team, and came over for nothing, everything is OK."

As for Hollywood and the war, Garner feels it will be some time before any pictures based on the Vietnam war are produced.

"There are a lot of technical problems — getting the right equipment, finding the right locations and such, but above all it is too soon. The pictures made about the Korean War didn't do well at the boxoffice, but World War II pictures are well received now."

Garner is not worried about his most recently released film doing well. "Grand Prix," the story of European auto racing, seems well along the road toward soaking up 40 or 50 million at the boxoffice.

This was a labor of love for Garner, who was a California hot-rodder in his youth.

While he developed a great admiration and respect for the men who drive the powerful Formula I cars, Garner doesn't hesitate to admit that it isn't for him.

Garner, star of the highly successful "Maverick" TV series, is getting ready to mount up again soon when he plays Wyatt Earp to Jason Robards Jr.'s Doc Holliday in a picture that takes up the great lawman's career after the battle of the OK Corral.

Note: Jim has since stopped smoking. :o)

A Post After My Own Heart!

Check this out, folks. WOW!

Vox Hunt: Mistletoe Kisses -

Vox Hunt: Mistletoe Kisses

• Dec 17, 2006 at 8:14 PM
• 2 comments

Show us who you'd like to kiss under the mistletoe.

Sally Field told Rita Braver on CBS News Sunday Morning that James Garner gave her "the best kiss I ever had in my life, which was on camera, believe it or not" (in a scene from "Murphy's Romance").

Presented with this information in a separate interview with Braver, Garner said, "She’s such a dear. Poor thing. She must not get out very much. But that's nice for her to say. I've had a couple of them say that. I might not be a bad kisser after all."

What A Memory!

Check out this post on Pioneer Woman's Blog. There are a ton of fantastic comments!

Confessions of a Pioneer Woman: I Kissed James Garner in an Elevator

Apr 10, 2007

I Kissed James Garner in an Elevator

You heard me. I was a week into my freshman year at U.S.C. and was deep into exploring The City of Angels with Collin, my cute boyfriend who later turned out to be gay. And when I say "exploring," I mean exploring. School hadn't even started yet and already we'd been to the beach in Malibu, walked the Sunset Strip, shopped on Rodeo Drive, and eaten at every "it" restaurant we could find.

The night before school started, Collin and I stopped off at a hotel somewhere in Greater Los Angeles. We wanted to have a drink, you see, and continue to revel in our delicious new eighteen-year-old independence. The hotel had a top-floor bar, so Collin and I stopped giggling and frolicking long enough to push the "up" button and wait for the doors to open.

And when they did, I saw James Garner standing there. James Garner, in all his Rockford Files glory.

And yes, I know James Garner had a long, distinguished career way before he played Jim Rockford, but "The Rockford Files" was in my era and that's what I was watching when I first fell in love with his confident, swaggering manliness. James Garner is Jim Rockford, just like Arnold Schwarzenegger is the Terminator. It's just one of those eternal truths.

And there he was, standing a mere three feet in front of me. He was still every bit as appealing as I remembered him from the TV show. As he stepped off the elevator and Collin and I began to step on, I didn't even think about reining in my enthusiastic awe. "Oh my gosh," I sputtered. "JAMES GARNER???!!!???" I was blinded by the light of celebrity before me. My eyes were, I'm sure, the size of dinner plates and I'm fairly certain my pounding heart was visible, just like that cartoon character whose red heart comes thrusting out of its chest. I continued. "I just LOVE YOU!" I hadn't yet learned skills of subtelty.

By now Collin was in the elevator, frantically pushing the top-floor button so the doors would close and separate us not only from James Garner but from the abject embarrassment he was feeling over my complete lack of discretion. I was halfway in and the elevator doors about to close when James Garner reached into the elevator and pulled me off at the very last minute. The elevator closed and sent Collin on his merry way. "You stay down here with me, darlin'," James Garner said to me. I had seven coronary infarctions and my hiney completely inverted as I casually answered, "Um. Okay!" We stood in front of the elevator and chatted about where we were both from, what I was doing in Los Angeles, and what an unusually hot evening it was for southern California. A minute later, the elevator opened back up.

Collin's sweet little face---carrying just a hint of hostility---greeted me. "You comin' up?" he asked. James Garner gave me a little nudge. "Aww, you better get back on, sweetheart." But I didn't want to. I wanted to stay with James Garner. He was strong and handsome and much more like my dad than any of the U.S.C. boys I'd met so far. And though I was ready to be independent and grown up, I was homesick. And I missed my grandmother, at whose house I faithfully watched "The Rockford Files" during my blissful childhood in the seventies. She might as well have been standing there in front of me, too. James Garner, though a celebrity, was familiar to me. And secure. And steadfast. And really, really handsome.

I think James Garner sensed that I'd need a little coaxing to get back onto the elevator with my measly eighteen-year-old boyfriend and that if he didn't do something proactive, I'd stow away in the trunk of his Cadillac Seville and refuse to leave his yard. So James Garner gave me a bear hug from behind, escorted me onto the elevator, turned me around...and gave me a great big smack on the lips. And as he exited the elevator he turned, gave me a wink and said, "Goodbye, darlin'." And I fainted inside. And died seventeen times, too. It took me a long time to find Collin interesting after that. I'd looked into the face of Jim Rockford, and things had changed forever.

James Garner? Are you reading this? I'm pretty sure you think about me at least once a week. No, I think you do. No, you do; you just don't know it. I think that deep down you remember our time in the elevator as a moment in life that passed you by, a moment that could have turned into a lifelong love story if I hadn't been eighteen and my cute gay boyfriend hadn't been there to spoil all the fun. Oh? You were married back then? Oh. Never mind. 'Cause I don't want to go down in history as the person who came between James Garner and his wife. I've got a lot of laundry to do and I just don't need that one.

Goodbye forever, James Garner.

I love you,
Ree

P.S. Call me sometime!

Posted by Ree at 06:59 AM | Permalink

Viet Nam 1967

Unlike many stars of the era, Jim Garner did not protest the war by refusing to support our troops. Himself a veteran of 14 months of combat - with two Purple Hearts - in Korea, he knew all to well what fighting a war is all about.

This is one picture of him visiting a hospital in Viet Nam. More shots to come.

May 8, 1967

Soldiers, Stars and Smiles

MAVERICK – James Garner , also known as Bret Maverick, jokes
with a patient at the 12^th Evac. Hosp. Garner spoke to almost every
patient in Tropic Lightning medical facilities during his 36-hour stay
at the Cu Chi base camp.

Another Birthday Tribute

The Rap Sheet: Happy Birthday, Jimbo

Saturday, April 07, 2007

Happy Birthday, Jimbo

I’ve been thinking a lot about James Garner lately, not just because he is among my favorite actors, but because one of the characters he’s best known for having portrayed--Jim Rockford of The Rockford Files--is contending in The Rap Sheet’s second online poll for the title of “best TV private eye in history.” It’s Garner’s 79th birthday today, and that got me to thinking about a short tribute to him I penned last year for my other blog, Limbo. I’ve used that post as the basis for this longer panegyric.



Born James Scott Bumgarner in Norman, Oklahoma, on this date in 1928, the man who would be Rockford was the son of a carpet layer. His mother (through whom Garner is one quarter Cherokee--a fact recalled in the name of his film and TV production company, Cherokee Productions) died when young James was just 4 years old, and he and his two older brothers, Jack and Charles, were sent to live with relatives. Only after their father remarried in 1934, was the family reunited--but by no means peacefully. According to Wikipedia, “Garner grew to hate his stepmother, Wilma, who beat all three boys, but especially young James. When he was 14, James finally had enough of his ‘wicked stepmother’ and after a particularly heated battle, she left for good. As James’ brother Jack commented, ‘She was a damn no-good woman.’”



At age 16, James Bumgarner joined the United States Merchant Marine, but he had to leave after a year, due to chronic seasickness. He moved west to Los Angeles, where his dad was living since the breakup of his second marriage. There he attended Hollywood High School and modeled for Portland, Oregon-based swimsuit manufacturer Jantzen (at $25 an hour), but he “hated” modeling and returned to Norman, where he played high school football and basketball (“If there was a ball, I played it”) before joining the U.S. Army as an infantryman during the Korean War. (He would receive two Purple Hearts for his military service.)



As the story goes, his first acting experience came while he was still attending Hollywood High. A friend persuaded him to take a non-speaking role in the Broadway production of Herman Wouk’s The Caine Mutiny Court Martial. After that he starred in TV commercials and eventually captured roles on such series as Zane Grey Theater, Conflict, and Cheyenne. His earliest movie appearances were in 1956, when he could be seen in both Toward the Unknown (with William Holden) and The Girl He Left Behind (with Tab Hunter and Natalie Wood). As to why he changed his surname ... the explanation is that one of the film studios he worked for abbreviated “Baumgarner” to “Garner” (without permission), and he eventually went along with it. (He changed his name legally in the late 1950s.)



I was first introduced to Garner’s work during weekend reruns of the renowned Roy Huggins-created TV western, Maverick, one of my father’s favorite programs and also among the inspirations for my continuing interest in the history of the American West. Garner of course played Bret Maverick (1957-1960), a not too rough-and-tumble riverboat gambler who roamed the dusty, sometimes lusty U.S. frontier as much for fast bucks as adventure, becoming--as the theme song goes--“a legend of the west.” After that, I followed his career through a tumbling succession of memorable films--from The Great Escape (1963), The Wheeler Dealers (1963) and The Americanization of Emily (1964), to the better-remembered Support Your Local Sheriff (1969), Marlowe (an underappreciated 1969 film based on one of Raymond Chandler’s private eye novels, The Little Sister), Support Your Local Gunfighter (1971) and Skin Game (1971). Along the way, Garner starred in an unfortunately short-lived NBC-TV series called Nichols, which found him in the comfortable role of a cowardly, apathetic drifter (not so very different from the parts he’d played in Gunfighter and Skin Game) who, in 1914, leaves the army and returns to his small Arizona hometown ... only to be promptly blackmailed into taking the job of sheriff. Garner, who was extremely fond of Nichols, took its cancellation hard; the only good thing about it was that it left him free to take the lead three years later in The Rockford Files, another Huggins-created series.



Rockford cast Garner as a resourceful, smooth-talking, but distinctly unheroic Los Angeles private eye who never seemed to find an easy-paying client, a regular girlfriend, or a decent place to hang his hat (he lived in a dilapidated Nashua trailer in a Malibu parking lot). James Scott Rockford was effectively Bret Maverick for the 1970s, but with all of his horses under a Pontiac Firebird hood and a father who (unlike the philosophizing “Pappy” in Maverick) showed up more often than not, in the kindly person of Noah Beery Jr., the nephew of film legend Wallace Beery. During its six-year run (1974-1980)--which would have been longer, had Garner not been forced to pull out after injuring himself in the course of doing too many of his own stunts--Rockford picked up an impressive five Emmy Awards (including a Best Actor commendation for Garner) and was ranked by TV Guide as one the 50 finest American television shows ever. “When it came to private eyes--at least, the ones on movies and TV--Jim Rockford ... stood out like a slow curve in a world of fast balls,” opines Ed Robertson, who literally wrote the book on Garner’s gumshoe drama (Thirty Years of The Rockford Files, 2005).



After Rockford signed off as a series for the last time (only to spawn a sequence of popular TV movies during the Clinton era), the then 53-year-old Garner sought to return to his other most familiar small-screen role in NBC’s Bret Maverick (1981), which reimagined the former card sharp and con man semi-retiring to a backwater Arizona town. Sadly, that series--which I thought went a long way toward recapturing the vitality and humor of the original--lasted only a year, after which Garner returned to the silver screen, appearing in Victor/Victoria (1982, along with Julie Andrews), Murphy’s Romance (1985, with Sally Field), Sunset (1988, which had him portraying a crusty-but-romantic Wyatt Earp to Bruce Willis’ cowboy actor Tom Mix), Maverick (1994, in which he played the role of an impatient marshal, while Mel Gibson--in his pre-zealot days--assumed the part of brother Bret), Twilight (1998, with Paul Newman), and Space Cowboys (2000, with Clint Eastwood and Tommy Lee Jones). He also signed on for a few TV movies, including Barbarians at the Gate (1993), Breathing Lessons (1994), and Legalese (1998, which included the casually stunning Mary-Louise Parker as Garner’s sexy, thoroughly ambitious junior law partner).



Following The West Wing’s award-winning early success, Garner made another stab at series television, working opposite Joe Mantegna on First Monday (2002), about the U.S. Supreme Court. Garner portrayed a football-loving conservative Chief Justice of the United States (a funny role for Garner, who’s a staunch Democrat, and was briefly courted to run for the 1990 Democratic nomination for governor of California). Unfortunately, audiences didn’t seem to care about earnest debate in the High Court the way they did about political strategizing and character assassination in the White House. First Monday didn’t make it into a second year. Garner went on to play a classically crusty grandfather on 8 Simple Rules ... for Dating My Teenage Daughter, an unremarkable part he took on after the untimely, 2003 death of lead John Ritter. The Internet Movie Database says he’ll be starring in a 2008 film called The Magic Shoe and doing voice work for an animated flick, Terra.



I’ve never met James Garner, and I am sure that he isn’t to be confused with the easygoing, lovable characters he has so often portrayed. But he’s given me four decades of enjoyment on screens large and small, and for that, he earns my best wishes on 79 years down, and many more to come.



SEE IT NOW: In March 1999, Garner was interviewed on-camera for the Archive of American Television. That candid and informative, six-part appearance is currently available on Google Video. Part one can be found here, together with links to the other five installments. It’s not to be missed by Garner fans.

posted by J. Kingston Pierce at 4:58 PM  

Just In Time For Jim's Birthday

I just grabbed this off another blog called "Jude's Almost Daily Blog"


Monday, April 2, 2007

Mr. Handsome! (My 2nd Favorite Boss)

Before I had the honor of training my Mr. Edward H. Moler, I went around bragging to anyone and everyone that my favorite boss was none other than James Scott Garner, or Bumgarner if you're from Oklahoma - and you like to pretend you're in the know.

My Mr. Handsome - see picture please, is the epitome of gorgeous both inside and out, and I have to tell you Jim, Moler rivals you in every way - but I do give you the edge in the looks department if only for the way you tip your hat, Sir.

In less than a week Mr. Handsome, Jim Garner, turns 79 and with the soul of the lion that he has always been - I'm sure we'll hear a few more roars out of this guy before too terribly long. I won't give up many of his secrets by telling you that what you saw on television and in the early films was exactly what we saw as his employees, co-workers, friends. He simply is Jim: grits-eating, golf-swinging, eyebrow-lifting-innocent Jim, and there really wasn't much acting going on - well, maybe there was in a few films, the ones where he had to play the bad guy - no one believes that role -- not in a million years. Clever, tricky, sneaky, off-the-cuff, and off-the-edge of the cliff yes, but never a bad guy...maybe just a little bad?

When I left Hollywood for the Plains and pains of Oklahoma, I made the right decision - but I left an incredibly awesome man when I did. One I could have used over and over and over again to gain knowledge compounded upon knowledge - it's just a damn good thing I walked into Mr. Moler's life when I did. It was a great trade guys - and to be honest, Edward H. Moler needed a little spicing up too! I was happy to oblige. Best boss in the world - it was a difficult decision, and the ONLY reason Jim that I had to give the title to Moler was simply that he put up with me as long as he did....I wish you would have begged. I would have been in writer's Heaven by now, instead I'm in Purgatory - waiting..writing..waiting. But the adventures were worth it.

In your words Mr. Handsome (may I borrow them for this?) "Oh Hell! You knew what you were gettin' your own self into!" Big Smile! Big Smile! Big...Big...Big...I love you so much smile. You're simply amazing. You know, if I were born a boy my Mom would have called me James? Well, Matthew James, after Matt Dillon and James Arnez, but I can fudge a little - Thanks for the lessons.

Posted by jude at 12:45 PM


Have a wonderful birthday, Jim. No one deserves it more.

James Garner - More Bio

JAMES GARNER

His easygoing charm and dry humor made him one of America's most enduring TV and film stars. But Jim Garner's climb to the top included legendary battles against Hollywood power brokers and serious injuries and depression. Our portrait includes the story of his successful legal fight against Warner Brothers, and features clips from the hit TV series "Maverick" and "The Rockford Files" and from memorable movies including "The Great Escape", "Victor/Victoria", and "Murphy's Romance".

---

Search for JAMES GARNER on Biography.com.
JAMES GARNER's family tree provided by Genealogy.com.

Buy JAMES GARNER's Biography on VHS video.

Buy JAMES GARNER's Biography on DVD.

James Garner--Maverick

Romancing the West: James Garner--Maverick: "

Sunday, October 23, 2005

James Garner--Maverick

What a night! The room was filled to capacity, at least 300 hundred cowboys and cowgirls, all duded up in their Western finest.

I attended the ceremonies with Elaine Palance, who accepted the award for her husband, Jack. Elaine gave a great speech which got everybody laughing. She's a natural, shouda been an actress herself.

We were seated at one of the head tables. I was surrounded by some of Hollywood's top stars. At the table on my right sat Morgan Woodward, a really tall and striking Texan and a couple of seats past him was James Garner.

Garner will always be Maverick, that fast-talking, quick-drawin' gambler. His most recent role was in the "The Notebook." What a tear-jerker that was! He got a giggle from the audience when he announced that he'd just gotten another job! As if we thought he wouldn't.

Stay tuned, more pictures to come...............................

posted by Cheryl Clarke at 1:29 PM

James Garner Does It Again

James Garner - Celebrity News at filmsandtv.com: "

Sep 24, 2004 James Garner: Not many actors would have been able to put their slippers in the Hennessy closet on ABC 8 Simple Rules after the comedy series family lost their leader, John Ritter, who was one of the nicest men in the business. Garner could and did. The series cast members have overcome some of their grief and confusion, thanks in part to Garner soothing presence. The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) announced on Wednesday that the popular actor will be honored with the Life Achievement Award for career achievement and humanitarian accomplishment. SAG President Melissa Gilbert told reporters that Garner, 'epitomizes class, style, wit and depth' before adding, 'he serves as a role model for all of America actors.' We concur. Garner will receive the Award during the live TNT telecast of the SAG Awards on Saturday, February 5, 2005.