Garner won two Emmys and racked up a total of 15
nominations.
Garner found his
way to showbiz through a friend, theater producer Paul Gregory: He was employed
cueing actor Lloyd Nolan during rehearsals of the Broadway-bound “The Caine
Mutiny Court Martial.” Garner eventually copped a nonspeaking role in the 1954
production, where, he said, he closely studied the play’s star, Henry Fonda.
After studying with Herbert Berghof, Garner landed a role in the touring
production of “Caine.”
Back in Los Angeles in 1955, he secured bit parts in the TV series
“Cheyenne .”
Impressed, Warner Bros. gave him a screen test and a contract at $200 a week.
He paid his dues in supporting roles in “Towards the Unknown,” “The Girl He
Left Behind” and “Shootout at Medicine Bend” as well as some TV assignments.
He was first really
noticeable in a role as Marlon Brando’s pal in “Sayonara,” after which he was
assigned a supporting role in “Darby’s Rangers.” When “Darby’s” lead Charlton
Heston walked off the film, Garner inherited his first starring role, but
reviews were mixed.
The real boost to
his career came in a role now indelibly associated with him, that of Bret
Maverick in the comedic Western that ABC debuted in 1957; the role and the
series fit his wry personality like a glove. Originally the story was to
alternate between the Maverick brothers played by Garner and Jack Kelly, but
“Maverick” quickly became all about Garner’s character, who used his wits to
get out of trouble. Other actors revolved in and out including Clint Eastwood as
a vicious gunfighter. “Maverick” led to a long relationship between Garner and
its creator, Roy Huggins. The actor stayed with the series until 1960, when he
quit over a dispute with Warners.
“I’m playing me,”
Garner said about the role. “Bret Maverick is lazy: I’m lazy. And I like being
lazy.”
Lazy or not, the
actor shared the Golden Globe for most promising male newcomer in 1958 and
earned his first Emmy nomination in 1959 for “Maverick.”
In the meantime,
Warners was serving him frustrating fare like “Up Periscope” and “Cash McCall.”
Taking advantage of a suspension during the Writers Guild strike of 1960,
Garner sued Warners for breach of contract — and won — allowing him to be a
free agent and demand more for his services.
He appeared in specials
and toured in summer stock before landing a supporting role in “The Children’s
Hour” with Shirley MacLaine and Audrey Hepburn.
His roles in films
got better: “Boys’ Night Out” and, especially, “The Great Escape” brought him
his best notices. He said that he drew on his experience in the Korean War,
during which he was the company scrounger, for the latter role.
For a time he
seemed ready to inherit the aging Cary Grant’s romantic comedy leading man
mantle with such films as “The Thrill of It All” (1963), “The Wheeler Dealers”
and “Move Over Darling.” Blake Edwards gave him a meatier assignment, in the
satire “The Americanization of Emily,” opposite the then-red-hot Julie Andrews.
He then nabbed the thriller “36 Hours” and a couple of indifferent comedies,
“The Art of Love” and “A Man Could Get Killed.”
The films were now
A-budget, but “Duel at Diablo,” “Mr. Buddwing” and “Grand Prix,” which gave him
a yen for car racing, were hardly first rate.
Except for a couple
of Westerns including “Hour of the Gun” (in which he played Wyatt Earp), Garner
was stuck in films that did not find much success, such as “They Only Kill
Their Masters,” “Marlowe” and “Skin Game.” He took cover in television, where
after the brief NBC Western series “Nichols” in 1971, he hit paydirt with
comedic detective skein “The Rockford Files,” which ran from 1974-80 and won
him an Emmy in 1977 and another four nominations.
Huggins teamed with
Stephen J. Cannell for the detective series recycling many of the plots from
“Maverick.” Many of Garner’s friends had recurring roles in the series,
including Joe Santos and Stuart Margolin as his buddies. Margolin said at the
time that Garner worked long shifts, did his own stunts and stayed to do
off-camera lines for the other cast members. But his old injuries and pay
disputes led Garner to call it quits even though the show drew high ratings on
NBC.
He again essayed
“Bret Maverick” for one season in 1981. But a bad back, lawsuits with MCA TV
over “Rockford ”
syndication payments (he eventually settled, reportedly for several million
dollars) and, eventually, heart surgery curtailed his ability to endure the
rigors of a TV series. By then, however, he was a household name, and one which
audiences would follow to the theater, provided the vehicle wasn’t a turkey
like “H.E.A.L.T.H.” or “The Fan.”
Fortunately,
Edwards and Andrews called on him again in the musical “Victor/Victoria” in
1982, and he landed a plum role opposite Sally Field in the comedy/romance
“Murphy’s Romance” in 1985. He essayed an older Wyatt Earp in Edwards’ “Sunset”
opposite Bruce Willis as Tom Mix and did the underwhelming “Fire in the Sky” in
1983. In 1994 he took a small role in the big screen version of “Maverick,” with
Mel Gibson in the lead, giving the star a run for his money in the likability
department.
In 1996 he starred
as an ex-president opposite Jack Lemmon in “My Fellow Americans.” The best of
his later work, however, came in television in such TV movie dramas as
“Heartsounds” with Mary Tyler Moore in 1984, directed by Glen Jordan, who also
guided him through “Promise” in 1986. In 1989 he was acclaimed for “My Name Is
Bill W.” with James Woods. In the 1992 HBO film “Barbarians at the Gate,” the
actor offered up a standout chewy performance. Quieter, but no less effective,
was “Breathing Lessons” opposite Joanne Woodward.
His big screen
career continued in the 2000s with the Clint Eastwood-helmed veteran astronaut
comedy “Space Cowboys,” chick pic “Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood” and
2004 hit tearjerker “The Notebook,” in which Garner and Gena Rowlands played
the older versions of a couple portrayed by Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams.
On the small screen,
Garner recurred on the ABC comedy “8 Simple Rules for Dating My Daughter” from
2003-05. He also voiced God for the short-lived NBC series “God, the Devil and
Bob,” played the chief justice in CBS’ Supreme Court drama “First Monday” and
portrayed Mark Twain in a 2002 Hallmark adaptation of Twain’s novel “Roughing
It.”
NBC was developing
a new version of “The Rockford Files” in recent years but was not happy with
the result, and in April 2012, sister company Universal announced a bigscreen
adaptation that would star Vince Vaughn as Rockford . The project is still in development
and undergoing a rewrite from novelist Chuck Hogan.
James Bumgarner
interrupted his high school education in Norman ,
Okla. , to become a merchant seaman before
moving to Los Angeles , enrolling at Hollywood
High and then returning to Norman ,
where he joined the Oklahoma State National Guard.
He briefly went to
work in his father’s carpeting business in Los Angeles until being called for duty in
the Korean War. He served more than a year in the Korean peninsula and was
awarded the Purple Heart before his discharge in 1952. He studied business
administration at the U.
of Oklahoma
Garner starred with
Mariette Hartley in a series of noted commercials for Polaroid in the 1970s.
He won the Screen Actors
Guild’s Life Achievement Award in 2005.
Garner is survived
by his wife, the former Lois Clarke, to whom he was married since 1956;
daughter Greta “Gigi” Garner; and an adopted daughter, Kimberly, from Clarke’s
first marriage.
--- Extract from Variety
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