James Garner (born James Scott Bumgarner; April 7, 1928-July 19, 2014) was an American actor and producer.
He starred in several television series over more than five decades, including popular roles such as Bret Maverick in the 1950s Western series Maverick and as Jim Rockford in the 1970s private detective show, The Rockford Files.
He played leading roles in more than 50 theatrical films, including The Great Escape (1963) with Steve McQueen, Paddy Chayefsky's The Americanization of Emily (1964) with Julie Andrews, Grand Prix (1966) with Toshiro Mifune, Marlowe (1969) with Bruce Dern, Support Your Local Sheriff! (1969), Support Your Local Gunfighter (1971), The Castaway Cowboy (1974), and Blake Edwards's Victor/Victoria (1982) with Julie Andrews, and Murphy's Romance (1985) with Sally Field, for which he received an Academy Award nomination.
Garner's career and popularity continued through another decade in movies like Space Cowboys (2000) with Clint Eastwood, Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001) with Michael J. Fox and Cree Summer, and The Notebook (2004) with Gena Rowlands, and his TV sitcom role as Jim Egan in 8 Simple Rules (2003–2005).
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Garner was born James Scott Bumgarner on April 7, 1928 in Denver, Oklahoma (now a part of Norman, Oklahoma). His parents were German American. Weldon Warren Bumgarner, a widower, and Mildred Scott (Meek), who died five years after his birth. His older brothers were Jack Garner and Charles Bumgarner, a school administrator. His family was Methodist. After their mother's death, Garner and his brothers were sent to live with relatives. Garner was reunited with his family in 1934, when Weldon remarried.
In 1954, Paul Gregory, a friend whom Garner had met while attending Hollywood High School, persuaded Garner to take a non-speaking role in the Broadway production of The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, where he was able to study Henry Fonda night after night. During the week of Garner's death in 2014, TCM broadcast several of his movies, introduced by Robert Osborne, who said that Fonda's gentle, sincere persona rubbed off on Garner, greatly to Garner's benefit.
Garner subsequently moved to television commercials and eventually to television roles.
In 1955, Garner was considered for the lead role in the Western series Cheyenne, but that role went to Clint Walker because the casting director could not reach Garner in time.
After several feature film roles, including Sayonara (1957) with Marlon Brando, Garner got his big break playing the role of professional gambler Bret Maverick in the Western series Maverick from 1957-1962.
Only Garner and series creator Roy Huggins thought Maverick could compete with The Ed Sullivan Show and The Steve Allen Show, but for two years it beat both in the time slot. The show almost immediately made Garner a household name.
Critics were positive about the chemistry between Garner and Kelly and the series occasionally featured popular cross-over episodes starring both Maverick brothers and numerous brief appearances by Kelly in Garner episodes.
Although Garner quit the series after the third season because of a dispute with Warner Bros., he did make one fourth-season Maverick appearance, in an episode titled The Maverick Line starring both Garner and Jack Kelly filmed in the third season but held back to run as the season's first episode if Garner lost his lawsuit against Warner Bros. Garner won in court, left the series, and the episode was run in the middle of the season instead.
The studio attempted to replace Garner's character with a Maverick cousin who had lived in Britain long enough to gain an English accent, featuring Roger Moore as Beau Maverick, but Moore left the series after filming only 14 episodes.
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Warner Bros. then hired Robert Colbert, a Garner look-alike, to play a third Maverick brother named Brent Maverick. Colbert only appeared in two episodes toward the end of the season. That left the rest of the series' run to Kelly, alternating with reruns of episodes with Garner during the fifth season.
Garner still received billing during the opening series credits for these newly produced Kelly episodes, aired in the 1961–1962 season, although he did not appear in them and had left the series two years previously. The studio did, however, reverse the billing at the beginning of each show and in advertisements during the fifth season, billing Kelly above Garner.
When Charlton Heston turned down the lead role in Darby's Rangers (1958), before Garner's departure from Maverick, Garner (originally slated to play a large supporting part that was given to Stuart Whitman) was selected and performed well in the role.
Garner and Jack Kelly reappeared as Bret and Bart Maverick in a 1978 made-for-television film titled The New Maverick written by Juanita Bartlett, directed by Hy Averback, and also starring Susan Sullivan as Poker Alice. As had often been the case in episodes of the original series, Bret's brother Bart shows up only briefly toward the end.
The New Maverick served as the pilot for a failed television series, Young Maverick, featuring the adventures of Bret and Bart's younger cousin Ben Maverick, portrayed in both The New Maverick and Young Maverick by Charles Frank.
The series itself, which only presented Garner for a few moments at the beginning of the first show, was cancelled so rapidly that some episodes filmed were never broadcast in the United States. Despite the title, Frank was three years older than Garner had been at the launch of the original series.
Garner was nominated for his only Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role for the film Murphy's Romance (1985), opposite Sally Field. Field and director Martin Ritt had to fight the studio, Columbia Pictures, to have Garner cast, since he was regarded as a TV actor by then despite having co-starred in the box office hit Victor/Victoria opposite Julie Andrews two years earlier.
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In 1994, Garner played Marshal Zane Cooper in a film version of Maverick, with Mel Gibson as Bret Maverick (in the end it is revealed that Garner's character is the father of Gibson's Maverick) and Jodie Foster as a gambling lass with a fake Southern accent.
Nominated for 15 Emmy Awards during his television career, Garner received the award in 1977 as Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series (The Rockford Files) and in 1987 as executive producer of Promise.
For his contribution to the film and television industry, Garner received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6927 Hollywood Boulevard.
In 1990, he was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. He was also inducted into the Television Hall of Fame that same year. In February 2005, he received the Screen Actors Guild's Lifetime Achievement Award.
Garner was a private and introverted man, according to family and friends. On July 19, 2014, police and rescue personnel were summoned to Garner's Los Angeles-area home, where they found the actor dead at the age of 86. He had suffered a heart attack caused by coronary artery disease. He had been in poor health since his stroke in 2008.
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