Actors - James Garner

Home > Listing Index > Actors > James Garner

	Actors - James Garner

James Garner (born April 7, 1928) is an American film and television actor of partially Cherokee Indian descent. He starred in several television series that spanned a career of five decades, including his roles as Bret Maverick in the popular western-comedy series, Maverick (1957–1960), Jim Rockford in the popular crime drama, The Rockford Files (1974–1980), and Jim Egan in the popular but short-lived comedy, 8 Simple Rules (2003–2005), and made dozens of movies, including the classics The Great Escape
(1963) and Paddy Chayefsky's The Americanization of Emily
(1964).

An Okie in Korea

Garner was born James Scott Bumgarner in Norman, Oklahoma to Weldon Warren Bumgarner and Mildred Meek. After an endless number of early bad jobs, he joined the Merchant Marine at 16. He was later in the National Guard before being drafted into the Korean War, where he received a Purple Heart.

After modeling Jantzen bathing suits in print ads, in 1954 Garner had a non-speaking role in the Broadway production of The Caine Mutiny Court Martial
, where he watched Henry Fonda at close quarters night after night. He subsequently moved on to television commercials and eventually to television roles. His first movie appearances were in The Girl He Left Behind and Toward the Unknown in 1956.

Maverick

After four supporting feature film roles, including the smash-hit Sayonara
with Marlon Brando, he got his big break when he starred in a stunningly popular comedy-Western series, Maverick, playing the role of professional gambler Bret Maverick from 1957 to 1960. No one but Garner and series creator Roy Huggins thought the series could compete with The Ed Sullivan Show and The Steve Allen Show, but Maverick quickly became a national sensation, making Garner a household name almost immediately at the age of 29. With the arguable exception of the movie The Great Escape
, Garner was never again involved with a project that generated as much public and media obsession.

Various actors had recurring roles as Maverick foils, including Efrem Zimbalist, Jr as "Dandy Jim Buckley" and Richard Long as "Gentleman Jack Darby," and the series veered effortlessly from comedy to adventure and back again. The relationship with Huggins, the creator and original producer of Maverick, would later pay dividends for Garner.

Garner was originally sole star of Maverick (for the first seven episodes) but production demands forced the studio, Warner Brothers, to create a second Maverick brother, Bart, played by Jack Kelly. This move allowed two production units to film episodes simultaneously (the series also featured extremely popular cross-over episodes with both Maverick brothers). Critics marvelled at Garner and Kelly's extraordinary chemistry in their episodes together, but Garner quit the series in the third season in a dispute with Warner Brothers.

The studio attempted to replace Garner with a Maverick cousin who had lived in Britain long enough to pick up an English accent, played by an eventual movie James Bond, Roger Moore, but Moore quit the series due to a decline in script quality after only 15 episodes, insisting that if he'd gotten stories like Garner's earlier ones, he would have stayed. Warner Brothers also dressed Robert Colbert, a Garner look-alike, in Bret Maverick's outfit and called the character Brent, but Brent Maverick did not catch on with viewers and Colbert made only two episodes toward the end of the season, leaving the rest of the series' run to Kelly (alternating with reruns of episodes with Garner).

In 2004, Garner became one of the first three honorees in the World Poker Tour Walk of Fame for his portrayal of Maverick.

Major 1960s movie career

In the 1960s he starred in such films as The Thrill of It All and Move Over, Darling
, both with Doris Day, Boys' Night Out with Kim Novak and Tony Randall, The Great Escape
, The Americanization of Emily
with Julie Andrews and James Coburn, The Art of Love with Dick Van Dyke, and Support Your Local Sheriff!
with Walter Brennan.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for James Garner ]

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article James Garner; it is used under the GNU Free Documentation License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the GFDL.

Actors - James Garner

An Okie in Korea

Maverick

Major 1960s movie career

Searches on eBay

Related searches on eBay