What I Learned from James Garner
James Garner died this week at the age of 86. He was one of the great stars of my adolescence.
He starred as Bret Maverick on Maverick. That was a weekly television show, but he was not in it each week. When he was, the ratings went up. What we tend to forget is this: his salary for that show was $500 a week. Even with the purchasing power of the dollar in 1958, that was not a lot of money.
He tried to get more, and he did so by refusing to work. The studio sued him. He sued the studio. He won, and they let him go. That cost Warner Brothers a lot of money. It was really stupid. But it was great for him. His career then took off. He had already made a major breakthrough in the Marlon Brando movie, Sayonara, and his movie career soared. This opened the door to other television stars to make the break, most notably Steve McQueen and Clint Eastwood. They escaped from the small screen to the big screen, and they got fabulously wealthy.
I think of the other stars in those weekly Warner Brothers westerns. I think of Ty Hardin. (Who?) I think of Clint Walker. (Who?) They stayed until they ran out of audience. Then they disappeared.
He returned to the small screen, and got even more wealthy: The Rockford Files. That show also ended in a lawsuit. He won. More money came his way.
I did not know until a few years ago what a fluke it was that Garner got onto the small screen. He did it because a woman pulled out of the parking space. He pulled in.
Having returned from fighting in Korea for 14 months, a 23-year-old Garner had first dabbled with a business administration course at Oklahoma University.Deciding it was not for him, he went to California and worked for his dad, a carpet-layer, for a bit.
Deciding that this was "no fun", he decided to work on the Arabian oilfields -- but it wasn't to be.
"They weren't looking for roughnecks, they were looking for geologists and I didn't have that degree," he explained.
So driving rather despondently through Los Angeles he approached the building in which his friend Paul Gregory had set up as an agent and producer.
As he got close, a woman pulled out right outside and he decided to swing in.
One chat with Paul later, James had agreed to try his hand at acting, something that his friend had been trying in vain to persuade him to do for some time.
He later said that if she had not pulled out of that space, he would not have gone into acting.
He got a break. He did not make it for himself. It fell into his lap. He knew that. But he made good use of the opportunity. That impressed me.
He was not a great actor. He did not a wide range. But he was good-looking, he was competent, and the public loved him for 50 years. He never played a real heavy that I can remember.
Two of his movies were uplifting. They are both on YouTube. The one I appreciate the most deals with the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous. It is generally a true story. He played one of the three co-founders. The third one, Rev. Sam Shoemaker, does not appear in the movie, and he is rarely discussed in the news stories about the founding of AA. The other co-founders were Bill W. and Dr. Bob Smith. Garner played Smith. If you have not seen it, I recommend that you watch it today. It was one of his three favorite movies that he starred in.
The other was The Ultimate Gift. It is a bit like a Hallmark movie, but I like it.
You could do worse than watch them both today.