I’ve had a variety of scattered thoughts since I heard the news an hour ago:
I just can’t believe that a man that good-looking would ever die.
He was the John Wayne of the small screen.
He portrayed Rockford as one of us, only taller, funnier and much more handsome.
He was a tragic figure, the cowboy of Santa Monica, burdened by an Iago named Angel Martin.
He launched Tom Selleck’s career.
Rockford and Columbo were by far the strongest detectives during TV’s golden age of detectives.
The Rockford Files intro sold America on the answering machine.
Garner was also adept at selling Polaroid cameras.
Reached for comment, Tom Fredrickson of Lost Wax Method offered the following:
James Garner and Julie Andrews in Victor/Victoria
“Garner always struck me as the rare actor who might actually be smarter in real life than he played—but I’ve been fooled before on that point.Blake Edwards’s reputation seems to be in serious slippage, but the first Garner role I thought of after Rockford was King Marchand in Victor/Victoria. Not sure who else could hold the screen with Robert Preston, Alex Karras, Julie Andrews, and the very entertaining scenery chewing of (believe it or not) Lesley Anne Warren. Edwards’s films have dire longueurs and his loyalty to Henry Mancini —and musicals (or maybe just musicals by Henry Mancini)—is hard to get past in the 21st century, but his non Pink Panther flicks were comedies of ideas, and Garner served those ideas—and the jokes around them— better than most.”
Was it only in the ’70s that TV shows featured trademark cars? I guess the Patrick Jane character in The Mentalist drives a Citroen DS21 or something like that, but Jim Rockford’s Pontiac Firebird was almost as memorable as Starsky and Hutch’s rig. It was brown, but to me it was solid gold.
On Dan Patrick’s radio show this week, sportscaster Al Michaels mentioned that he would miss Garner as a golf buddy. Apparently, Garner and singer/songwriter/actor Mac Davis often shared a golf cart in which they would regale each other with humor and tall stories. Michaels and all the other celebrity golfers at the exclusive Bel-Air club would say, “Now that’s the happy cart.”
And EPB’s own Claude Iosso adds:
On Dan Patrick’s radio show this week, sportscaster Al Michaels mentioned that he would miss Garner as a golf buddy. Apparently, Garner and singer/songwriter/actor Mac Davis often shared a golf cart in which they would regale each other with humor and tall stories. Michaels and all the other celebrity golfers at the exclusive Bel-Air club would say, “Now that’s the happy cart.”
