James Garner, a master of light comedy who shot to fame in the 1950s as the charming and dry-witted gambler on the TV western Maverick and later won an Emmy as the unconventional Los Angeles private eye on The Rockford Files, has died. He was 86.
Garner was found dead of natural causes at his Los Angeles home Saturday. Garner underwent quintuple bypass heart surgery in 1988 and suffered a stroke in 2008. He amassed more than 80 movie and TV-movie credits during his career of more than 50 years.
An off-screen Hollywood maverick who successfully battled two studios in court, Garner easily moved between small screen and big screen in roles ranging from light comedy to drama.
His films include The Children's Hour; The Great Escape; The Americanization of Emily; The Thrill of It All; Move Over, Darling; Grand Prix; Support Your Local Sheriff; Marlowe; Victor/Victoria; Space Cowboys; and The Notebook.
Garner was nominated for an Academy Award for his role in the 1985 romantic comedy Murphy's Romance.
But it was television that made Garner a household name, and once he returned to series TV in the early 1970s after a decade starring in films, he remained a welcome presence on the small screen.
That included stints as a celebrity pitchman for such entities as the Beef Industry Council, Mazda, Chevy Tahoe and, most famously, Polaroid cameras.
Garner's seemingly effortless flair for delivering humorous dialogue -- and delivering straight dialogue humorously -- made him one of television's biggest stars.
Signed as a contract player at Warner Bros. in the mid-1950s, Garner -- a handsome, 6-foot-3, black-haired Korean War veteran -- launched his Hollywood career with guest spots on TV shows such as Cheyenne and small parts in a few films.
He was on location in Japan playing the supporting role of Marlon Brando's Marine Corps captain buddy in the 1957 romantic drama Sayonara when he learned that Warner television wanted to test him for a new series called Maverick.
The hour-long western-adventure series made its debut on ABC in September 1957. Arriving at a time when a slew of westerns such as Gunsmoke and Have Gun Will Travel dominated the airwaves, Maverick stood out.
Although the show began as a relatively straight western, the writers quickly began injecting humor into the scripts, a development Garner handled with aplomb. The series' tongue-in-cheek formula worked: Within two months of its premiere, the upstart Maverick had passed the rival Ed Sullivan and Steve Allen shows in the Sunday-night ratings.
Maverick brought Garner an Emmy nomination for best actor in 1959, the same year the show won an Emmy for best western series. Maverick ran until 1962, but Garner left the show in 1960.
He had been unhappy with Warner Bros. over his relatively low salary and the studio's control over his career. And when the studio suspended him without pay during a writers strike, he successfully sued and got out of his contract.
Garner turned his attention to movies and soon formed his own company, Cherokee Productions.
Garner starred in 21 films from 1961 through 1971, the year he returned to television as the star of Nichols, an NBC western set in 1914 Arizona. The show lasted a year.
But then came The Rockford Files, which ran on NBC from 1974 to 1980 and starred Garner as private eye Jim Rockford, which earned Garner an Emmy in 1977.
But the show abruptly ended in 1980. Under doctors' orders to take time off because of a bleeding ulcer, Garner could not continue working and NBC announced a replacement series.
In 1983, Garner filed a lawsuit against Universal alleging that the studio had used so-called creative accounting to cheat him out of his 37.5 percent share of the profits for The Rockford Files from syndication and foreign sales.
In his 2011 memoir The Garner Files, Garner said the case was settled "on the courthouse steps" in 1989. Although he had promised not to reveal what Universal paid him, he wrote, his wife had to keep telling him to wipe the grin off his face.
After leaving Rockford, Garner devoted most of his professional life over the next three decades to television. Some of his best roles were in TV movies and miniseries.
He received Emmy nominations for Heartsounds, Promise, My Name Is Bill W., Decoration Day, Barbarians at the Gate and Breathing Lessons.
He also returned to his role as Rockford in eight Rockford Files TV movies in the '90s and also co-starred with Mel Gibson in the 1994 film Maverick.
In 2005, Garner received a life achievement award from the Screen Actors Guild.
Information for this article was contributed by Frazier Moore of The Associated Press.
A Section on 07/21/2014
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