James Garner: An Appreciation of the Man, the Legend

Now we come to praise James Garner.

He traded in a different gear of badass. He was wry, laconic. Always on the verge of exasperation with the cast of characters around him. In The Great Escape, he was the calm steady real man, toe to toe with simmering action volcanoes Steve McQueen and the granite faced Chuckles Bronson, but caring enough to drag doomed blind, over-acting Donald Pleasance across the WW2 landscape while wearing one of the spiffiest turtle-necks in film history.

McQueen would've just dumped Pleasance in a bush, but not Garner.

The poster reads, "Ornery, Savage, Beautiful."  I don't know about the last two, but in this movie, ornery is about right. What you got ahold of here is American TV actor Vic Morrow directing our man Garner and a clutch of other TV actors in, yes, an off-kilter Spaghetti Western, with Garner dialing back every bit of charm he has. He is the Clint Eastwood in this film, attempting to be amoral and stoic in a savage western landscape, but he just seems pissed off. His mustache, however, is crazy amazing.

You get the feeling through the movie Garner would rather be in his trailer. Still, this film is such a Bizzaro World cinematic stop-over, I dig it so.

To see Garner more in his proper, Brett Maverick-element, there's a of couple aces up his cinematic sleeve, these being Support Your Local Sheriff and Support Your Local Gunfighter. Two pitch perfect western comedies with Garner as the smartest stranger in town, surrounded by every top drawer comedic character actor the sixties had to offer.

Outsmarting Walter Brennan:

Dealing with his sidekick-to-be, google-eyed movie western mainstay, Jack Elam:

Yeah...that's good stuff.

Post Rockford Files, our man Garner foundered quite a bit, making dreck like Tank, sensitive girly movies like Murphy's Romance, even an Aliens Kidnapped Me And Probed My Hinder movie called Fire In The Sky. Before that happened, however, Blake Edwards reached out and plucked his old friend out of his bad movie and tv commercial pitchman days and cast him in one of the best of 1982, harking back to Garner's early sixties run as a down to earth Cary Grant type in the musical romp, Victor Victoria. Damn if he couldn't also pull off "suave."

It's the mustache. The man could rock a mustache.

And we'll end this thing with a tribute video from the always amazing Turner Classic Movies, who are doing a 24 hour marathon of Garner's best next Monday.

R.I.P. James Garner, April 7, 1928 – July 19, 2014