With starring roles in ‘Maverick’ and ‘The Rockford Files’ among the many standout turns on his resume, Garner shined as a non-traditional good guy.
Here's why we loved James Garner's TV characters: because they reassured us that even guys with no visible heroic traits could somehow beat the bad guys in the end.
Bret Maverick and Jim Rockford, who were basically the same character in different footwear, were the antithesis of almost every traditional good guy on television.
When Bret rode into town in 1957 with the drama "Maverick," justice in Western towns was almost always administered by men like Marshall Matt Dillon, played by James Arness on "Gunsmoke."
Matt Dillon was tall, handsome, rugged, fair-minded, moral and a straight shooter. Like his Silver Screen predecessors — John Wayne comes to mind — he was a righteous firewall whose very presence left no doubt justice would prevail.
Bret Maverick had no such ambitions. He was a gambler who aspired to become nothing higher than a hustler. He'd be happy, he insisted, to finesse a few bucks and leave town untroubled by any gunfire he heard behind him on his way out.
Unfortunately, that plan kept not working out. He kept getting drawn into disputes that kept forcing him to dispense justice.
He didn't use a gun much. He started with his wits and when necessary moved on to his fists.
If there were a hall of fame for TV Western fistfights, Bret's battle with Clint Eastwood's Red Hardigan in the 1959 episode "Duel at Sundown" would be a charter inductee.
ABC PHOTO ARCHIVES/ABC VIA GETTY IMAGESThe late, great Garner, pictured in 1959, broke big as the star of the television series, ‘Maverick.’
At the same time, that episode even better illustrated the real agenda of "Maverick," which was to find laughs where most shows found only the other stuff.
After the fight, Bret finds himself in a rare six-shooter showdown with the outlaw John Wesley Hardin. Except "Hardin" turns out to be his brother Bart, played by Jack Kelly. Yup, the Maverick brothers stage a fake shootout to fool Red.
As the brothers ride away unharmed, they pass the real John Wesley Hardin, who's blasting his way into town with steam coming out of his ears to find the varmint who "killed" him.
Sweet.
Bret Maverick wasn't the only non-traditional Western hero on TV in the 1950s. Richard Boone's Paladin on "Have Gun Will Travel" was dark and haunted. Steve McQueen's bounty hunter Josh Randall on "Wanted: Dead or Alive" was hardly a classic white hat.
But no one had the same qualities as Maverick. He wasn't the fastest or the toughest. He may not have been the smartest.
He just had the best sense of humor.
We also sensed he was on our side even as he denied he was serving any cause beyond his own. No matter how dire things looked, there was a wink in there somewhere saying things would work out okay.
Bret Maverick rode into the sunset too early, when Garner got into a real-life contract dispute with Warner Bros. during season 3.
He headed off to the movies, where he did mighty well, and in the long term that early exit probably enhanced Bret's legacy. We hadn't had enough.
Neither had Roy Huggins, who created "Maverick," and 14 years later had the idea of reviving Bret as a modern-day outlier.
So we were in a receptive mood in 1974 when Huggins created Jim Rockford, a low-budget private investigator who, like Bret, had neither the personality nor lifestyle of most of his TV colleagues.
He lived in a mobile home. He liked to eat Mexican food. He really liked to go fishing. He couldn't keep a relationship with a woman for more than one episode. He hung out with a bizarre posse whose help often got him beaten up. He constantly was taking cases so low-end you wondered how they ever got on television.
His one seeming indulgence was that every season except the last, 1979, he got a new Pontiac Firebird. That may have been a contract demand. In real life, Garner loved great cars, and what beat the muscle cars of that era?
SILVER SCREEN COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGESGarner holds a dollar bills in one hand, and a handgun in the other in a 1977 publicity shot for 'The Rockford Files.’
However much fun he made the ride for himself, he made it just as much fun for us.
"The Rockford Files" developed characters like a good drama and put them in situations that sometimes seemed closer to a good sitcom.
As with Bret Maverick, it's probable that some other actor somewhere could have played Jim Rockford. It's just hard to think who, since Garner had a rare ability to look like he was telling the joke at the same time he was putting it on pause for just long enough to solve the problem.
He was one of those characters, all of whom we love, who would look down at their feet, go "aw shucks" and then when it mattered dash out and save the damsel from going over the falls.
As a matter of fact, that's how we see the founding fathers of the whole country, as a bunch of farmers and tradesmen who, when things just got too oppressive under King George, held a meeting and said, ‘Enough, it's time to run this thing by ourselves.’
Granted, we don't always immediately think of the founding fathers when we think of Bret Maverick or Jim Rockford.
But if you went to a ball game, who would you rather sit next to? Bret Maverick or James Monroe?
Sometimes you don't need to found a country. You just want to have some fun.
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