James Garner • 1928 ~ 2014
LOTS OF PEOPLE MY age grew up when Friday night meant Rockford on the television. All the kids would lay on the floor, with the adults upon the chairs and couches. Together, we would watch Jim get himself into a mess, and then connive and wriggle himself back out of it. And solve the case to boot, although payment for services rendered was often absent.
James Garner was more than Jim Rockford. His biggest accomplishment may have been his marriage, leaving Lois Fleishman Clarke Garner a widow less than a month before their 58th wedding anniversary . His driving skills with Formula One race cars in Grand Prix, a 1966 film, could have led to a successful racing career. Jim did his own stunts, which is particularly rough on one’s body.
I’ll remember Jim Garner as a guy who didn’t give up.
James Garner and Steve McQueen with director John Sturges on the set of The Great Escape, 1963
American Toolbox 