{"id":3777,"date":"2014-07-20T19:30:43","date_gmt":"2014-07-20T19:30:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=3777"},"modified":"2014-07-26T13:52:04","modified_gmt":"2014-07-26T13:52:04","slug":"so-long-gentleman-jim-garner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=3777","title":{"rendered":"So long, Gentleman Jim Garner …"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"James<\/a><\/p>\n

By Ray Bennett<\/p>\n

Three times I interviewed James Garner, who has died aged 86, once in a long phone call and twice on set in Hollywood, and each time it was because he agreed to talk about someone else.<\/p>\n

He told me: \u201cI don\u2019t know if you\u2019ve noticed, but publicity is something I\u2019ve always shied away from. My attitude is that so long as I\u2019m working, I don\u2019t have to keep poking the name in front of people. I\u2019ve hired press agents for years to say \u2018no\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first time we spoke it was in 1979 just before \u201cThe Rockford Files\u201d came to an end as a series. He\u2019d done more interviews than he intended to including a big piece in Esquire and he said, \u201cThey have just been wonderful to me in all these interviews and it makes a hell of a thing trying to live up to.\u201d<\/p>\n

I had to ask: \u201cAre you really as nice as all that?\u201d<\/p>\n

He said, \u201cNo! I really didn\u2019t want to do that Esquire article after I\u2019d agreed to it because I thought, \u2018Oh, my god, you know, the way she\u2019s talking this is going to be a valentine\u2019. I told her: \u2018I\u2019m not that nice. I do some naughty things.\u2019 I don\u2019t want any goody-goody two-shoes image, that\u2019s for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, the reason I landed that first interview was to talk about the women he worked with. As his stint in \u201cThe Rockford Files\u201d drew to a close, I pestered NBC and Universal to get through to him for an interview. I pitched a story for TV Guide Canada on the women in his professional life, especially his agent and producer Meta Rosenberg, who died on Dec. 30, 2004 aged 89, and writer Juanita Bartlett, who died on Feb. 25 this year aged 86.<\/p>\n

When Garner and I spoke on the phone on July 28, 1979, and I thanked him for his time, he said, \u201cOh, it\u2019s a pleasure. I\u2019m very happy with the subject.\u201d We ran the story on the cover of TV Guide Canada with the headline \u201cGentleman Jim\u201d.<\/p>\n

He said, \u201cI\u2019ve never understood the man\/woman thing when it comes to work. I look at people one-on-one and if someone is capable, their sex has nothing to do with it whatsoever. If they\u2019re good, they\u2019re good. If they\u2019re smart, they\u2019re smart and it just never occurs to me that because a person is a woman they should be singled out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two years later, when he returned to his defining role in \u201cBret Maverick\u201d I visited him on the set to talk about co-stars Stuart Margolin, who started out in \u201cNichols\u201d and played Angel in \u201cRockford\u201d, and country music star Ed Bruce, who played Sheriff Tom Guthrie.<\/p>\n

Garner was far more interested in speaking about them than he was about himself but over the course of the three conversations we did talk at length about his great movies from \u201cThe Great Escape\u201d to \u201cGrand Prix\u201d (pictured below) to \u201cSkin Game\u201d and \u201cThe Americanization of Emily\u201d, but more about that another time.<\/p>\n

\"James<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ray Bennett Three times I interviewed James Garner, who has died aged 86, once in a long phone call and twice on set in Hollywood, and each time it was because he agreed to talk about someone else.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6,9,15],"tags":[2034,2033,2032,2036,2035],"class_list":["post-3777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","category-interviews","category-news","category-television","tag-bret-maverick","tag-maverick","tag-james-garner","tag-juanita-bartlett","tag-meta-rosenberg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3777"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3777\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3801,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3777\/revisions\/3801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}