The Garner Files: A Memoir (26 page)

“Lady, could you just wait a minute? We’re trying to get this car out of this space,” I said.

“Well excuse me, Mister Movie Star!”

I did a slow burn and said, “Lady, how would you like to kiss a fat man’s ass?”

The pros on the putting green, who had stopped to watch, all applauded.

T
here are a few perks. You get special treatment here and there, but it isn’t worth it. If America suddenly got amnesia and forgot who I was, that would be fine with me. I just don’t get it. On one hand, I know that some people like my work, but somehow that doesn’t get through. I’ve never thought of myself as anything special, and I don’t like to be the center of attention, but there wasn’t much I could do to prevent it. I’d have worn a disguise in public if I thought it would have done any good, but I figured they’d know who I was the minute
I opened my mouth. It was once reported that I paid the seller of a map to the stars’ homes to take me off the list, but that’s not true. I may have threatened to give the guy a shot in the mouth, but I didn’t bribe him.

I hate everything about show business but acting. Publicity doesn’t interest me. I don’t read anything they write about me— articles, reviews, whatever. (Well, I do read reviews, but only the good ones.) I never liked making personal appearances or having my picture taken. That goes back to my days as a model.

I’d rather dig a ditch than do an interview, let alone a press junket where you sit in a hotel room all day while a hundred reporters work you over one by one. I’ve never liked premieres or entourages or anything associated with celebrity. I’m not too crazy about limousines, either. I can’t stand Hollywood parties; when Lois and I went out, it was usually for dinner with close friends.

And I don’t give a damn about awards. When
TV Guide
named me the best dramatic actor in television history, I didn’t even get a free copy of the magazine. That’s okay: I didn’t like
TV Guide
anyway because the owner, Walter Annenberg, used it as a platform for Nixon, Reagan, and Bush.

There was an English actress who said, “The Americans are famous for giving presents for acting.” Exactly. I don’t like trophies, especially for acting. I have no interest in Oscars. Though I’m a member of the Motion Picture Academy, I rarely see the nominated movies, so Lois does the voting.

I didn’t get into the business to be better than anyone else. They give too much credit to actors, and I don’t think they should be singled out. It’s the writing. When it’s done right, acting isn’t a competition, it’s a collaboration. The better my fellow actors are, the better I am. If I get an acting award, I think I’m stealing it from somebody who deserves it more than I do. They should just nominate five people, give them all a trophy, and go home.

I couldn’t stand fan magazines. Even as a teenager, I knew they
were bullshit. I’d look at
Photoplay
and think,
What a bunch of phonies!
All those supposedly candid shots of the stars in “real life.” You could see them posing. I never understood the whole fan thing, because I’ve never been a fan of anybody. How can you care so much about someone you never met? I didn’t want to be part of that. But when
Maverick
became a hit, I did those same stories, to my shame. The fan magazines were so sleazy, they weren’t saved in libraries like old issues of
Life
or
The Saturday Evening Post
. I’m glad.

I hate
Hollywood
. You say “Good morning” in this town and they say, “What did he mean by that?” Maybe that’s why they never understood me; I always said exactly what was on my mind. The industry is like it’s always been, a bunch of greedy people. You have to watch ’em every minute. I once got into a movie deal with a producer who said he had all the elements lined up, but when it got down to the wire it turned out he never had them. When I asked what happened he said, “I lied. It was the only way I could get you into the deal.” He thought that made it okay.

I never got along with studio executives. Most of them have been to business school or law school, sometimes both, but as far as film goes, they have no creative talent at all. Their opinions aren’t worth a damn, so they go with the numbers. They’re in constant fear of losing their jobs, which makes them indecisive. In negotiations, their goal is to get the best of you, not to make a good deal for everybody involved. I’ve never understood that.

I was careful not to get friendly with studio executives, because then I’d have to be nice to them. I wanted to be able to say whatever I wanted without worrying about harming a relationship.

Hollywood is dishonest, it’s petty, and it’s ageist. Late in his life, Fred Zinnemann, the Oscar-winning director who gave us
From Here to Eternity,
High Noon,
and
A Man for All Seasons,
had a meeting with a young producer who didn’t know who Zinnemann was.

“Well, Mr. Zinnemann,” said the young man, “What have you done?”

“You first,” said Zinnemann.

It’s worse for actresses. Women come into their own in middle age—they’re smarter and more attractive. I thought Lana Turner was much more interesting at forty than she was at twenty. Producers don’t seem to realize that you still have the drive and most of the energy. You don’t look young, but you’ve
lived,
and that makes you a better actor. William Goldman was right: in Hollywood, nobody knows anything.

N
ope, there’s nothing I like about fame. Except for the ten-foot-tall, bronze statue of me as Bret Maverick that was unveiled in Norman on April 21, 2006. It’s near the train station, on a corner where I used to hang out when I was a kid. The town also changed the name of a street to James Garner Avenue.

Norman was a great place to grow up, and I’m proud and happy to be from Oklahoma. I’ve always stayed loyal to my home state. People in the rest of the country don’t know what a wonderful place it is. The Rodgers and Hammerstein version of Oklahoma has nothing to do with reality. When I saw the movie, I thought to myself,
Well,
they’re
having fun.

Though I haven’t lived in Norman for a long time, my friends and relatives there have been very supportive. A group of them— committee members Roy Hamilton, Bill Cobb, and Bob Goins—along with Bill Saxon and Lee Allan Smith, were responsible for putting up the statue. They raised the money and hired the sculptor, Shan Gray. I went to the unveiling ceremony. We had a family reunion and there was a reception at the old train depot. Old friends and perfect strangers came to wish me well. It was an unforgettable day.

Funny how it worked out: the statue is right across the street from the Sooner Theatre, where I’d watched movies as a boy, never dreaming anything like this could ever happen to me.

T
his is immodest, but I think
Support Your Local Sheriff
is one of the better Western spoofs ever made. It’s comedy, not humor. It’s very broad, with puns, slapstick, finger-in-a-gun-barrel kind of stuff. It’s the old story about a gunslinger who drifts into town—in this case, “on his way to Australia”—becomes sheriff, and takes on the powerful family that runs the town. When they hand him the badge, there’s a dent in it from a bullet. “This must have saved his life,” I say.

“It would’ve . . . if it weren’t for all those other bullets.”

Bill Bowers wrote the script and wanted a producer credit, so I gave it to him. The first day on the set, he wanted to know what to do, and I said, “See that chair over there with your name on it? Sit there and be quiet. We’ll holler if we need you.” (Never hollered.)

Burt Kennedy had wonderful actors to work with: Joan Hackett, Jack Elam, Walter Brennan, Bruce Dern. Burt had directed some real Westerns, including
The War Wagon
with Duke Wayne. He was a good director, but for some reason he didn’t want Joan Hackett. I think he may have promised the role to Stella Stevens. Stella would’ve been fine, but I loved Joan. She was in the Jean Arthur league of comedic
actresses. Just a
funny
woman. Burt kept complaining about her until I finally said, “You can reshoot anything you like, but we’re not getting rid of her.” I think Joan did a wonderful job in the picture and audiences and critics alike applauded her performance.

Jack Elam was one of the nicest guys in the world and a lot of fun. Loved to gamble. He’d bet you the sun wouldn’t come up if you gave him the right odds. He’d been an accountant in charge of disbursements at one of the studios, but he really wanted to act. Some producer came in with a script he wanted to do and Jack said, “Look, I’ll see that you get the money if you give me this little part here.” That’s how he became a movie actor. Though it was his first comedy, Jack was easy to work with and he did a great job as my drunken sidekick.

Walter Brennan was a marvelous old poop. He was well up in his seventies—I think it was the last picture he made. He’d won three Oscars. Walter was the first actor I’d ever seen use cards. He knew the dialogue cold and never flubbed a line, but I guess he just needed to know that his words were there as backup. He put a card up here and another down there and just kind of glanced at them to make sure. You couldn’t tell, though.

Bruce Dern was a fine young actor and I think this was his first comedy. He went on to do great work in a long series of movies.

Support Your Local Sheriff
was my first producing job. I’d noticed that, though actors make a lot of money, somebody has the money to pay
them.
Producers. I’d also noticed that producers weren’t smarter than me, they just made more money.
I
wanted to make more money. And have more control. So I formed Cherokee Productions.

That’s when I learned there’s a reason why producers make the big bucks.

Most people don’t know what a producer does. It’s not an easy job. They have to secure financing, commission a script, and hire everybody else to make the picture. They even have to come up with a title.

It was originally called
The Sheriff
. I was with Burt Kennedy and Bill Bowers in an office on the second floor at MGM. I told them I thought
The Sheriff
was too dull. But we couldn’t think of anything better. I left the meeting early because I had to go home, and as I walked downstairs, there was a time clock with a sign over it: “Support Your Local Police.” I turned around, walked back up the stairs, poked my head in the office and said, “I’ve got it:
Support Your Local Sheriff
.” Didn’t even wait for a reaction. When I got home, there was a message from Burt: “Great title!”

People had warned me that comedy Westerns weren’t commercial, but I went ahead and made it anyway, for $750,000, which was nothing even then. It opened for a week and didn’t do any business. The studio wanted to shelve it. I said, “Tell you what: You put up ten thousand dollars and I’ll put up ten thousand dollars, and we’ll run it in one theater.” We put it on Wilshire Boulevard for a month and they lined up. We rereleased it and it did great business everywhere. I’m still getting checks.

N
ichols
was my first TV work since
Maverick
more than ten years earlier, and my first foray into television producing. My agent, Meta Rosenberg, was our executive producer. As far as I know, she was the first woman to hold such a high position in television. The writer-director Frank Pierson had created the character and served as our producer. Frank had already written successful movies, including
Cat Ballou,
Cool Hand Luke,
and
Dog Day Afternoon
. We had directors like John Badham and Paul Bogart, and writers like Buck Houghton, Marion Hargrove, and Juanita Bartlett.

Juanita had been hanging around town writing spec scripts without making a sale until she took a job as Meta’s secretary. One day Juanita asked Frank Pierson if he needed a script for “Bertha.” Frank said he wasn’t aware of a character named Bertha in the show. Juanita explained that the saloon on the
Nichols
set was named
Bertha’s, and that she had a story idea for an episode featuring Bertha. Frank told Juanita to go ahead and write a script. She did, and we all liked it so much, we made Bertha an ongoing character, cast Alice Ghostley in the role, and hired Juanita as a staff writer.

But Juanita was still very shy and unsure of herself. She cried for a week and didn’t want to leave her secretary’s desk. She thought the whole thing might be a fluke and kept on making coffee for Meta until we convinced her that the new secretary could do that. After doing a rewrite of another script, Juanita finally relaxed. She went on to a long career as a writer-producer. She isn’t shy anymore.

Nichols
is a turn-of-the-century Western set in a small town in Arizona. I love that era. Right after World War I, before industrialization and world leadership, the country was just waking up. New inventions like the telephone and the automobile were making life better and more exciting, but the old values still hadn’t given way.

Nichols—we never gave him a first name—retires from the army and returns to his hometown of Nichols, Arizona, named for his grandfather, who’d founded it. He takes the job of sheriff but doesn’t carry a gun, not because he’s afraid of them, but because he’s sick of violence. In short, Nichols isn’t much of an authority figure. He’s more interested in making a quick buck than enforcing the law.