The Garner Files: A Memoir (27 page)

Maverick and Rockford are basically the same character, but Nichols is different. He’s a free spirit and an independent thinker struggling to keep up with a fast-changing world. He has his own style, with jodhpurs, cavalry boots, and a goofy little cap. He drives a 1914 Chevrolet and a belt-drive Harley-Davidson.

I’d run the Baja 1000 and driven fast cars in
Grand Prix,
but I was scared to death of that rickety old bike. It was uncomfortable and dangerous. Though the bike had been restored and strengthened, the handlebars were weird and it had no suspension, so it was hard to control. We built another one out of a modern motorcycle and fitted it with tanks and fenders to make it look like the original, but in some
shots, I had to drive right into the camera, so they couldn’t double for me or the bike.

To make
Nichols
work I needed a sidekick who was a shifty-eyed, back-stabbing rat, but also lovable. Tall order. We’d made screen tests but couldn’t find what we were looking for until one day I saw a clip from
Love, American Style.
It wasn’t a scene that should have gotten a laugh, but the actor was so good, he broke me up. I knew he was the one for the part.

The actor was Stuart Margolin, and we cast him as my deputy sheriff, Mitch. Stuart and I were on the same wavelength from the start: in our first scene together, we met on a staircase and improvised a side-to-side bit that came off beautifully. It set the tone for our future work together. Mitch was the forerunner to Angel Martin, the character Stuart played in
The Rockford Files,
and later to his slippery Native American, Philo Sandeen, in
Bret Maverick
.

Neva Patterson plays Ma Ketchum, whose crooked family has taken over the town. Nichols’s only friend (and love interest) is Ruth, a barmaid played by a very young Margot Kidder. We also had John Beck and M. Emmet Walsh as recurring characters.

There was great social and political turmoil in the country at the time. The civil rights and women’s movements were in full swing and the Vietnam War was still sending Americans home in body bags. We slipped in a little commentary here and there—
Nichols
was antiviolence, pro–civil rights, and pro–women’s rights—but we kept it gentle and never got preachy. And always tried to keep it funny.

Chevrolet was our sponsor. When we screened the pilot for them in Detroit, the wife of one of the executives said, “It’s not
Maverick
!”

I knew we were dead then and there. The folks at Chevrolet thought they were getting
Maverick
and, by golly, they wanted
Maverick
. They picked up half the show and sold off the other half.

Nichols
never got the chance to find its audience. We were preempted eight out of twenty-four shows by the presidential election
campaign, and NBC switched us from one night to another in midseason without telling us, so it was pretty clear they had given up on the show. They renamed it
James Garner as Nichols
but it didn’t help

NBC put us up against
Marcus Welby, M.D.,
the top-rated show on television at the time, and we ran even. The critics liked us, and our ratings were better than a lot of shows that got picked up by the networks in those days. But the network canceled us anyway.

I was so angry and disappointed, I decided to kill Nichols off in the last episode. In the opening sequence, Anthony Zerbe pulls a gun and blows me away. There’s a funeral and they bury me. But I come back as my twin brother, Jim Nichols, to avenge the killing. In the last shot, as I ride out of town on the Harley, the camera pans up to a sign: “You Are Now Leaving Nichols.”

In my mind,
Nichols
is right up there with
Maverick
and
Rockford
. It lasted less than a year, from September 16, 1971, to March 14, 1972. I made a profit on it, though it ran for only twenty-four episodes and was never rerun. I think
Nichols
was ahead of its time. It was different and creative, and we had such wonderful people working on both sides of the camera. The cancellation about broke my heart.

T
he Hallmark Hall of Fame, a television anthology series that began in 1951 with
Amahl and the Night Visitors,
has become an American entertainment institution. Hallmark has high standards and they stick to them. Over the decades they’ve done programs with strong performances and excellent production values—Shakespeare, the classics, biographies—plus original material with top-notch writing, directing, and acting. It was an easy decision for me and my producing partner, Peter Duchow, to join forces with Hallmark.

The Hallmark Hall of Fame production of
Promise
originally aired on December 14, 1986. With wise, sensitive direction by Glenn Jordan, a magnificent script by Richard Friedenberg, and inspired
performances by Piper Laurie and James Woods,
Promise
won five Emmys (Best Actor, Best Special, Best Direction, Best Teleplay, Best Writing), two Golden Globes, a Peabody Award, a Christopher Award, and the Humanitas Prize, given to the writers of television programs that “probe the meaning of human life” or supply “enriching human values.”

I play Bob Beuhler, who’d promised his mother when he was twenty-one that he’d look after his emotionally disturbed younger brother D.J. When the old woman dies thirty years later, Bob is faced with the prospect of caring for a “crazy man” for the rest of his life.

I couldn’t have played the character five years earlier. I’d have thought he was too unsympathetic. I was always reluctant to play heavies. People have told me that this was a mistake, that I should take on a wider variety of roles. But I never wanted to be a bad guy on the screen. I didn’t want to be a superhero either—didn’t want to go to either extreme. That’s why I hesitated. Not that Bob is a villain, he just never grew up.

James Woods had been in the first episode of
The Rockford Files.
When we hired him for
Promise,
I called to say how happy I was to have him. He said, “I bet you don’t remember me,” and I said, “You bet I do. I’m not gonna forget
you
.” In case you haven’t noticed, Jimmy is very bright, extremely articulate, and a brilliant actor.

Jimmy researched the part of D.J. by spending time at a halfway house in Santa Monica called Step Up on Second. It was founded by Susan Dempsay, whose son, Mark Klemperer, was schizophrenic.

People in their late teens or early twenties—usually men, but it happens to women, too—can suddenly develop schizophrenia. Their odd behavior is often misinterpreted and they go undiagnosed. They self-medicate with alcohol and illegal drugs, and many wind up homeless, strung out, muttering to themselves.

Susan Dempsay envisioned a place where these kids could at least get off the streets. It’s not that she didn’t want to take care of Mark herself, but he’d do erratic things like suddenly jump out of a car and
disappear for weeks. She’d find him eating out of a Dumpster. So she created a refuge where people like him could relax, maybe learn about government assistance programs, be reminded to take their meds, and connect with others like themselves.

I had no idea what schizophrenics have to endure. I learned that they inhabit a terrifying world of hallucinations and inner voices that seem completely real. Even when they’re well, they have the burden of knowing they can lose control in an instant. I’ve never forgotten what one of them said: “When I was awake, I seemed alone, even when I was with people. My life was narrated by thoughts that weren’t mine.”

J
immy’s D.J. is very intelligent. But he’s crazy. In lucid moments, he knows he’s crazy and can talk eloquently about what it’s like to be schizophrenic. Those moments make his suffering even more heartbreaking. But most of the time, D.J.’s behavior is exasperating. He sits for hours in front of a television set, chain-smoking and watching commercials, obediently sending for useless products because he takes the words “order now” as a command from a higher authority. He digs up the backyard on a ridiculous whim, makes embarrassing scenes in public, washes his hands compulsively. He has violent mood swings from despondency to euphoria.

One day at Step Up on Second, Jimmy Woods met “Sam,” who gave a beautiful, eloquent description of what it’s like to be schizophrenic. Richard Friedenberg put it in the script:

D.J.:
Do you want to know what it’s like, Bobby? It’s like, all the electric wires in the house are plugged into my brain. And every one has a different noise, so I can’t think. Some of the wires have voices in them and they tell me things like what to do and that people are watching me. I know there really aren’t any voices, but I feel that there are, and that I should listen to them or something
will happen. That’s why I send for all those ads on the TV, because I feel the voice in the ad is talking to me. I hear him talking to me. He tells me to buy the things and that . . . well, I’m afraid if I don’t . . .

I can remember what I was like before. I was a class officer, I had friends. I was going to be an aeronautical engineer. Do you remember, Bobby?

BOB:
Of course, I do.

D.J.:
I’ve never had a job. I’ve never owned a car. I’ve never lived alone. I’ve never made love to a woman. And I never will. That’s what it’s like.

You
should
know. That’s why I’m a Hindu. Because maybe it’s true: Maybe people
are
born again. And if there is a God, maybe he’ll give me another chance. I believe that, because this can’t be all I get.

Accepting the Emmy for Best Teleplay, Richard Friedenberg said he hoped the film would help schizophrenics by calling attention to their plight. I’m sorry to say that twenty-five years later, schizophrenia is the worst mental health problem facing the nation. Asylums have been closed, and government spending on mental health has been cut to the bone. There are new medications for schizophrenia, but though more expensive, they’re not much more effective than the old ones. And there is still no cure.

A
fter
Promise
had wrapped, Peter Duchow and I were sitting in a coffee shop in Salem, Oregon, talking about the Bill Wilson story. Jimmy Woods was eavesdropping (as usual) from a couple of booths away. I’m not going to say he
lobbied
for the part, but he ran over and announced, “I
am
Bill W.!”

My Name Is Bill W.
is the story of the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous. Few American films had dealt with alcoholism
seriously. Aside from Billy Wilder’s
The Lost Weekend
in 1945,
Come Fill the Cup
in 1951 with James Cagney as a recovering alcoholic newspaper editor,
The Voice in the Mirror
in 1958 with Richard Eagan and Julie London, and
Days of Wine and Roses
(1962, written by J. P. Miller and directed by Blake Edwards), drunks and drunkenness were played for laughs in films.

If alcoholism was treated seriously at all, it was portrayed as a character flaw rather than a disease. Which mirrored the general attitude. People thought that if you were a drunk, it was because you lacked willpower. The only help for alcoholics was in the form of a hot meal and a sermon, or a trip to the drunk tank, sanitarium, or psycho ward. If you were a drunk, you stayed a drunk until you died.

My family history had sensitized me to the problem, so when my producing partner, Peter, suggested doing a serious film about Alcoholics Anonymous, I welcomed the idea. I wanted to tell the story of how two men came up with a simple way to deal with alcoholism and help millions of people lead decent lives.

W
illiam Griffith Wilson was a World War I hero and a hotshot securities analyst through the 1920s. When the stock market crashed in 1929, his already excessive drinking spun out of control. After several alcohol-related trips to the hospital, Bill had an epiphany and swore off booze. But sobriety didn’t bring him the peace he’d hoped for, and his battle to stay sober put a strain on his marriage.

On a business trip to Akron, Ohio, craving a drink and terrified of falling off the wagon, Bill asked a local minister to put him in touch with another alcoholic, just to talk. That’s how he met Robert Holbrook Smith, MD, a barely functioning alcoholic surgeon.

At first, “Dr. Bob” was reluctant to talk with Bill and planned to spend only a few minutes with him. But after Bill told him, “I’m not here to help
you,
I’m here to help
me,
” Bob got interested. The
conversation kept going until they both realized that if they could talk it out, they could make it, one day at a time.

The two men gave each other a safe harbor from “the stormy sea of booze,” as Dr. Bob put it. Their decision to share their “shaky little fellowship” with other drunks resulted in Alcoholics Anonymous, one of the most successful self-help movements in history.

W
e struggled for five years to bring the story to the screen, going through four or five scripts. We didn’t hit on the right approach until MaryAnn Rea in my office plucked an unsolicited script out of the slush pile from an unknown writer named William Borchert and suggested that Peter and I read it. As usual, MaryAnn was right.

We’d been focusing on AA the organization, and it didn’t click until we read Bill Borchert’s script, which centered on the love story between Bill Wilson and his wife, Lois. It was the first script Bill had ever written, though he’d been a successful producer. Once we decided just to tell a great story, everything fell into place. Daniel Petrie directed with great skill and insight, and we got fine performances from JoBeth Williams as Lois and from Gary Sinise as Bill’s friend and drinking buddy, Ebby.

I think Bob Smith and Bill Wilson are among the great men of the last century. They got together to help each other, but the organization they founded in 1935 has helped millions of people around the world by giving them a way to share their experiences without being judged or preached at or psychoanalyzed. AA’s twelve-step program really works. It provides an option for dealing with alcoholism besides death, insanity, or incarceration.