The Garner Files: A Memoir

by James Garner

  In 1983, in a ceremony that coincided with the two hundredth anniversary of the Purple Heart, a general pinned the medal on my chest, one Purple Heart decorated with an oak leaf cluster to indicate two awards. He said the army was remedying an error. It was sure better to get it thirty years late than posthumously. Sorry to say, it was too late for Grandma Meek, who had died in 1969.

  I felt lucky to be recognized. Many other Korean War vets never have been. It was an unpopular war, coming less than five years after World War II. Nobody was ready for another war so soon. When we came home, there were no parades. The nation lost almost as many men in Korea as we did in Vietnam, but they didn’t even call it a war—it was a “police action” or the “Korean conflict.”

  Korean War vets are ignored because Korea is a forgotten war. I hope that’s changing. There’s finally a Korean War Veterans memorial in Washington, and I’ve joined with Buzz Aldrin and others to help raise money to build a Korean War museum. (Many people don’t know that before he was an astronaut or walked on the moon, Buzz flew sixty missions as a combat pilot in Korea.) Korean vets deserve the same recognition as vets of other wars.

  Then again, Charlie Madison, my character in The Americanization of Emily, may have had it right: we’ll end wars only when we stop glorifying those who take part in them. In any case, I want to be very clear about one thing: I was not a hero. If there were any heroes, they were the guys who never came back from Korea, or the ones who were wounded, captured, or risked their lives to save their buddies. I didn’t save anybody but myself. I wasn’t a hero; I just got in the way a lot.

  After being discharged from the hospital, I was assigned to a base post office outfit stationed in a bombed-out shoe factory. That’s when I started enjoying the war, because I became a “dog robber” like Charlie Madison and Bob Hendley, the character I played in The Great Escape. A dog robber is a soldier who knows how to work the system, a facilitator who can get just about anything done.

  I decided to turn our area into a first-class recreation center. To do that I had to scrounge materials and supplies from other units on the base. They weren’t always inclined to cooperate, so I had to give them an incentive: if they didn’t come up with what I wanted, they didn’t get their mail. Soldiers become unhappy when they don’t get their mail, so they usually gave me what I asked for, including what we needed to build a bar and keep it stocked with whiskey. Graves Registration provided the ice.

  I built a theater, laid out a baseball diamond, and ran in pipes so we could have hot showers. My crowning achievement was the swimming pool. We dug out the basement, painted the walls, cemented the floor, put in a ladder, and filled it with water.

  But I couldn’t do much about the food, which was standard army chow. We had fresh eggs, and you could get them cooked however you wanted, but we also had to endure the infamous creamed chipped beef on toast, what GIs unaffectionately called “shit on a shingle.”

  Still, army chow was bearable as long as I could keep the onions and garlic out of it. I cannot stand onions and I’m very sensitive to garlic. I can taste tiny amounts of it, like when they’ve cooked another dish with garlic before and don’t wash the pan. If I get even a hint of it, I might throw up in my plate.

  This violent aversion may have saved my life: like our South Korean allies, the Chinese and North Korean troops lived on a diet of fish heads, rice, and garlic. One night while on guard on the line, I caught a faint whiff of it coming from the direction of the enemy positions. I couldn’t see anything, but I knew there was someone out there and they were coming closer. Once I sniffed them I could hear them, too. It turned out to be a patrol heading straight for our position. They were just the other side of a rise when I passed the word down the line. We were ready for them and stopped them in their tracks.

  We got turkey for Thanksgiving and turkey for Christmas and turkey in between . . . and more turkey New Year’s and . . . turkey, turkey, turkey! I got to where I didn’t like turkey. One day I was bitchin’ about it to the mess sergeant.

  “Damn, don’t we ever have anything except turkey?” I said.

  “Come ’ere,” he said.

  He took me into the kitchen and showed me a refrigerated trailer full of turkeys. He pulled one out and handed it to me. It was cool— not frozen, not even cold—and it had a date on it: 1945.

  They were feeding us World War II turkeys!

  Needless to say, I never had another bite of turkey in the army, and I’ve tried to avoid it ever since. Unfortunately, I still have to eat it on occasion. But I don’t have to like it.

  After nine months, my hitch was up. They promised me another sergeant’s stripe if I’d reenlist. I certainly enjoyed those months there. Though I was five thousand miles from the States, I felt at home. I knew who was who and what was what on the base. For the first time in my life, I had a sense of purpose and accomplishment. I even took the high school equivalency test and got my diploma.

  But I didn’t like the army that much.

  I went home a happy man.

  The only reason I’m an actor is that a lady pulled out of a parking space in front of a producer’s office.

  When I came home from Korea I visited my dad in California for a few months, but I still hoped to play football, so I went back to Norman and enrolled in the University of Oklahoma. Unfortunately, my knees were so messed up I couldn’t play. I dropped out after one semester, even though I had a B average. I just wasn’t interested in school.

  I hung around the pool hall, racking balls and picking up a little change on the side hustling snooker and playing cards. One night I was in a card game with Jennings Nelson, a football player for the University of Oklahoma. I was always short of money, and I told him when we sat down: “I’ve only got so much money and when it goes, that’s it.” Sure enough, I ran out of money, and he called me a name. I had to do something, so I fought him. We went out to the back of the pool hall. He was a big guy, about six foot three. He wound up in the hospital.

  Six months later, I was back in California, laying carpets for my father. I didn’t want to lay carpets, but I didn’t know what else to do. I’d never found a job I liked and didn’t have much of an education or any real skills.

  One day I drove down to San Pedro to apply for an oil field job in Saudi Arabia, but it turned out they were hiring geologists, not roughnecks. On the way home, driving up La Cienega Boulevard feeling sorry for myself, I noticed a sign on a building: “Paul Gregory and Associates.”

  I’d met Paul in 1945, when I was seventeen and working at the Shell station on the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and La Brea. A fellow Oklahoman, Paul was a soda jerk at the Gotham drugstore across the street, but he really wanted to be an agent. He kept telling me, “You oughta be in pictures,” and offered to “represent” me.

  I laughed at him.

  I ran into Paul a few years later, this time in Greenblatt’s Delicatessen, when I was about to leave for Korea. By then he had an office across from Schwab’s drugstore on Sunset Boulevard and he was driving a great big Cadillac convertible.

  “See, I told you you should have been in pictures!” he said.

  On my way back from Korea two years later, I saw Paul’s name in Newsweek magazine. He was a big stage producer with three hits going, including Don Juan in Hell with Charles Laughton and Agnes Moorehead. So when I saw the “Paul Gregory and Associates” sign on La Cienega I thought, Gee, maybe the soda jerk knows what he’s talking about . At that instant, a woman pulled out of a parking space in front of the building, and I pulled in. It was fate. Or at least serendipity: if the parking space hadn’t suddenly been there, I would not have driven around the block looking for one. I’d have kept on going.

  Paul saw me right away. He said he’d be willing to take me on as a client. (In those days, producers could be agents, too.) We talked for about an hour. Or rather, he talked. He told me I could have a “big career.”

  “Look at yourself, Jim,” he said. “You could defin
itely be a success if you’d learn how to act.”

  I decided to give it a try. Though I wasn’t much interested in acting, I was less interested in laying carpets. I wasn’t looking for stardom. I just wanted a clean job for decent money. I was twenty-five years old and told myself I’d give it until I was thirty to see if I could make a living at it.

  I also told myself I’d have to overcome my stage fright.

  Paul sent me to Columbia to read for an acting coach named Benno Schneider. Afterward, Benno gave me some advice: “Whatever you’ve been doing until now, young man, I’d suggest you go back to it, because you’ll never be an actor.”

  That was all I needed to hear. Rather than discourage me, it spurred me on. I don’t like to be told I can’t do something. I said, “I’ll show him!” (About five years later, Benno and I were sitting on a couch in my business manager’s office and he said, “I want you to know that I think you’re wonderful. You have star quality.” I said, “Really? That’s interesting, coming from someone who told me I’d never be an actor.” He claimed he never said it, but I told him, “Oh yes, you did! That’s something you don’t forget.”)

  My first part was in Paul Gregory’s production of The Caine Mutiny Court Martial, a two-act drama by Herman Wouk based on his Pulitzer Prize–winning novel. (It was later made into a movie starring Humphrey Bogart, Van Johnson, and Fred MacMurray.) The play centers on the aftermath of a mutiny aboard a fictional US Navy minesweeper in the Pacific during World War II. Most of the action takes place in a military courtroom.

  I played one of six judges on the bench. We were known on Broadway as “the silent six,” because none of us had any lines. They paid us each a hundred bucks a week to just sit there for two hours every night.

  But I didn’t just sit there.

  Being onstage without speaking for two hours every night taught me that the most important part of acting is listening. By listening, you keep yourself engaged. When you’re not listening, you’re daydreaming: “Where should I have dinner after the show? Maybe have a couple drinks first?” Your mind wanders and you lose track of what’s happening on stage. That’s the trouble with a lot of actors: they don’t listen; they just wait for the chance to talk. Which means they’re not involved in the scene. You can see the dead in their eyes as they wait to say their lines.

  The production had three big movie actors: Henry Fonda, Lloyd Nolan, and John Hodiak. I learned a lot watching them work every night. Little by little, I saw what they were doing and why they were doing it. I learned about technique, and I learned how to concentrate, but most of all, I learned how to be a professional.

  Henry Fonda had remarkable stage presence and tremendous self-confidence when he was in character. He knew how to capture an audience. The minute he walked on stage every eye in the house would go right to him and stay there. But he never thought he was any good. We’d have a great audience, they’d love the performance, and everyone would be happy but him. He was never satisfied, but never blamed anyone but himself.

  I spent a lot of time with Henry over the years. We took vacations with our wives, and I got to know him well. He was a cultivated man, an intellectual, and a craftsman. He painted, had a vegetable garden, raised chickens, and kept bees. He even knitted!

  And he was a gentleman.

  I consider Henry a mentor, and not only as an actor. We never talked much about acting. We both just did it. We were the same in that respect. Henry had a code of honor: if he gave you his word, he meant it. I think a lot of it had to do with his Nebraska upbringing. That’s true in Oklahoma, too, so it was common ground between us.

  Henry was a good man. He was kind to people and treated everybody the same. His father had taken him to see a lynching when he was a boy and it had a lasting effect on him. To get the studio to make The Ox-Bow Incident in 1943, he had to do several stinkers in return. His Gil Carter, the lone voice of reason against a mob determined to hang three drifters, was more like Henry than any other character he played.

  I admired him so much I even mimicked him. In My Darling Clementine, he did a little seated two-step in place by leaning back in a chair and pushing off a post, first with one foot and then another. I stole it for Support Your Local Sheriff. When Henry saw it, he said, “Why don’t you imitate somebody good?”

  We remained close friends until his death in 1982.

  I was paid an extra twenty-five bucks a week to take care of Johnny Hodiak’s wardrobe and keep his dressing room neat. I was basically his valet. I also understudied Hodi, who played Lieutenant Maryk, but I never went on. I respected him both as an actor and as a man. He knew his craft and, proud of his Ukrainian heritage, he had defied MGM boss Louis B. Mayer by refusing to change his name. It was a terrible shock and a great loss when, in October 1955, he died of a massive heart attack. He was only forty-one.

  I used to go around with the three of them—Fonda, Hodiak, and Nolan—as a sort of bodyguard-gofer-mascot. On my first night in New York, they got me a date with a gorgeous model, a redhead named Barbara Walters (not the journalist), and they took us to the “21” Club. I miss those guys.

  A month before rehearsals began, Paul Gregory assigned me to run lines with Lloyd Nolan. By that time, Lloyd was in his late forties, a master character actor who had done countless movies and plays. In the original script, Captain Queeg remained defiant until the end, but Lloyd had him slowly crumble under cross-examination. It added an extra dimension to the character and Lloyd stole the show. (Bogart played Queeg the same way in the film and got an Oscar nomination.)

  But before Lloyd could put his mark on the character, he had to learn the dialogue. I would go to his house for two or three hours every day and cue him on Queeg’s lines. At the table reading on the first day of rehearsals, Lloyd never had to look at his script. Everybody else was reading their lines, but Lloyd was letter-perfect, even on that long speech about the “stolen” strawberries.

  Fonda was amazed, because Queeg was a difficult part.

  “How the hell did you do that?” he wanted to know.

  “I hired Bumgarner,” Lloyd told him.

  So Fonda asked me if I would cue him, too, and I gladly agreed. (The secret, by the way: It’s like building blocks. You do one line at a time and stay on it until you’ve got it cold. Then you do the next line, and the next, and before you know it, you’ve got the whole thing.)

  The play opened in Santa Barbara and toured the country for three months before its Broadway premiere at the Plymouth Theatre on January 20, 1954. It ran for more than four hundred performances. Fonda left the show before the end of the run, and Barry Sullivan replaced him. You could see the difference. No consistency. Sullivan had good nights and bad nights, but Fonda never let down. Lloyd Nolan was the same. They both gave a solid performance night after night.

  William Inge said that after seeing me in Caine Mutiny rehearsals, he’d used me as the image of the character Beau in Bus Stop and he asked me to read for the part. The only thing I remember about the audition is that after I read two or three lines, they said, “That’s nice, Mr. Bumgarner, but we can’t hear you past the third row.”

  I was disappointed and relieved at the same time. I was so intimidated by everything, I just couldn’t break out. You have to be much broader on the stage than on film, and I was just too introverted.

  The New York office of 20th Century-Fox offered me a screen test, but I declined. I figured there was a rivalry between the New York and Hollywood offices of every movie company, and I didn’t want to get caught in the crossfire. I told them I’d only do a test in Hollywood. They thought I was crazy. After Caine Mutiny closed on Broadway, I went back to California and finally did the test for 20th, but nothing came of it because I was awful.

  The first thing I ever did on film was a Winston cigarette commercial with a very young Ellen Burstyn; she was Ellen McRae then. A few years later, we did a play together, John Loves Mary, and I came back to Hollywood raving about her. I touted her to Marty Rans
ohoff and just about anybody else who would listen. Over the years, Ellen has proved me right. I’m proud of her.

  After living off the Winston money for a year, I was about broke and wondering if I’d have to go back to carpet-laying when I was offered the part of Maryk in a touring company of The Caine Mutiny Court Martial. A previous road company had been a disaster because Paul Douglas, who played Queeg, gave an interview in Alabama. Douglas told the reporter he hated the South because it was “full of sorghum, sow bellies, and segregation.” There were $30,000 worth of cancellations in about a week and they had to call off the tour.

  They eventually put a new company together with Charles Laughton directing. Though I was still prone to stage fright, I jumped at the chance to work with the great English actor who’d created such unforgettable roles as Captain Bligh in Mutiny on the Bounty and Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

  One morning when we were still in rehearsals, Laughton said, “James, I’d like you to come up to the house and lunch with me.”

  I was sure he was going to can me, because I knew I wasn’t very good.

  After lunch he said, “James, do you know what your problem is?”

  “No, sir, I don’t.”

  “You’re afraid to be bad, and therefore you don’t do anything. You stay in the middle of the road. You’re not dull, but you aren’t interesting, either.”

  It shook me to the core, but I knew he was right. I didn’t care if the audience liked me, I just didn’t want them to dislike me, and so I underplayed everything. I didn’t want to do anything that might alienate them. As a result, I was mediocre.

  Laughton said, “Don’t worry about the audience. Just go out there and take the risk of being bad! I’ll rein you in when necessary.”

  I suppose that applies to life, too: You have to take the risk. You may fail, but at least you’ve given it your best shot.

  Laughton’s advice helped me relax. Ever since then I just stick my neck out and let the director chop it off if he wants to. It also made me realize that if I wanted to be more than just another big ox standing there going “Duh,” I’d have to distinguish myself somehow. I began to think I might be able to do it with humor.