The Garner Files: A Memoir

by James Garner

  At that point in the tournament, John Cook was individually tied for the lead. A win would have been a big career boost and a windfall in prize money. As I walked down the fairway, I heard a shout from the gallery: “HEY, ROCKFORD! HEY, ROCKFORD!” Some jerk had been heckling me all day. I’d done my best to ignore it, but when he kept it up, I motioned him to be quiet because John was trying to putt out to win the tournament. John missed the putt, triggering a five-way playoff.

  We signed our cards, and as I walked through the gallery, I said, “Who’s that loudmouth?” The crowd parted and there were two guys in their twenties who’d obviously been drinking. I told the guy, “You shouldn’t yell like that. It doesn’t make any difference to me, but the pros are playing for a lot of money. John Cook would have won the tournament if he’d made that putt.”

  He didn’t say anything, but started picking at my sweater, just below the neck.

  “Don’t do that!” I said.

  “Or what? You’ll deck me?”

  Before he could finish saying, “deck me,” I decked him.

  The next thing I knew he was on the ground and Bill Saxon was trying to keep me off of him.

  “You want some more?” I said.

  “I’m a big fan of yours, and my dad, who died of cancer, just loved you,” he said.

  Then he started crying.

  Oh, man.

  I’m happy to say that John won the tournament when he made a birdie on the third hole of the playoff. It was his first win and it launched a successful career on both the PGA Tour and now the Champions Tour.

  I thought the incident was closed, but someone had snapped a photo and sold it to the tabloids. The next day it appeared all over the world. The heckler brought a case against me for assault and battery, claiming irrevocable harm because he was a recovering alcoholic and drug addict, and I had intentionally inflicted emotional distress on him.

  I had no such intention. I only wanted to beat the crap out of him.

  The complaint alleged $2 million in damages. The trial was in Monterey a few months later. I took the stand and told my side of the story. When the jury came in after deliberating for all of half an hour, the judge asked if they’d reached a verdict. The foreman said, “Yes, Your Honor, we have two statements: One, Mr. Garner’s not guilty, and two . . . we’d like to have our picture taken with him.”

  With Bill Saxon’s airplane at our disposal, we’d fly to Greensboro, Charlotte, Atlanta, Asheville, and Tampa to play in pro-ams and other golfing events. We didn’t miss too many in that part of the country.

  Bill was an oil operator for most of his professional life. His Company, Saxon Oil, would search out prospects and then round up investors to finance drilling. Arnold Palmer had been one of Bill’s early investors and they became friends. They bought a golf course together near Orlando called the Bay Hill Club, and during the winters they had a regular game there at eleven o’clock every morning. When Rockford was on hiatus, I’d stay with Bill and join them. It was a great time and I got to meet and play with a lot of interesting people, including Arnold. I’ve never met anybody who enjoys golf more or plays harder to win a two-dollar Nassau than Arnold Palmer.

  I’ve never been much of a gambler. I never bet the ponies or the lottery, and I don’t care for casino games, but in the early 1950s, I used to go to Las Vegas on weekends. I’d take only one or two hundred dollars, because I wasn’t making any money. I had a golfing buddy there, a blackjack dealer named Montana. Before I’d leave town he’d say, “How ya doin’?”

  “Oh, I’m down about two hundred bucks.”

  “What time are you leaving?”

  “Eleven o’clock.”

  “Okay, come in around ten-thirty.”

  I’d sit down at his table and in half an hour, I’d have my two hundred back. But no more.

  I played a lot of backgammon with Luis over the years, but never for money. I played poker, mostly in home games, though I did play in the World Series of Poker in 2006. Got knocked out in the first hour by a guy with a bigger full house than I had. Ordinarily my hand would’ve kept me going for a while.

  I’m not a bad poker player; I just draw bad cards.

  I learned the game around the kitchen table with Uncle John Bumgarner, who was a good player. He’d say, “We used to be wealthy; it cost me a lot of money to get this good.”

  If you’re wondering whether being an actor helps at the poker table, yes and no. Yes on offense, like when you’re bluffing, no when it comes to reading “tells.” I’m terrible at that.

  I don’t bet on football games, but I love the NFL. I’ve been an Oakland Raiders nut since the 1970s. The late Dr. Robert Rosenfeld, who was my orthopedic surgeon, was also the Raiders’ team doctor. I’d fly up to Oakland with him and sit on the sidelines with the players. There was a long stretch when the Raiders won whenever I showed up for a game and lost when I wasn’t there. Soon if I wasn’t there and they lost, they blamed me! When the Raiders moved to Los Angeles, I had season tickets at the Coliseum.

  In the glory years, the Raiders had great players and a great coach in John Madden. George Blanda played until he was pushing fifty. Kenny “the Snake” Stabler could burn you at thirty yards; Fred Biletnikoff was as clutch a receiver as ever played the game; Jim Otto never missed a game—he never missed a play. Art Shell, Ted Hendricks, Gene Upshaw—I loved those guys.

  There’s an annual tournament at Bel-Air named for the swinging bridge across the ravine that bisects the tenth hole. It’s a tough format: The first day of the tournament is better-ball of partners and on the second day, play is from the back tees and both balls count. On the third and final day it’s alternate shot, which can be tough because you feel like an idiot when your partner hits a great drive and you screw up the next shot.

  The bad news about the Swinging Bridge Tournament is that it draws such a huge field, rounds take over five hours. But everybody wants to play in it because it’s so much fun. And hard to win.

  In 1998, my regular partner couldn’t play, so Bill Saxon suggested I team with John McKay, a friend of his from Dallas. John is a good player and he knew the course after having spent twenty years in LA with CBS Television. He’d played in the Swinging Bridge Tournament many times before.

  On the first tee I told John, “I only ask two things: one, we never say we’re sorry, and two, we never say, ‘We really need this one, partner.’” (John later told me he’s used that with partners ever since.)

  John and I played well enough the first two days to stay in contention. On the last day, it all came down to the eighteenth hole. John hit a good drive, and after I put our approach shot to within three feet of the hole, John needed to sink the three-footer, which had a six-inch break, to win the tournament. With a crowd watching, John lined up the putt, hunched over the ball, and calmly stroked it into the cup.

  I. Went. Crazy.

  I was so thrilled, I didn’t even mind going to the awards ceremony—I’d never gone in all the years before. When they handed me the trophy, I said, “I think I’d rather have this than an Oscar, because with an Oscar, you just go out and work and if you’re lucky, it happens. But I went out to win this tournament.” It was a moment I’ll always remember.

  Arthritis keeps me from playing golf now, and I miss it. Looking back, like all golfers, I had my strengths and weaknesses. I drove the ball pretty far, with a little fade. My irons were okay, except from about a hundred yards out. That shot was my Achilles’ heel. My short game was pretty good, especially putting. Sometimes I didn’t do what I was supposed to do on the golf course, but it wasn’t because I choked. Spectators never bothered me, but my temper was a problem. I think I could have been a better player if I’d controlled it. I had a love/hate relationship with the game: I got frustrated when I didn’t play well and I’d make myself miserable. If I hadn’t been so hard on myself, I’d have enjoyed the game more. But golf took me all over the world and introduced me to many wonderful people. Bottom line, I’ve taken
a lot more out of golf than golf has taken out of me.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Act-ing!

  I didn’t particularly want to be an actor, but by the time I reached my mid-twenties, I really didn’t want to be a roustabout. Watching movies in the Sooner Theatre in Norman as a boy, acting was the last thing I could imagine. But after a hundred odd jobs, I was looking for clean, well-paid work, and I’m glad I found acting, because it pays the best and it’s the most fun of all.

  I was awful at first, stumbling around, hoping to get lucky. I didn’t care about acting, I just wanted to support my family. I’d gotten married to Lois and had an instant family. Our daughter Kim was just out of the hospital, weak with polio. I had to get serious. The responsibilities of life made me pay attention to what I was doing on the screen.

  I’m a Methodist, but not as an actor. I’m from the Spencer Tracy school: be on time, know your words, hit your marks, and tell the truth. I don’t have any theories about acting and I don’t think about how to do it, except that an actor shouldn’t take himself too seriously, and shouldn’t try to make acting something it isn’t. Acting is just common sense. It isn’t hard if you put yourself aside and just do what the writer wrote.

  I don’t have the background a lot of actors have. For one thing, I’ve never taken acting lessons. That’s not true: in 1954, while playing a silent judge in The Caine Mutiny Court Martial, I briefly studied at the Herbert Berghof Studio in New York. When I say briefly, I mean one class. I couldn’t see the point. When Warner Bros. put me under contract, I took one or two classes with their drama coach, Blair Cutting. All I remember about the whole experience with Blair is if the wind was strong, his hair would blow off.

  In those days people kept telling me I needed a “foundation” in the theory and technique of the great acting teachers. I wondered about it at first, but then realized that my foundation was the life experience I’d had by the time I was twenty-five. I’d been all over the world and seen a lot. I figured I knew at least as much as someone who’d been to acting school. Let’s face it: Anybody can be an actor. There are no qualifications. The only other profession like that is politics.

  I learned my craft doing Maverick. Natalie Wood and I were both under contract to Warners at the time, and we worked together in Cash McCall. One day on the set, she said, “Jim, now that you’ve established yourself, you need to take some acting classes.”

  “Why would I want to do that?” I said. “I’ve got the top show on television. If and when things start to go south, I’ll consider taking lessons, but until then I don’t want to mess with a good thing.”

  I never thought acting was frivolous, though I thought some actors were. It’s a worthy vocation if practiced right. But I have to laugh when I hear actors talking about their art. Hey, it’s a movie. Just say the lines.

  I could never teach anybody to act because I don’t have a clue myself. The class would last about thirty seconds, because I’d tell them to just be yourself. Put yourself in the situation the character is in. How would you react to it? That’s all I know.

  I’m a very structured actor. I like to have the whole script in front of me before I shoot. I like it solid and I like to stick to it. (Some directors work without a script, but I don’t think they’re very good.) You can put the best actors and the best directors in the world out there, but they’re nothing without the written word. The script is sacred. I don’t improvise, because the writers write better than I do. So my first instinct is to leave the script exactly like it is. Actors like to tinker because it’s easier that way. If they don’t understand it the way it’s written, they assume they know better than the writer. But the writer has a point of view that the actor does not. He’s looking at the whole picture, not just one character.

  The late writer-producer Larry Gelbart once said it’s rare for a writer to find someone who wants to serve the material. “Not Gable,” he said, “who refused to go down with the submarine, because Gable doesn’t sink.” Well, I’ll sink. I’ll do whatever’s necessary to tell the story. That includes doing off-camera lines with fellow actors. It’s a courtesy to a colleague, but it’s also a service to the piece. You get better results from the actual person because it’s consistent: If I do a scene with you and then read lines in my close-ups to him off-camera, the audience is going to see a difference.

  I don’t act—I react to what someone else does. Give me a “reactor” over an actor every time. A reactor is sensitive to what’s going on around him. If you don’t have something to react to, you’re just out there chewing the scenery.

  If you listen carefully, you remember your words. You hear what the other actor is saying and you get involved. I try to listen to every word—even if it isn’t directed at me—and see the reaction to it. I try to stay with the dialogue and not anticipate it, to be in the action and react to it rather than just observe it. When you approach acting that way, you don’t learn lines, you learn thoughts. When I can’t remember a line, it’s usually because it doesn’t flow with the rest of the script.

  You put on a face for the public. The face isn’t false; it’s just another side of you. If it were false, you couldn’t last. People want something real and natural, and if they catch you acting, you’re dead. It has to look real. In order to look real, it has to be real, and I’ve always thought of the characters I played as real people.

  People think it’s easy for me to make it look easy. “That’s just good ole, easygoing Jim,” they say. Well, Lois can tell you I ain’t no “easygoing Jim.” People think I’m “playing myself.” Well, I’m not myself on the screen. I’m playing a character, but I try to put myself in his position. I work hard at not seeming to work too hard. I try to make the audience think it’s the first time I’m saying it. That’s not always easy, especially after the twelfth take. I’m basically a three-take actor. After that, it’s all downhill. (I get bored when I have to do a lot of takes. And if I have to do a lot of takes, you can bet it isn’t my fault.)

  Gene Hackman is my favorite actor, though I’ve never worked with him. Never even met the man. (We were in the same movie, Twilight, but didn’t have any scenes together.) I’d watch Gene do anything on the screen. I love the way he delivers his lines, the choices he makes. I also love Robert Duvall. He immerses himself in research for a role and then makes it look effortless. I don’t know if he considers himself a Method actor, but if he is, it works for him.

  I’m the opposite. I don’t do much preparation for a part. I purposely don’t read the books of movies I might make, because I don’t want to be disappointed by what they might change or leave out. I don’t do research, and I’m not interested in delving into the character’s hidden facets. I don’t care about his “backstory” or what kind of toothpaste he uses. For me, too much analysis takes the fun out of acting.

  When we were making 36 Hours, George Seaton told me a story about his friend, the British character actor Edmund Gwenn. You may remember him as Kris Kringle in the original Miracle on 34th Street. Seaton and Gwenn had a running argument about which was harder to do, comedy or drama. Seaton said drama; Gwenn insisted it was comedy. Well, Gwenn got sick, and when Seaton heard he wasn’t going to last long, he went to say good-bye. He found Gwenn in a hospital ward. After some small talk, Seaton said, “Dying must be hard.”

  “Dying is easy,” Gwenn said. “Comedy is hard.”

  That’s right. You can create drama with lighting, with scenery, with music. You can heighten it with editing. But you can ruin comedy with those things. You can’t fake humor. It had better be funny or you’re dead.

  I draw a line between comedy and humor. Comedy is slapstick— slipping on a banana peel and all that stuff. Humor is more subtle. Humor is cerebral and pure. It lasts. Either the joke is there or it isn’t, and if something isn’t funny, you ain’t gonna make it so by falling down.

  I do humor, not comedy. If I’m funny at all, I try to be slow funny. I tend to look at everything from the side, and
I’m more interested in character than flash, because flash hits quick and leaves quick. It takes a little longer to know a character, but character builds and builds, and it’s funnier.

  You can do comedy alone, but you can’t do humor without a good partner. You have to have somebody to bounce off of. To play humor you need a “sense of humor,” which means you have to know what’s funny and what isn’t. And you have to have comic timing. You can’t learn that; you have to be born with it.

  Robert Montgomery was a wonderful comic actor, but he didn’t get much credit because he made it look easy. You never saw him acting. The actors who get the credit are the ones you do see acting.

  I like a happy set, and I think it shows in the finished product. I like to laugh. But I also like to work. I enjoy going to the set every day with my fellow actors and the crew and the director. But I don’t take it home with me. When they yell, “Wrap!” I don’t think any more about it. I don’t even worry whether it’ll be a success or a failure, because I know I’ve done my best and have no control over how it’ll be received. But I can’t wait to get back to work the next day.

  When young actors want advice, I ask them: “Do you really, truly, have to be an actor?”

  “Yes, I have to!”

  “Okay, tell you what you do: Get a decent job. Make sure you have as much financial security as you can. Then go to your little theater and act your heart out. Forget about trying to make a living as an actor, because the odds are way against you.”

  It’s a tough business. There’s no security. Last I heard there were twenty thousand members in the Screen Actors Guild in Los Angeles. Of those, only about a thousand make a living. That means, year after year, nineteen actors out of twenty have to work a day job to survive. If you want to be an actor, don’t do it for the money.

  A lot of film actors go back to the theater periodically to “sharpen the saw.” They say they miss it. I don’t, because I’ve always been frightened of live audiences. When I was in Caine Mutiny Court Martial and John Loves Mary, the only two stage plays I’ve ever done, I had to pretend there was no back door in the theater or I would have used it. To this day, I’d be a wreck if I had to work in front of a crowd.