The Garner Files: A Memoir

by James Garner

  I think Warner was scared of me. I mean physically. Whenever we were together, I’d catch him watching me out of the corner of his eye, as if he were afraid I’d pick him up and throw him out of a window, maybe because Errol Flynn had once threatened to do just that, and Warner thought I was the same kind of guy. I was careful not to dispel that notion, but I would never have laid a hand on him. A few years after I left Warner Bros., we were both at some premiere, and the minute he saw me he had his bodyguards circle around him as if he were in mortal danger.

  Warner hated agents, especially Lew Wasserman and Jules Stein of MCA, who’d made a deal for client Charlton Heston to star in a Warner Bros. combat movie. While Heston was preparing for the role, Warner discovered that the contract gave the actor 10 percent of the movie’s gross. He went ballistic and tore up the contract. Meanwhile, the studio ordered Heston to report for the start of production. When he refused on the advice of his agents, Warner Bros. declared him in breach of contract and lawsuits were filed.

  Questioned by MCA’s lawyer in a deposition, Warner ticked off his objections to the contract the agency had negotiated, and then blurted out: “Aw, those fucking actors deserve anything bad that happens to them anyway.” The MCA attorney smiled and said, “Thank you, Mr. Warner, that’s all we need from you.” Heston got a big settlement.

  At 5:30 on the same afternoon that Chuck Heston failed to report for the start of Darby’s Rangers, I was called up to the Warner executive offices. They said they wanted to reward me for being such a great guy and offered to raise my salary to $350 a week and give me a two-year extension on my contract. I wasn’t sure what they were up to, but I knew it was something, so I said no. Then they upped the offer to $500 a week. With Kim recovering from polio and Lois pregnant with Gigi, I took it. I didn’t know that the $500 was really $285; the rest was withheld as an “advance against residuals” that I’d never see because actors didn’t get residuals in those days.

  On the following Monday morning, I learned I was to replace Heston as the lead in Darby’s Rangers. It would be my first starring role in a feature, and they were getting me for $500 a week. They’d have had to pay anyone else many times that to star in the picture.

  Early in 1957, as soon as I’d finished my work on Sayonara in Japan, Warner Bros. called me back to Hollywood to test for a new Western series. They’d looked at just about every actor in Hollywood to play a gambler wandering the frontier in the 1870s, but they picked me, probably because they saw the Sayonara dailies and figured, Hey— we’ve already got this guy under contract, we might as well save money. That’s how they “discovered” me to play Bret Maverick. I wasn’t happy about it. I wanted to make movies, not a TV Western. But I didn’t have a choice.

  Jack Warner had a firm policy against using original stories because he didn’t want to pay a $500-per-episode “created by” royalty to a writer. He decreed that, whenever possible, scripts should be adapted from properties already owned by the studio. If the odd pilot was based on an original script, Warner would screen it once or twice in a movie theater in Bermuda or somewhere to establish technically that the series came from a Warner Bros. “film.”

  Maverick’s pilot, “The War of the Silver Kings,” was adapted from the book The War of the Copper Kings, which the studio had previously purchased. For another episode, they recycled an old Warner Bros. feature called Rocky Mountain starring Errol Flynn. They used stock footage from the movie, and our clothes had to match, so I wore Flynn’s actual hat and vest. The rest of Maverick’s costume was a conglomeration of stuff they had lying around in the wardrobe department: Monty Woolley’s shirt from The Man Who Came to Dinner, Gary Cooper’s coat from Saratoga Trunk. I even had to ride a certain horse. This was standard operating procedure at Warners in those days. People used to say that if there were ever more than two characters in a Warner Bros. TV show, it was stock footage.

  In August 1957, on the strength of the pilot, ABC sold Maverick to the Kaiser Steel Company—in those days there was one sponsor for a whole show—for $6 million for fifty-two episodes, thirteen of them reruns. We had to deliver thirty-nine episodes the first season, giving us only a month to build up a backlog of shows before the series went on the air.

  Henry J. Kaiser was an American industrialist who’d made his name and fortune building “Liberty” ships during World War II. He was a tough executive who figured out how to turn out a prefab cargo vessel in six days, which was a big boost to the Allied war effort. By the mid-1950s, his empire also included a steel and aluminum company based in Oakland, California. He wanted to go national, so he asked ABC for a suitable television show. ABC pitched Maverick.

  Kaiser’s friend, the TV host Art Linkletter, advised him not to buy it because, Linkletter said, there were already too many Westerns on the air. He predicted Maverick would “die like a dog” in the first season. Kaiser went ahead anyway, maybe because he saw a bit of himself in Bret Maverick. And I was told he liked the way I handled the character.

  The Maverick pilot aired on September 22, 1957. After a few more episodes, the director Budd Boetticher and I started to play around with the scripts, injecting a little humor here and there. Soon Roy Huggins caught on. By the fourth episode, Roy was writing for it, and things got a lot more amusing.

  One of the other Maverick writers, Marion Hargrove, liked to put little digs in the stage directions like, “Maverick looks as if he has lost his place in the script,” or “Maverick looks at him with his beady little eyes.” When someone told him you can’t refer to the star as “beady-eyed,” Marion said, “Leave it in. I know Garner, and believe me, he’s beady-eyed.”

  By the tenth week, we were the top-rated show on television and were changing America’s viewing habits. Before Maverick, when people went out to dinner on Sunday night, they made sure they were home by eight o’clock to watch Ed Sullivan or Steve Allen. Maverick came on at 7:30, so everybody had to get home a half hour earlier.

  The show put the word “maverick” into the language. A “maverick” is “a refractory or recalcitrant individual who bolts from his party and initiates an independent course,” according to The Western Dictionary. The word goes back to a Texas cattleman who didn’t brand his calves. When they’d wander onto someone else’s ranch, people started calling them “mavericks.” In one of the shows, we defined a maverick as “a calf who’s lost his mother, and his father has run off with another cow.” I’ve always thought of it as a sort of freewheeling slick. In 1980, the name was used for a new NBA franchise—the Dallas Mavericks—and it’s the name of a chain of convenience stores in the Southwest, though they spell it “Maverik.”

  Maverick’s competition on Sunday night—Ed Sullivan, Steve Allen, and Jack Benny—were each making $25,000 a week, and we were burying them in the ratings. Sullivan had been on top for years and nobody had ever beaten him before, yet I was making $500 a week for doing not only Maverick but also appearing in feature films (Up Periscope and Cash McCall in addition to Darby’s Rangers). I was also required to do publicity, including at least one interview a day at lunch, plus personal appearances on weekends. They also wanted me to go out at night and be seen around town, but I didn’t have the money. I couldn’t afford the clothes, and I couldn’t afford the car. I had to borrow Natalie Wood’s Cadillac to take Lois to the premiere of West Side Story because my car was an old clunker.

  I figured that since Maverick was a hit, the studio would do the right thing and tear up the old contract. I figured wrong.

  When Maverick was on hiatus, I hit the road at the rate of three cities a day. One weekend they sent me to Texas, and when we landed in San Antonio, there were five thousand people at the airport. They overran the gates and came right up to the plane. I did local TV, rode in a float with Miss San Diego, and was Grand Marshal at the Illinois State Fair, for which I received $100 pocket money while the studio got $25,000.

  One time they put a bunch of VIPs on a Mississippi steamboat and pre-positioned me, costume
d as Bret Maverick, on a small island in the middle of the river. When the boat came by the captain announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to pick up an extra passenger.” They took me aboard and I mingled with the customers until we docked.

  When I was asked to do The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom on ABC, I knew the usual fee was $7,500, but a Warner Bros. executive informed me I was expected to do it for nothing and I’d already been “committed” to appear.

  “Then uncommit me,” I said.

  When they threatened to fire me, I said, “Up to you.”

  When they threatened to sue me, I said, “Go ahead.”

  We finally compromised: I got $2,500 for the Boone show, plus a new (1959) Corvette, tax-free, with a full tank of gas and the key in the ignition. (Wish I had that car today!) Plus, no more bookings without my permission, and I’d get half of all future appearance fees.

  If you bring your personality to roles, people get to know you. When you play someone you don’t understand, it doesn’t work. I understood Maverick right away because a maverick is a rebel and I’ve always been a rebel. Maverick doesn’t like to fight, but he’ll use his fists if pushed to the wall. Me, too. (There’s a line in Murphy’s Romance that I think fits us both: “When I’m pushed, I shove.”) Maverick is a drifter, and I was a drifter. He isn’t anti-Indian, and neither am I, being one quarter Cherokee.

  Maverick is quick-witted and quick on the draw, though he tries to avoid gunplay. But he’s not a coward . . . exactly. He just believes in self-preservation. His attitude is, why risk your life over something trivial, like money? Or “honor”? But Maverick has his own moral code, and he does have a conscience. Yes, he cheats at cards, but he only cheats cheaters. He doesn’t have to cheat anybody else because he’s a great poker player. (That’s one trait we don’t share.) Maverick is often described as an antihero, but I don’t think that’s true. I’d call him a reluctant hero. He’ll come to your aid if there’s an injustice involved, and he’ll always stand up to bullies. (Have I mentioned that I hate bullies?)

  Mind you, I wasn’t thinking about all this stuff when I was making Maverick. I just wanted that check at the end of the week.

  It took us eight calendar days to make a Maverick episode: We’d start on Tuesday, shoot through Friday afternoon, break for the weekend, then come back and finish late Monday or early Tuesday. But since the episodes were being aired every seven days, we were losing a day a week, and it was only a matter of time before we would run out of shows. So after about the eighth week they got the idea of adding a brother who could alternate with Bret. They auditioned a bunch of actors, including Stuart Whitman, Rod Taylor, Richard Jaeckel, and Jack Kelly, the brother of the movie actress Nancy Kelly. One day they brought Jack over to the Warners back lot. We hit it off right away. They hired him to play Bart Maverick for $650 a week, $150 more than my salary . . . and he was still getting screwed. (My $500 a week increased to $600 the second year and to $1,250 the third, which, in those days, was . . . not a lot of money.)

  Henry Kaiser wasn’t just a sponsor; he was a 33 percent partner in Maverick’s profits, but as far as I know, he never interfered with the production. When the network accidentally forgot to tell Kaiser about the addition of another Maverick—he didn’t find out until the first episode aired—he was livid. “I paid for red apples and they gave me green apples!” Kaiser said. ABC had to pay him $600,000 to smooth his feathers.

  They created a second production company for Jack Kelly that worked simultaneously with ours. Jack and I did separate episodes, but all the scripts were written for Maverick, not for a specific brother, so they were interchangeable. Occasionally we’d cross over. He’d appear in my episode, I’d appear in his. Just a few scenes, though, usually to rescue each other from a tight spot.

  Jack was a good guy and we got along fine. The only problem was, he drank too much. He wasn’t bad, but whenever we’d go on an airplane, he’d get snockered and become difficult. And sometimes he’d arrive on set with a hangover and an attitude. But within a couple of hours, we were having fun again.

  Jack’s wife, the actress May Wynn, was another story. Born Donna Lee Hickey, she took her stage name from her character in the film version of The Caine Mutiny. She resented that Jack wasn’t a bigger star, and I think she blamed me for it. She’d nag him about my having funnier scripts and getting more recognition. After a few drinks, she would needle Jack mercilessly. Then he’d have another drink, and they’d get into a big argument.

  The audience somehow got the idea I was the senior Maverick brother, even though Jack was seven months older, maybe because I was there first, or because I was an inch or so taller than Jack. That may explain why Bart Maverick’s episodes weren’t as popular as Bret’s. The audience was disappointed: All of a sudden, they weren’t getting what drew them to the show in the first place. We tried to remedy that by having Bret introduce Bart’s first few solo episodes.

  These were the early days of television. We didn’t have the time or money to do anything extravagant. The whole series was shot at Warner Bros. Studios. I don’t think we went on location more than once or twice in three years. There were four units filming simultaneously on the lot in Burbank. We were literally back-to-back, one camera pointed at us, the other at Sugarfoot or Cheyenne or one of the other Westerns. The dolly grips were butt-to-butt and we had to take turns shooting.

  Roy Huggins was the writer-producer and creator of Maverick. Roy was smart and he was successful, in a commercial sense. Look at the shows he created: Maverick, 77 Sunset Strip, The Fugitive, The Rockford Files, Baretta. Roy was a nice enough guy, I suppose, but he had strong opinions and would never listen to anybody. He borrowed just about every story he ever did and just changed it from one form to another. Somehow, I don’t think he had the depth or the scope for the movies.

  Roy did have a great line about me: “Jim Garner and I have a love/hate relationship: I love him and he hates me.”

  It wasn’t true; Roy didn’t love me at all.

  But I may not be an impartial witness. I knew more than I should about Roy because my friend Luis Delgado was his brother-in-law. (Luis’s sister, the actress Adele Mara, was Roy’s wife.) More than that, I can’t say.

  Luis was Jack Kelly’s stand-in on Maverick when I asked him to work for me. “I will on one condition,” he said. “You take care of the acting and I’ll handle everything else.”

  And did he ever. He looked after me like I was his baby. When we traveled, he made all the arrangements. He’d go to a city ahead of me and rent a car, check into the hotel, go to the production office and get our per diems, then pick me up at the airport. If I needed clothes, he got clothes. If I needed laundry or dry cleaning done, he saw to it. He’d drop me off and pick me up at the golf course (Luis didn’t play); he’d get the script changes and put them in for me. He handled all the cash and made sure I always had spending money.

  In short, Luis made sure I didn’t have anything to worry about so I could focus all my energy on acting.

  Luis (“LOO-ee”) was a dynamic guy with a commanding presence. My driver, Chester Grimes, could be across the room, Luis could just look at him, and Chester would straighten right up. (Chester, aka “Cheddar Cheese,” has been with me for many years, and I can always depend on him to make me laugh. Sometimes so much I have to beg him to stop.)

  I met Luis when I was eighteen and he was twenty, at the Dolores Drive-in at Wilshire and La Cienega where we both went to chase girls. The only difference was that Luis had a car.

  Years later Luis owned a bar, the Laurelite, on Sunset Boulevard, next door to Greenblatt’s Delicatessen and across the street from Schwab’s drugstore. People in the movie business loved the place because he’d put them on the cuff. Luis never got wealthy, because he was too good-hearted.

  Luis’s nickname was “the Thin Man,” and it fit: delgado means “thin” in Spanish, and Luis was skinny at six foot three, 185 pounds. He was too thin for the Army!

  Luis
always had good-looking cars—I remember a beautiful green Buick convertible he drove in the ’50s. We both loved cars and at one time both had Mini Coopers. You’d see us going home from the studio, Luis in his purple one and me in my blue one. In 1972, Luis’s wife bought him a custom van for his birthday. Luis was working as Steve McQueen’s stand-in on The Getaway, directed by Sam Peckinpah. They were shooting in San Antonio, Texas, and I volunteered to drive the van there from Los Angeles to surprise Luis. He was surprised, and he loved the van, which had a lot of custom work by Tony Nancy.

  While on the set of The Getaway I did a car stunt for Peckinpah. Drove an orange VW Beetle in a robbery scene. When I asked Sam to pay me, he said, “How much do you want?”

  “Just give me what you think it’s worth.”

  He reached in his pocket and pulled out a dollar.

  I didn’t tell him that I had so much fun, I’d have paid him.

  Luis was excellent company and we had great times. Between shots on the set, we played backgammon. On weekends, we’d go to auto races all over Southern California. When we weren’t shooting, I’d go to his house in Sherman Oaks to play backgammon. Never played for money, and it’s a good thing, because Luis was the luckiest damn roller you ever saw!

  Luis and I understood and trusted each other. We never had a cross word between us in fifty years. I lost him to cancer in 1997.

  I think Westerns are popular because they’re pure escapism. They don’t bother with the problem of how the hero earns his living. A cowboy rides into town, gets off his horse, and goes into a saloon. The barkeep pours him a shot and the cowboy sits down. He doesn’t have to worry about anything. Nobody wants to know where he came from or what he does. When he ties up his horse, there’s no parking meter on the hitching post. In Maverick, there’s always good weather, and you know neither Bret nor Bart will have to worry about where their next meal is coming from. Or where they’re going to sleep. They just get off their horses and lie down.