He's been married for 55 years!!!!
-
ActuallyStrange — 14 years ago(October 26, 2011 08:15 AM)
He's one of a tiny group of people in Hollywood who are actually good people and take marriage seriously.
Made you look!
Click here!
ActuallyStrange.wordpress.com -
FoxyRedFox — 14 years ago(November 01, 2011 07:13 AM)
Mr. Garner has always been one of the actors I respect the most, both for his career choices and for his life off camera. I don't think I've ever read a single negative thing about him. He is, indeed, a gentleman.
-
bbmaps — 14 years ago(December 10, 2011 04:47 PM)
Absolutely true. In a Hollywood full of small-minded back-biters, James Garner is a straight shooting, honest man. Not many are honorable enough to sue studios more than once, and walk away not only right, but so right the studios work with him again. Many of the people who worked with him on the crew or acting came back repeatedly, and he had a serious reputation for being very generous as a actor, staying late to feed lines when most stars would be off the lot when their on camera scenes were over. Women love him because he doesn't hit on them - apparently a even rarer trait in Hollywood than elsewhere. This also helps to explain his 55 year marriage.
Others here have claimed that McQueen stole his scenes with Garner in "The Great Escape," but that was the ever competitive McQueen's issue. Garner did plenty, and came off in the film as he has in life: not a showboater and not fancy, but a decent workman is honorable, and strongly insistent that he do the right thing. Garner has not only talent, but decency, and McQueen, for all his bad boy appeal and success, could never quite pull off a happy life. -
FoxyRedFox — 14 years ago(December 10, 2011 07:40 PM)
I remember reading about Mr. Garner frequently being injured on his various television shows because he liked to do his own stunts. However, he refused to take time off after an injury because his crew had families to feed.words to that effect. Good man, indeed.
-
ecarle — 14 years ago(August 07, 2011 01:28 PM)
Garner and McQueen:
Michael Caine, who hailed from the poor part of London, wrote that in his era, "there were two ways out of the ghetto: sports and show business. I wasn't good at sports."
While not all American film stars are from poverty(Humphrey Bogart, Lee Marvin, and William Hurt were from some wealth), a lot were, particularly "back in the day." McQueen and Garner had hardscrabble childhoods, missing parents(McQueen), abusisve stepparents(Garner.) They quit school early and used the military to transition into adult life at a young age.
And Garner and McQueen were good lookin' which became their ticket to Hollywood and "up the ladder" success. (Interesting, in youth, the strapping but pleasant-faced Garner wasb68 MORE good-looking than the somewhat runty-looking young McQueenbut McQueen became the bigger movie star.)
Movie bit parts (McQueen supporting Paul Newman in "Somebody Up There Likes Me" and Garner supporting Brando in "Sayonara")live TV, series guest shots(McQueen on "Alfred Hitchcock Presents")and then Westerns. "Wanted Dead or Alive" for McQueen and the more memorable, quirky and FUNNY "Maverick" for Garner.
"The Great Escape" brought McQueen and Garner together on the big screen. There are various accounts of McQueen's insecurity and bad behavior on "The Great Escape"(it may have been a mental-emotional thing; he was called "the male Marilyn Monroe" by studio brass). Director John Sturges was finally ready to fire McQueen and give most of his lines to Garner. Sturges met with Garner and said "starting tomorrow, McQueen is out and you are the star of The Great Escape."
But Garner didn't want that. Garner and James Coburn went to McQueen and worked on convincing him to stay. "But I'm not the star of this," said McQueen. "NOBODY's the star in this," replied Garner, "we're an ensemble." McQueen stayed, and a pop classic was made. And it IS cool to have Steve McQueen and James Garner in the same movie, if not in too many scenes together.
Garner's marriage:
I remember the public announcements of separation. They were pretty "serious." I think Garner did some dating during this time. But they indeed did reconcile, and in the "older years," the couple seems to be quite happy. Which is great. In Hollywood or anywhere.
A few Hollywood marriages broke all the way up, but the same reconciliations seem to take place. Dean Martin divorced his longtime wife and mother of most of his children, Jeannie, lived with or married some much younger women, left them and pretty much came back to Jeannie as a "best friend, living apart" in his last years. Steve McQueen divorced his wife Neile Adams, for Ali MacGraw, and then was divorced by MacGraw and married one more woman before his untimely death in 1980. But Neile Adams, the mother of McQueen's only children, seems to have stuck around as his "pal for a phone call" right up to his death.
Robert Mitchum was an example of a star who NEVER divorced his wife, but maintained many long-term affairs during the period of the marriage. One was with Shirley MacLaine, who stayed married to a man who lived in Japan even as MacLaine carried on her own affairs(and the Japan-based husband, his.)
Ah, Hollywood. They live different lives for the most part, but some of them do manage to live decent and giving lives, to themselves and others.
Personal James Garner teb68stimonial to his niceness: I was working a charity carnival event in Los Angeles one year in the seventies as a student, in a booth selling Cokes and food. James Garner approached, made conversation for awhile with those of us manning the booth, asked about the charity, bought his food and drink and left thanking US. His wife was on his arm. He was doing "Rockford" then and I will tell you this: that man was BIG. Broad. Also ridiculously handsome in person.
He looked to me much more like a movie star(which he had been) than a TV star. But somehow he turned his TV stardom into the equivalent OF movie stardom.