OBITUARY | Film, TV legend James Garner, reluctant hero, dies

James Garner, whose folksy Oklahoma manner translated into lasting stardom on American television as an Old West gambler on “Maverick” and a private detective on “The Rockford Files,” has died of natural causes at his Brentwood home. He was 86.
In his best-known roles, Garner portrayed winsomely human versions of the Old West con man and the determined gumshoe. An unlikely star, Garner said he dreaded public speaking and never aspired to show-business fame.
“I had no ambition,” Garner recalled in a 2002 interview with Charlie Rose on PBS. “I didn’t want to be a star. I just wanted to do something to make a living.”
He acted on stage and in movies before moving to television.
“Maverick” aired on ABC from 1957 to 1962. Garner played Bret Maverick, a likeable, horse-riding card shark who moseyed from town to town searching for poker games and trying to avoid trouble. The series  won an Emmy Award in 1959.
“Everybody else was steely-eyed, the straight shooters,” Garner said in the 1999 interview. “But Maverick, he didn’t fight. He’d rather smile and laugh. He was a reluctant hero. That really gave us room to poke fun at all the others. We did that in ‘Rockford’ later, too, the same thing.”
“The Rockford Files,” which ran on NBC from 1974 to 1980, featured Garner as Jim Rockford, a falsely accused ex-convict turned Los Angeles private investigator who worked cases from his beach-side mobile home and preferred to wield his wit rather than a firearm.
Rockford stood out as “the first TV private eye – perhaps the first literary one – to be created as a fully credible human being, rather than simply a dogged, alienated purveyor of justice,” according to the Museum of Broadcast Communications. Garner won an Emmy in 1977. He was nominated six other times for his portrayals of Maverick and Rockford.
The Screen Actors Guild gave Garner a lifetime achievement award in 2005.
His movies included “The Great Escape” (1963), “Victor Victoria” (1982), “My Fellow Americans” (1996), “Space Cowboys” (2000) and “The Notebook” (2004). He was nominated for an Academy Award for his role opposite Sally Field in “Murphy’s Romance” (1985).
His starring role in “Grand Prix” (1966), director John Frankenheimer’s tale of an American driver on the global racing circuit, stoked Garner’s lifelong love of cars and racing. It was one of two dozen movies and TV shows made by Garner’s production company, Cherokee Productions.
James Scott Bumgarner was born on April 7, 1928, and raised in Norman, Oklahoma, the last of three sons born to Weldon Bumgarner, who ran a country store, and the former Mildred Scott Meek. His mother died when he was 4; in his memoir, he said he later learned the cause was uremic poisoning caused by a botched abortion. He officially shortened his name to Garner several years after studio executives first did it, without his permission.
He said he was a rebellious, sports-loving kid who rarely applied himself in school. The day he turned 16, he dropped out and joined the U.S. Merchant Marine.
He worked odd jobs, including janitor and carpet-layer in Oklahoma and California, did some modeling, was wounded during 14 months in Korea with the U.S. Army and briefly studied business at the University of Oklahoma. Finally, he tried acting. Bloomberg