page_title: James Garner
section_title: Maverick
hierarchical_section_title: James Garner / Career / Maverick
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo of James Garner as Bret Maverick and Karen Steele from the first episode of Maverick.
context_page_description: James Garner was an American actor, producer, and voice artist. He starred in several television series over more than five decades, including popular roles such as Bret Maverick in the 1950s Western series Maverick and as Jim Rockford in the 1970s private detective show, The Rockford Files. He played leading roles in more than 50 theatrical films, including The Great Escape with Steve McQueen, Paddy Chayefsky's The Americanization of Emily with Julie Andrews, Grand Prix with Toshiro Mifune, Blake Edwards's Victor/Victoria with Julie Andrews, and Murphy's Romance with Sally Field, for which he received an Academy Award nomination. Garner's career and popularity continued through another decade in movies like Space Cowboys with Clint Eastwood, and The Notebook with Gena Rowlands.
context_section_description: After several feature film roles, including Sayonara (1957) with Marlon Brando, Garner got his big break playing the role of professional gambler Bret Maverick in the Western series Maverick from 1957-1960.
  Only Garner and series creator Roy Huggins thought Maverick could compete with The Ed Sullivan Show and The Steve Allen Show but for two years it beat both in the time slot. The show almost immediately made Garner a household name.
  Garner was the lone star of Maverick for the first seven episodes, but production demands forced the studio, Warner Bros. (Warners), to create a Maverick brother, Bart, played by Jack Kelly. This allowed two production units to film different story lines and episodes simultaneously, necessary because each episode took an extra day to complete, meaning that eventually the studio would run out of finished episodes to air partway through the season unless another actor was added. 
  Critics were positive about the chemistry between Garner and Kelly and the series also featured popular cross-over episodes featuring both Maverick brothers. This included the famous "Shady Deal at Sunny Acres", upon which the first half of the 1973 movie The Sting appears to be based, according to Roy Huggins' Archive of American Television interview. Garner and guest star Clint Eastwood staged a fistfight in an episode titled "Duel at Sundown", in which Eastwood played a vicious and cowardly gunslinger. Although Garner quit the series after the third season because of a dispute with Warners, he did make one fourth-season Maverick appearance, in an episode starring both Garner and Jack Kelly filmed in the third season but held back. 
  The studio attempted to replace Garner's character with a Maverick cousin who had lived in Britain long enough to pick up an English accent, portrayed by Roger Moore, but Moore quit the series after filming only 14 episodes as Beau Maverick. Warners then dressed Robert Colbert, a Garner look-alike, in Bret Maverick's outfit and called the character Brent Maverick, but Brent Maverick did not have a chance to catch on with viewers since Colbert made only two episodes toward the end of the season. That left the rest of the series' run to Kelly, alternating with reruns of episodes with Garner during the fifth season. Garner still received billing during the opening series credits for these newly produced Kelly episodes, aired in the 1961–1962 season, although he did not appear in them and had left the series two years previously. The studio did, however, reverse the billing at the beginning of each show and in advertisements during the fifth season, billing Kelly above Garner.
  When Charlton Heston turned down the lead role in Darby's Rangers, before Garner's departure from Maverick, Garner (originally slated to play a large supporing part that was given to Stuart Whitman) was selected and performed well in the role. As a result of Garner's performance in Darby's Rangers, coupled with his enormous Maverick popularity, Warners subsequently gave him lead roles in other theatrical films, such as Up Periscope and Cash McCall.
caption: With Karen Steele in Maverick
exif: {}