The Dark & Bloody Ground

By 1974, many Americans, especially those in what Nixon called "the silent majority" were getting pretty leery of well-heeled do-gooders. Think Bill Ayers, whose father Thomas Ayers was the CEO of Commonwealth Edison (and chairman of the board of my alma mater, Northwestern University). Think Jane Fonda. Think Leonard Bernstein, who famously hosted a cocktail party for members of the Black Panthers.

Was Beth Davenport, Rockford's lawyer and erstwhile flame, the writers' stand-in for radical chic? In "The Dark & Bloody Ground" her character was not attractive. Cute, but not attractive.  She was portrayed as privileged, manipulative, and willing to cheat her hard-working friend on behalf of her pet cause -- in this case an impoverished, friendless woman accused of murdering her husband. So a rich do-gooder stiffs a working man out of his hard earned wages to help the poor. I wonder if Governor Reagan was a fan of the show?

Beth's role in the episode was to serve as both a comic and a dramatic foil for Rockford, and it played well. When she approaches Rockford, who is fishing on the beach and makes her wade into the surf in her suit to make her pitch, she mentions that she is donating her representation. Rockford responds that she can afford to because she "picked the right grandfather." He is not so fortunate. ("I don't take charity cases. They're not part of my survival kit.") When Beth protests that her client is innocent, he clearly regards her as naive. ("I spent five years in prison. While I was there I never met anybody who wasn't innocent.")

The plot must go on, of course, and Rockford is sucked into the case. This confirms a pattern established in the pilot and repeated throughout the series. Rockford is initially skeptical about his clients and their cases. He is sympathetic, up to a point, but realistic about his own interests. He sidles into things reluctantly, and often against his better judgment. And he often only really gets interested in a case after someone beats him up or tries to kill him. (In this episode, a society party-planner named Eliot tries to run him off the road in a Mack truck.) This pattern fits pretty comfortably with a popular perception Americans have of themselves and their country. (Apropos of nothing, a 50-year old viewer of "The Dark & Bloody Ground" would have been 15 or 16 years old on December 7, 1941.) 

Beth's lack of concern over his interests sets up a classic Rockford tirade, as they quibble over his expenses. 

BD:  "You're angry!"
JR:   "Why would I be angry? You hired me to do a job. I almost get killed in the process. The highway patrol are looking for some fun-loving kid. My father wants an autographed picture of the truck, and you're so torn up you're arguing over a tube of toothpaste!  (Door slams.)

Rockford strikes a blow for the working class when he pins the murder on Eliot, who Beth seems to know (or know of) from traveling in the same social circles. ("Old money would never marry Eliot.")

BD:  "He's not the type..." (to commit murder).
JR:   "Because he went to the right schools?  He's the type."

As the series continued, Beth became less the caricature of a precocious limousine liberal, and more of the tough, independent career woman. There were no further references to old money or lost causes. Beth might have been an interesting "frenemy" (ala Angel Martin), but her character evolved into more of a clear-eyed Rockford defender, instead. The later Beth would never have tried to cheat Rockford out of his expenses for car repair by arguing that he was negligent for not locking the hood of his car:

JR:   "There's no lock on the hood."
BD:  "You should have one installed. This must happen all the time in your line of work."

In addition to the class warfare, there is a very brief "Okie from Muskogee" moment that sets the cultural tone of the show. The murdered husband had been a writer, and when Rockford interviews the accused in jail she says he had been out "listening to the country." Rockford offers her a subtle but expressive look that in a fraction of a second tells us exactly how he feels about someone who would describe bumming around as "listening to the country." 
 
"The Dark & Bloody Ground" also marks Rocky's first pitch for Jim to consider a career in truck driving, which he considers a safer and more respectable line of work. Jim, of course, has heard it all before and pays no attention. Rocky's bewildered reply tells us a great deal about what we'll see over the rest of the first season and the life of the series:  "For a man who doesn't like getting stomped on, you're in the wrong line of work."

The Kirkoff Case

Rockford plays well off of creeps. In the first episode of TRF he is hired by actor James Woods (who runs neck-and-neck in the Late 20th Century Creepstakes with Christopher Walken) in the role of Larry Kirkoff, a rich twenty-something who probably murdered his parents.The great thing about Rockford and creeps is that his reactions to them are based more on distaste than moral indignation. He is willing to work for Kirkoff to try to prove his innocence, despite the fact that everyone (including Rockford, more or less) believes that he's guilty. When he tells a red-herring heavy at the beginning of the show that he's working for Kirkoff, the man is genuinely outraged. ("You must be hard up for money!").

We viewers gets the vicarious pleasure of watching Rockford channel our contempt for Kirkoff, as well as the more subtle and illicit thrill of resenting Kirkoff's contempt for Rockford (and us). Rockford is willing to take Kirkoff's money, but he's not going to let that affect his demeanor toward the guy. For Rockford, this is pretty close to the definition of integrity.


The lure of a $20,000 payday ($87,000 in 2009 dollars) keeps Rockford on the case even after he makes a half-hearted attempt to quit.

LK:  "No one can be in a racket like yours without being influenced by money."
JR:   "Not me."
LK:  "Especially you."
JR:   -- ambiguous silence --

Julie Sommars plays the female lead, Tawnia Baker, and their relationship dashes through multiple stages, beginning with a bit of screwball flirtation.



TB:  "What do you do when you're not chasing cowboys?"
JR:   "I sell greeting cards."
TB:  "Is there much money in that?"
JR:   "Christmas and Easter aren't too bad, but Mother's Day just sort of lays there."
TB:  "Sign of the times."

She drugs him, turns feral when he disrupts her gold digging, and they eventually reach a truce over hamburgers at a drive in, after mutually abandoning an expensive restaurant. By the end of the show she almost becomes a client. The sexual tension is muted as they fly through these role changes. While Rockford does not do a lot of old-school elbow guiding, he does drive her car when they go out. (For the record, Sommars was 32 when the show was shot.)

Rockford also glides through four non-Rockford identities in a mere 49 minutes:  messenger, old friend from Chicago, importuning insurance salesman, and corporate executive from Kirkoff Industries. The virtuosity with which he slides into and out of these improvised, throwaway roles is a hallmark of the Rockford modus operandi and one of the principal pleasures of the show.

Physically, Rockford is on the wrong end of the vast majority of the violence in this episode.

TB:  "You've been fighting!"
JR:  "No, the other guys did the fighting. I just stood there and took it."

He is drugged, held at gunpoint, kidnapped, severely beaten (he loses, then finds, a tooth), has his headlights kicked in, and is literally beaten to the punch by a union thug he tries to nail with a cheap shot. ("You've seen that before."  "Yeah, a couple of times.") As usual, the police are of little help, despite Becker's conditional sympathy. ("You're not exactly Princess Margaret in this department. Every time you come in here with a bloody nose morale goes up by ten points.")

He is initially glib in the face of the worst of these threats ("Does your mother know what you do for a living?"), but quickly changes his tune. In the wake of the tooth-loosening beating we get another glimpse into the humanity of the Rockford character, as imagined by TRF's writers. The chief thug croaks "I'm gonna give you some advice." This line must have been used in dozens of crime dramas prior to 1974, in film and on TV.  Rockford's response to this cliche? "I could use some advice, believe me." At that point he sounds nothing but sincere. The only other detective I can imagine saying that is Nick Charles, though Nick never really got his martinis jostled, and would probably have redirected the line to into an arch reference to his difficulties managing his strong-willed wife.     


Rockford proves that Kirkoff did not kill his mother, but still believes he killed his father. In the end, Kirkoff earns a bit of sympathy by confessing to that crime. His real motivation in hiring Rockford was to uncover the partial truth, so he could then be free to reveal the rest --a nice twist of character to end the first show.

"Backlash of the Hunter" (Pilot)

Our first glimpse of Jim Rockford comes 11 minutes into the pilot, after an interminable bus ride and a strangling. He is scuffling up from the beach toward his trailer with a fishing rod, accompanied by his father (the Pete Best Rocky). A pre-bionic Lindsay Wagner is waiting outside his door, and Rocky bets him ten bucks that she's a bill collector. It would be hard to imagine a less glamorous or dramatic introduction.

The relationship between Rockford and his client Sara Butler (Wagner) becomes the central feature of the first half of the show. One of the conventions of the detective genre is that the beautiful dame comes looking for help, and the hero is immediately drawn to her, despite his suspicion that she may be concealing a terrible, deadly secret. Instead, Rockford and Sara immediately begin a negotiation about money that carries through the entire pilot. He demands his $200 a day plus expenses in advance. She writes him a check. He runs a credit check on her ("I used to be softhearted..."), and the check bounces. ("You laid some bad paper on me. People who like each other hardly ever do that sort of thing.")  He only agrees to look into the case for an hour or so, at no charge, after she makes a lame, transparent attempt to seduce him. He finds this appalling, but takes it as a sign of desperation that he can't ignore.  Later they quibble over his expenses for toothpaste and the check for a lunch of coffee and hot dogs at the Tail o' the Pup. They eventually negotiate over how much he will take off the final bill if she agrees to charm and drug the heavy so they can search his apartment. The entire relationship is much more screwball than noir.

The pilot also offers a good window on the Rockford approach to violence. He has no qualms about bullying and threatening weaker people. When they interview Sara's brother, who defensively demands to to know who/what Rockford is, Rockford responds that he's "50 pounds heavier and whole lot meaner," as a way to get answers. Later when Sara asks if Rockford is afraid of Jerry, the bulky martial arts expert and prime suspect, he replies:  "You're damned right I am." This leads to what may be one of the most iconic scenes in  TRF history, the confrontation in the bathroom and the classic Rockfordian observation:  "The trouble with karate, Jerry, is that its based on the ridiculous assumption that the other guy will fight fair."   



[Ed Robertson's book The Rockford Files quotes Stephen J. Cannell saying that "during the scene in which Rockford pours soap on the bathroom floor and he hits the guy with the roll of nickels, that needle (on the audience response meter) went way into the 90s...I'd never seen that needle go that high. But you could just hear the audience howling through the glass wall of the booth where we were all sitting."  This may have been the scene -- with its trickery, humor and jazzy dialogue -- that established the Rockford character.]

Rockford makes several statements that serve as "texts" on his character and outlook. The first occurs when Sara tries to convince him to take her case, despite the fact that she will go broke trying to pay him. He asks her what it would make him if he took all her money, despite the fact that he didn't think he could help. She responds that that's not his problem.

JR:  "I think that makes me an unprincipled jerk. Since don't have any real close friends, I have to get along with myself."  Its easy to breeze past this in the show, but it underscores the idea that Rockford does have a code and conscience, and reinforces his status as a self-contained guy.

Later, when he and Sara are having an ambiguously romantic fireside chat, she asks him about his time in prison. He responds that he "spent five years in the state pen" for armed robbery, but his anger has scarred over, even if it hasn't healed: "Its not important to me anymore. Used to be."

He also defines his hands-off, live-and-let-live philosophy:  "I won't tell you what to do, Sara. I gave up that habit in prison. That's one of the more constructive things I learned there." 


The evolving relationship between Rockford and Sara is almost fatherly, which gets to The Rockford Files (if not Rockford's) ambivalence about sex. Sara owns "a bikini shop," but unless the viewer has a mannequin fetish this tidbit goes visually unexploited.  Jim is more interested in getting paid than getting Sara, and as noted previously he is disgusted by her brief attempt at seduction. Later they share a romantic kiss, followed by an ambiguous cut. Its hard to tell what we are to make of all this. Are PI's allowed to become romantically involved with their clients? Is it a bit gross that Garner is 21 years older than the 25-year-old Wagner?  And why does Rockford always have to conduct women through doorways and to restaurant tables by gently grabbing their elbows? (This is another tic that runs throughout the show, and it drives my wife crazy!)


The identity of the bad guys in The Rockford Files often says something about the times, but in this case they include an aging gold-digger and her mimbo, who is stupid, vain and dangerous. She has the brains and the money in the relationship, so maybe that says something about gender relations ca. 1974. Then again, maybe not.

In the pilot we also meet the three of the four staple characters of the series:  Angel, Becker and Beth. (I will skip Rocky until Noah Beery, Jr. shows up.) We learn that Rockford and Angel had been in prison together, but its nice to see the writers avoiding the cliche of two men who forged a closer-than-brothers bond behind bars. Their relationship is transactional and conditional. Angel confesses that he'd actually done "that bank job," despite all his previous claims of innocence. When Rockford sticks to his story of innocence, Angel retracts his confession. He clearly believes "Jimmy" is as guilty as he is, and is offended he won't share that confidence.

The relationship with Becker in the pilot is not the close friendship that would evolve during the course of the series. Becker is beleaguered, as usual, and protests that "every time you solve one of these (closed) cases" it makes the department look bad. The relationship with Beth is similarly businesslike - a slow start on the ambiguity that will run through the entire show.

We also get a good taste of the minor hassles and humiliations that Rockford faces. Sara's check bounces. Someone has drawn a beard on his picture in the Yellow Pages. He has to wear the restaurant's tie at a restaurant.  Garner is a masterly conveyor of annoyance and exasperation.

Finally, we get doses of the Rockford humor, which is often based on his oddly jazzy, Rat-Packish way of expressing himself.  When he and Sara are speculating about the gold-digger's motives in marrying her rich, dead husband, he states flatly that "Mr. Elias was 68 years old and looked like he had been dumped out of a vacuum cleaner."

When a sheriff orders him arrested toward the end of the show, Beth demands to know the charge. "How about vitamin deficiency?" Rockford snaps sarcastically, before the sheriff can answer.

The pilot has a great many flaws. It moves slowly at times, and establishing shots take eons. The camera clings to a sign outside a police station ("Police") for 14 actual seconds. (Just try counting it off and see how bored you get.) The panning around in Las Vegas prior to Rockford's arrival takes longer than your last vacation. There are continuity problems and in the end the circumstances that led to the murder of Sara's father are so random and implausible he might has well have been hit by a falling piano.

Still, character triumphs. The show was off to a good start.

A Character for (All) Ages

The cultural divide and generation gap of the 1960s were still a lively, worrying features of American life when The Rockford Files debuted in 1974. Jim Rockford, as played by James Garner, was an ideal character to bridge the generational and political chasms that divided America in the 1970s.

James Garner had a great deal of appeal to older and more conservative audiences. By the time he took on the Rockford role he had been a movie star for almost two decades. Most of his early parts were in westerns or WWII films (Shoot-Out at Medicine Bend, Toward the Unkown). In the late 1950s and 1960s he starred in high-profile productions with A-list casts like Sayonara (with Marlon Brando, 1957), The Children's Hour (with Audrey Hepburn, 1961), The Great Escape (with Steve McQueen, 1963), and The Americanization of Emily (with Julie Andrews, 1964). By the time Garner became Rockford he was an established figure, and one that older audiences could relate to. (He was also 46 -- not exactly Mod Squad material.)

But if Garner was a Hollywood star who reassured older audiences, he had often played characters with a subversive streak in genre-bending movies likely to appeal to a younger, more cynical generation. Garner was the heroic Colonel William Darby (Darby's Rangers, 1958), but he was also the comfort-seeking, combat-dodging Lt. Commander Charlie Madison (The Americanization of Emily, 1964). He played Wyatt Earp (Hour of the Gun, 1967), but two years later took on the role of a very different kind of lawman (Support Your Local Sheriff, 1969). His earlier TV roles (Maverick, Nichols) were non-traditional western characters.

What Garner's subversive characters had in common was a sense that the standards of behavior displayed by the leading men in conventional genre pictures were, well, nuts. If the genre called for stoicism, Garner's characters complained. If the genre called for selflessness and courage, Garner's characters showed an obsessive interest in saving their own skins. If the genre's characters were quick to use a gun or their fists, Garner's characters lived by their wits and stayed out of fights they could not win. They all had a realistic, not overly flattering view of human nature. They also tended to be very funny.

A rallying cry for the younger generation was "question authority," and Rockford did. Rockford did not necessarily trust the police, politicians, the military, labor unions, or big corporations. When he trusted his clients it often turned out to be a big mistake. Rockford's skepticism was hard-won, not ideological. But a character who rarely took anything at face value and rejected the conventional trappings of middle-class life -- he lived in a trailer in a parking lot -- would likely have some appeal to the Children of Watergate.

In sum, the actor and the role combined to create a popular show that reflected its era in intriguing ways.

Rockford Files: The Musical

Who knew the Rockford theme song lent itself to so many genres?

Marching bands....

Cheesy English show bands...

C&W bands....

Drum solos....

Even (accidentally) They Might Be Giants!

Jim Rockford and Me

If I had to pick one word to describe the 1970's, it would be hassle. Everything was a hassle. People were always getting hassled. No character on television got hassled as much as Jim Rockford. We got to watch as he suffered indignities, went broke, took beatings, cracked wise, fought back with whatever came to hand and (usually) emerged (sort of) victorious. (Or at least lived to fight another day, still in possession of his teeth, his trailer and his Firebird.)

I watched the pilot episode as an eight-year old, though the thing that I felt was coolest in 1974 -- Rockford shooting down an airplane with a revolver -- now seems like one of the weakest gags in the show's six-year run. But even at that tender age the show struck a chord with me. Life was full of hassles. But with brains, a bit of skepticism and a dry wit, you could prevail. Jim Rockford has been a kind of hero of mine ever since.

If I had to justify the existence of this blog (do I?), I would say I find a missing element in other things that have been written about the show. They fixate on the answering-machine messages (not that funny to me) or the plots (I find them hit or miss). To me the enduring appeal of the show is the character of Jim Rockford.

My goal is to rewatch some of my favorite episodes (Thanks, Hulu) and share my thoughts on the character of James Scott Rockford, with observations about other noteworthy characters, plots, guest stars, hassles, 70s fashion, and, best of all, examples of the Rockford wit.