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.