A True HOLLYWOOD MAVERICK

James Garner THE ROCKFORD FILES STAR BELIEVED IN STANDING UP FOR THE WORLD'S UNDERDOGS AND DOING THE RIGHT THING

- LOUISE A. BARILE

On an episode of The Rockford Files, Jim tries to explain to his father, Rocky, the difference between fictional private detectives and real ones. “There aren’t any heroes left,” said the TV sleuth. “They die young.” Jim badly needed the “$200 a day plus expenses” he earned through detective work, but he was wrong about the world lacking heroes. In picking up cold cases and investigations no one else would touch, he often helped the powerless find justice.

James Garner, the actor who played Jim Rockford from 1974 to 1980, spent his life battling the world’s Goliaths, too. “He had a very strong moral character, and he believed what was right was right,” his daughter Greta “Gigi” Garner tells Closer, explaining that her father’s moral compass was set in childhood and never wavered. “He was the type of person who never forgot where he came from,” she says.

Born in Norman, Okla., James Scott Bumgarner had few memories of his mother, who died when he was 4. A few years later, his father, an alcoholic, married a woman who appeared to delight in punishing Jim and his two older brothers. In addition to beatings, she punished the future actor for transgressions by making him wear a dress in public. Jim finally snapped at age 14, throwing his stepmother to the ground during a confrontation and choking her. He was pulled off just in time. “When I’m pushed, I shove,” he wrote in his memoir about the fateful incident.