I call on Bret Maverick
by Pete Martin
The star of TV’s Maverick sets the record straight on his real life as Jim Garner, and tells why he didn’t want to become an actor.
Ralph Edwards’ voice dripped from my TV set like warm maple syrup over a stack of wheats. He was giving Jim Garner, who is known to millions as Bret Maverick, his patented This Is Your Life treatment:
To millions of fans, you’re a romantic figure, Jim. Yet the sights and sounds of your real life hold equal interest. Such sounds as the crack of your knuckles on an opponent’s chin in a knockdown fight. The clean whine of bullets you liked — the ones that missed you — in Korea. The nighttime whisper of a pretty girl. She said, “Yes, I’ll marry you.”
And there are surprise turns in your life…
“A thing which lifts Maverick out of the oater class is that I’m more of a card player than a gunman.”
Photos: Jim, his wife Lois, and daughter Kim, 9, at the Garners’ home in Studio City, California.
“I’m still adjusting to the realization of quick success,” says Garner.
[Below] he is with his five-month-old daughter, Greta.
James Garner as Bret Maverick in “Maverick”
