Want to know the best James Garner movies? How about the worst James Garner movies? Curious about James Garner’s box office grosses or which James Garner movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which James Garner movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences and which got the worst reviews? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.
James Garner (1928-2014) was an American Oscar® nominated actor. Garner pretty much had two careers. On television he starred in not one but two all-time great shows…Maverick and The Rockford Files. His feature film career lasted over 50 years and included many classic films like The Great Escape, Sayonara and Grand Prix. His IMDb page shows 95 acting credits from 1956-2010. This page will rank 48 James Garner movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Television appearances, some of his movies made outside of the Hollywood system and his straight to DVD movies were not included in the rankings.
Drivel part of the page: When I originally wrote this page, my state of Virginia, had just had it’s worst earthquake in over 100 years (I lived about 100 miles away from the epi-center), Hurricane Irene was closing in on my area (I live 15 miles from Va Beach), and the Great Dismal Swamp fires (about 20 miles away) had reached “can be seen from space” status. So what was I am thinking? Safety of my family? Tape for the windows? Batteries for the flashlights? Will Irene put out the fires? Nope…..I was thinking I should do another UMR movie page before I lose power. Well it turned out the storm only knocked out the power for a few hours…and I managed to finish the page in time….and my Garner movie page quickly became one of my more popular pages. When I was much younger, James Garner was known to me for two things. I knew he was on the very popular show, The Rockford Files and that he was in the Polaroid commercials with Mariette Hartley. It was only after the discovery of one of my favorite movies of all-time, The Great Escape, that I realized that Garner had already had a very successful movie career.
James Garner Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.
James Garner Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table
The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.
- Sort James Garner movies by co-stars of his movies
- Sort James Garner movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort James Garner movies by yearly box office rank
- Sort James Garner movies how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie
- Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and how many Oscar® wins each James Garner movie received.
- Sort James Garner movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score. UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
- Use the sort and search buttons to make this page very interactive….for example you just want to see the Doris Day/Garner movies….just type in “Doris Day” in the search box….and up they pop. Or if you want to see his type rated movies according to critics and audiences click the sort button in that column.
Stats and Possibly Interesting Things From The Above James Garner Table
- Twelve James Garner movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark. That is a percentage of 25.00% of his movies listed. Sayonara (1957) was his biggest box office hit.
- An average James Garner movie grossed $70.60 million in adjusted box office gross.
- Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter. 28 James Garner movies are rated as good movies…or 58.33% of his movies. The Great Escape (1963) was his highest rated movie while The Distinguished Gentleman (1992) was his lowest rated movie.
- Nine James Garner movies received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 18.75% of his movies.
- Three James Garner movies won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 6.25% of his movies.
- An average Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score is 40.00. 19 James Garner movies scored higher that average….or 39.58% of his movies. Sayonara (1957) got the the highest UMR Score while Sunset (1988) got the lowest UMR Score.
Possibly Interesting Facts About James Garner
1. James Garner served in the Army’s 24th Infantry Division during the Korean War. He was wounded twice during his time in Korea. He received the Purple Heart for the first injury.
2. James Garner’s two most successful television shows ended prematurely. Garner quit Maverick the series in the third season because of a dispute with Warner Brothers. And he had to quit The Rockford Series for health reasons after season six.
3. James Garner’s first starring role was 1958’s Darby’s Rangers…..he got the role after Charlton Heston turned down the role.
4. James Garner was married to Lois Clarke. They married 14 days after meeting for the first time. They got married on August 17, 1956. According to Garner, “Marriage is like the Army; everyone complains, but you’d be surprised at the large number of people who re-enlist”. Garner has two daughters: Kimberly, from Clarke’s first marriage, whom he adopted when she was nine years old, and Greta “Gigi” Garner…who is an author. Gigi wrote the books…Girl Talk and The Cop Cookbook.
5. James Garner turned down the lead role in First Blood. Imagine if he had taken that role? Stallone would have probably made 13 Rocky movies instead of the 6 he did make.
6. In February 2005 James Garner received the Screen Actors Guild’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
7. James Garner has one Oscar® nomination to his credit…..1985’s Murphy’s Romance…Best Actor ……he also picked up two Golden Globe® nominations for his movies…Murphy’s Romance and 1963’s The Wheeler Dealers.
8. For his television career, James Garner received 9 Golden Globe® nominations…including two wins……and received 15 Emmy® nominations with two wins.
9. James Garner’s daughter, Gigi Garner, has an awesome tribute page to her father….check out that tribute here at http://mavrock1.tumblr.com/ . It should also be noted that probably one of James Garner’s greatest accomplishments…was being a great father….I got this information directly from Gigi Garner.
10. Check out James Garner‘ career compared to current and classic actors. Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.
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For comments….all you need is a name and a comment….please ignore the rest.
I believe one day Julia & Cameron on your pages and Tim & Keith on my pages will respond. Call it a hunch 🙂
Well we are getting closer Sunshine625….all we have to do is keep producing quality pages.
really have enjoyed Jamees Garner’s career, lots of great movies and at least one great movie for each decade. Sayonara, The Thrill of It, Support Your Local Sheriff, Victor/Victoria, Space Cowboys and The Notebook, what a nice run.
I am glad you have enjoyed James Garner’s movie career, and I am glad you have found this page….thanks for stopping by.
The Great Escape Was Just About My Father’s Favorite Movie As Well A A Movie I Liked A Great Deal…His Tender Moments In The Note Book Were Heartbreaking and a great detachment from The Rockford Files.;)
Hey Mentalist Acer, my father passed down his love of The Great Escape to me as well….my dad and his brother were both huge fans of The Great Escape…they even had the soundtrack on a LP(record)…..great soundtrack. As for The Notebook….he was awesome in the movie….and I am sure many young people only know him as Duke from that movie…..thanks for the comments and for stopping by.
Wow! How fabulous that Mr. Garner’s daughter read your hub and loves it so much she has posted your hub on her father’s website! In my Richard Widmark fan club, we had a special tribute for him on the site that he heard about through his daughter Anne. It was quite thrilling to know he knew we existed and that we could get word to him through Anne. Congratulations.
Hey Flora, yep it got the day started great…the first comment I read this morning was from Gigi Garner and I saw that my hub was linked to her tribute page…which is pretty cool…lots of behind the scenes photos over the years. I am glad you had that experience with Richard Widmark’s daughter Annie. It was even better than winning a Hubbie….lol.
Hi cogerson; Be careful out there, with all these diasters. People here in NY are panicking but I don’t expect it to be much worse here than the earthquake was. But you be careful out there.
As for James Garner, I always think of him as a TV star (because of Maverick and Rockford) and I forget how many films he’s been in. I’ve heard he was close friends with Clint Eastwood in their early, struggling days. Interesting that they both got their breaks in TV westerns (Rawhide and Maverick.)
I think my favorite James Garner film is “Support your Local Sherrif”, which I preferrd over “Local Gunfighter”.
I really have a hard time imagining Garner in “First Blood.” I’m not surprised he turned it down. He’s been vocal about his dislike of excessive violence, sex and profanity in the movies.
Good Garner Movie Page,
Rob
Hey Robwrite….well my little girls are going inland to grandma’s house…which is about 40 miles away from the ocean and has a generator. While the older and wiser of us will be staying at the homefront. I used to manage a grocery store that was 2 blocks from the Altantic Ocean…and that company made the managers stay at the store during hurricanes….so staying at the house should be easy…but thanks for the concern.
Yep I have read the same thing about Eastwood and Garner….Clint was in episode of Maverick in 1959 called Duel at Sundown….and the Duel was between Clint and James. I love seeing the two of them together in Space Cowboys.
Support Your Local Sheriff seems to be many people’s favorite Garner movie…in a close competition with The Great Escape…but both are great movies…. As always thanks for checking out my movie page.