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.
as there are literally hundreds of well known actors for you to choose from, you might have to consider tv careers simultaneously-in a separate hub, but not wait until movie careers are over. Otherwise you may never get there if you look at the number of names on imdb.com they roam in the thousands plus
Hey Flora….good points….currently I am only really interested in the movie actors/actresses….I think one of the main things that interests me about movies is how much or how little a movie made at the box office….I know tv is based on its ratings…but that does not interest me as much…plus if I keep putting out one or two movie hubs a week….I could end up with quite a bit of information….and currently it is nowhere else on the internet….at least that I am aware of….even though I keep getting hit the duplicate tag about every 8 or 9 pages.
In the meantime, why not take a break from this type of hub and write some movie hubs in the style that I wrote My Favourite Columbo episodes? Why not take one of your favourite actors/genres/eras etc. and write about how you feel about them-much in the same way you wrote your page about your Dad. Only you have your opinions. They will still be movie hubs and all yours even in the prose.
And then you can take the hubs that are getting duplicate warnings, open up an account on blogger, publish them there, and we your fans will follow you on that site just as Bobbirant and Vietnamvet’s fans have followed them on blogger.
In the meantime, why not take a break from this type of hub and write some movie hubs in the style that I wrote My Favourite Columbo episodes? Why not take one of your favourite actors/genres/eras etc. and write about how you feel about them-much in the same way you wrote your page about your Dad. Only you have your opinions. They will still be movie hubs and all yours even in the prose.
And then you can take the hubs that are getting duplicate warnings, open up an account on blogger, publish them there, and we your fans will follow you on that site just as Bobbirant and Vietnamvet’s fans have followed them on blogger.
What a pleasure to read this well detailed hub on James Garner’s movie career. I think a article on his tv career would be something else to think about.
Hey Gerry Hoy….thanks for the compliment….if anybody deserves a tv career hub…it would be Garner….maybe when I have finished the movie actors I will look at tv stats…thanks for checking out my movie page
James Garner was kinda an everyman. He never seemed too over the top in his roles. Very believable. I enjoyed his movies. Including Tank, and the Castaway Cowboy.
Thanks for stopping by Real House Wife….I think everybody likes James Garner…and I think it is because of “everyman” persona you mentioned….I have not seen Tank in years…but I remember it has some good parts in the movie…thanks for checking out the page.
..I was just telling my buddy MCKBIRDBKS about you – as I send everyone his way to check out his classic EMERALD WELLS CAFE series – I tell everyone about you too my friend – big time – I just had VHS night at the movies once again – last night it was The Blues Brothers and tonight it was Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket or John Ford’s A Quiet Man – Stanley won out.
And a trivia question for you – what was the name of Howard Hughes’ favorite film late in his life?
love your work …..you always do your homework with passion knowledge and flair ……
and I hated seeing Mr. Garner play second banana to Mel Gibson in the remake of Maverick …….
lake erie time ontario canada 11:30pm
p.s. – have you done one on Peter Sellers yet or have I missed it
Hey Epi…I will check out his Emerald Wells Cafe series…I already am one of his followers….but I will go and see the latest updates.
I almost bought Full Metal Jacket on blu-ray last night…you had three great movies to pick from.
Howard Hughes….watched two movies over and over in his Las Vegas penthouse theater….Jet Pilot and The Conqueror ….both starring John Wayne…he paid a millions of dollars to be the only person on Earth that could watch those movies for nearly 25 years…when he sold RKO….he bought these two movies back after the sell.
I have not yet done Peter Sellers…but he would be a good one to do…I will add him to the list….Jack Lemmon is coming to a hub near you soon.
As for Garner in Maverick….I thought he was the best part of that movie….I loved when Coburn and Garner were in those scenes…they went way back…from TV Westerns, to The Great Escape to The Americanization of Emily and finally Maverick…..thanks as always for your comments.
Quality Garner page, pretty go that his daughter checked out your page as well. My favorite Garner movie is Space Cowboys, a very fun movie to watch. Keep up the good work.
Hey Shaun…yep his daughter reading this page is so far the highlight of my movie page career….I like Space Cowboys as well…thanks for stopping by and checking out the page.