The Garner Files: A Memoir by James Garner Page A

next day. You went home and read it while you were having dinner . . . if you were lucky: Sometimes you wouldn’t get the script until you were in the makeup chair the next morning at 6:45. I remember a director named Walter Doniger coming in one morning and saying, “Good script, isn’t it?”
    “I’ll let you know when I read it.”
    “You haven’t read the script?”
    “No, I just got it, but don’t worry, I’ll read it before lunch.”
    We worked all morning without a problem—I could read eight or ten pages and pretty much know what it was about because the character was so strong. And I’ve always been a quick study when it comes to learning lines.
    I had the privilege of working with a lot of good actors on
Maverick.
In addition to the regulars, a succession of top-notch actors guested, including Mike Connors, Bing Russell (Kurt’s dad), Fay Spain, Ruta Lee, Werner Klemperer (before he played Colonel Klink on
Hogan’s Heroes
), Sig Ruman, Joanna Barnes, Hans Conreid, John Vivyan (before he starred on TV as
Mr. Lucky
), Jane Darwell, George O’Hanlon (the original Joe McDoakes in the movie shorts and later the voice of George Jetson), Claude Akins, Dan Blocker (Hoss Cartwright on
Bonanza
), Regis Toomey, Wayne Morris, Marcel Dalio (that wonderful French character actor), Edgar Buchanan, Abby Dalton, Robert Conrad (
The Wild, Wild West
), Louise Fletcher, James Lydon (we became good friends), Diane McBain, Connie Stevens, Adam West (
Batman
), William Schallert, Mona Freeman, Buddy Ebsen (Fess Parker’s sidekick in
Davy Crockett
and later Jed Clampett in
The Beverly Hillbillies
), Richard Webb (
Captain Midnight
), Martin Landau . . . the list goes on. In one show, Clint Eastwood plays a smartass heavy who keeps calling me “Maver-ack,” and a very young Robert Redford appears as a cowhand in another.
    Fifty years later, two guest stars stand out in my mind: Kathleen Crowley was one of those actresses who worked a lot in the ’50s. She did several
Maverick
s and always played charming grifters. Her character’s relationship with Maverick was unusual: We didn’t trust each other as far as we could throw a bull calf, but we liked each other. And Kathleen was gorgeous. She wasn’t very tall, but she had classic beauty. Nobody considered her much of an actress, but I did.
    Gerald Mohr was the one I had the most fun working with on
Maverick
. He appeared in several episodes, including one as Doc Holliday. Mohr was well educated. He was fluent in several languages, and he’d been a medical student when the radio bug bit him. He was good enough to be a member of Orson Welles’s Mercury Theatre ensemble, and he did hundreds of shows during the 1930s and ’40s, the golden age of radio. He made the transition to television and was one of the busiest actors in Hollywood for many years. He could tell a joke better than anybody, and he had a bunch of them.Never repeated himself. And he was a pro. I learned a few things about acting from him.
    A Shady Deal at Sunny Acres” is probably the definitive
Maverick.
It’s certainly my favorite episode, because it’s Bret at his coolest. One day Roy Huggins told me a script idea: One Maverick brother pulls off a complicated “sting” operation against a guy who had swindled the other brother out of some money while the brother who got swindled just sits on a porch all day and whittles. Every once in a while a citizen comes up to him and asks, “Why aren’t you out trying to get your money back?” All he says is, “I’m working on it” and just keeps whittling. Roy gave me the choice of roles, and I took the one sitting on the porch. He was surprised, because it was the smaller of the two parts. But I needed to get off my feet!
    Marion Hargrove wrote an episode that was a spoof of
Gunsmoke
called “Gun-Shy.” Ben Gage played Marshal Mort Dooley, a send-up of the James Arness character Marshal Matt Dillon. In the opening, Ben stands at one end of a deserted