James Garner was an American actor and producer. He starred in several television series over more than seven decades, including popular roles such as Bret Maverick in the 1950s Western ABC series Maverick and as Jim Rockford in the 1970s private detective NBC show, The Rockford Files. He played leading roles in more than 50 theatrical films, including The Great Escape (1963) with Steve McQueen, Paddy Chayefsky's The Americanization of Emily (1964) with Julie Andrews, Grand Prix (1966) with Toshiro Mifune, Marlowe (1969) with Bruce Dern, Support Your Local Sheriff! (1969), Support Your Local Gunfighter (1971), The Castaway Cowboy (1974), Blake Edwards's Victor/Victoria (1982) with Julie Andrews, and Murphy's Romance (1985) with Sally Field, for which he received an Academy Award nomination. Garner's career and popularity continued through another decade, in films like Space Cowboys (2000) with Clint Eastwood, voicing an animated film titled Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001) with Michael J. Fox and Cree Summer, and The Notebook (2004) with Gena Rowlands, and his TV sitcom role as Jim Egan in 8 Simple Rules (2003–2005).
Maverick is an American Western television series with comedic overtones created by Roy Huggins and originally starring James Garner as an adroitly articulate poker player plying his trade on riverboats and in saloons while traveling incessantly through the 19th-century American frontier. The show ran for five seasons from September 22, 1957, to July 8, 1962, on ABC.
Maverick is a 1994 American Western comedy film directed by Richard Donner, written by William Goldman, and starring Mel Gibson, Jodie Foster and James Garner. Based on the 1957–1962 television series of the same name created by Roy Huggins and originally starring James Garner, the film stars Gibson as Bret Maverick, a card player and con artist who collects money in order to enter a high-stakes poker game. He is joined in his adventure by Annabelle Bransford (Foster), another con artist, and Marshal Zane Cooper (Garner), a lawman. The supporting cast features Graham Greene, James Coburn, Alfred Molina and many cameo appearances by Western film actors, country music stars and other actors.
Bronco is a Western series on ABC from 1958 through 1962. It was shown by the BBC in the United Kingdom. The program starred Ty Hardin as Bronco Layne, a former Confederate officer who wandered the Old West, meeting such well-known individuals as Wild Bill Hickok, Billy the Kid, Jesse James, Theodore Roosevelt, Belle Starr, Cole Younger, and John Wesley Hardin.
William Edgar Buchanan II was an American actor with a long career in both film and television. He is most familiar today as Uncle Joe Carson from the Petticoat Junction, Green Acres, and The Beverly Hillbillies television sitcoms of the 1960s.
Gladys Marlene Wasden, known professionally as Abby Dalton, was an American actress, known for her television roles on the sitcoms Hennesey (1959–1962) and The Joey Bishop Show (1962–1965), and the primetime soap opera Falcon Crest (1981–1986).
James Jeffrey Griffith was an American character actor, musician and screenwriter.
John Augustus Kelly Jr., known professionally as Jack Kelly, was an American film and television actor most noted for the role of Bart Maverick in the television series Maverick, which ran on ABC from 1957 to 1962.
Robert Colbert is an American actor most noted for his leading role portraying Dr. Doug Phillips on the ABC television series The Time Tunnel and his two appearances as Brent Maverick, a third Maverick brother in the ABC/Warner Brothers western Maverick starring James Garner as Bret, Jack Kelly as Bart, Roger Moore as Beau, and Colbert. His last name was pronounced, at least by the Maverick announcer, phonetically as opposed to the French pronunciation of Claudette Colbert and Stephen Colbert.
Kathleen Crowley was an American actress. She appeared more than 100 times in movies and television series in the 1950s and 1960s, almost always as a leading lady.
Bret Maverick is an American Western television series starring James Garner in the role that made him famous in the 1957 series created by Roy Huggins and titled Maverick: a professional poker player traveling alone year after year through the Old West from riverboat to saloon. The series aired on NBC from December 1, 1981 to May 4, 1982. In this sequel series, Maverick has settled down in Sweetwater, Arizona Territory, where he owns a ranch and is co-owner of the town's saloon. However, Maverick is still always on the lookout for his next big score, and continues to gamble and practice various con games whenever the chance arises. The series was developed by Gordon Dawson, and produced by Garner's company Cherokee Productions in association with Warner Bros. Television.
The New Maverick is a 1978 American Western television film based on the 1957–1962 series Maverick starring James Garner as Bret Maverick. The New Maverick stars Garner as Bret Maverick, Charles Frank as newcomer cousin Ben Maverick, Jack Kelly as Bart Maverick, and Susan Sullivan as Poker Alice Ivers.
Roxane Berard, is a Belgian-born actress who was the leading lady in various episodes of thirty-four different American television series between 1958 and 1967. One notable appearance was in 1964 when she played Ninette Rovel who murdered her husband Armand in the Perry Mason episode "The Case of the Fifty Millionth Frenchman." Berard had a gamine quality similar to fellow Belgian Audrey Hepburn's, with whom she was inevitably and continuously compared, especially since they resembled each other rather closely, and Berard frequently worked with a French accent.
"Shady Deal at Sunny Acres", starring James Garner and Jack Kelly, remains one of the most famous and widely discussed episodes of the Western comedy television series Maverick. Written by series creator Roy Huggins (teleplay) and Douglas Heyes (story) and directed by Leslie H. Martinson, this 1958 second season episode depicts gambler Bret Maverick being swindled by a crooked banker after depositing the proceeds from a late-night poker game. He then surreptitiously recruits his brother Bart Maverick and a host of other acquaintances to mount an elaborate sting operation to recover the money.
Bret Maverick: Faith, Hope, and Clarity starring James Garner is a two-part episode of the 1981-82 television series Bret Maverick edited together and released to local television stations as a TV movie. The show involves a religious cult that swindles the townspeople out of a tract of land and Maverick winds up straightening everything out. The episodes were directed by Leo Penn and the film is sometimes entitled simply Bret Maverick. The same thing was done with the two-hour series premiere, slightly condensed and marketed to television stations as Bret Maverick: The Lazy Ace. The Bret Maverick television series was a sequel to the 1957 series Maverick, created by Roy Huggins, in which Garner had played the same character two decades earlier.
Dan Sheridan was an Irish-American actor who appeared in more than thirty-five television series between 1957 and his death at the age of forty-six in 1963. He was cast in forty-one episodes of the ABC/Warner Brothers western series, Lawman, starring John Russell and Peter Brown. In most of his Lawman appearances, Sheridan played the bartender, Jake Summers.
John Wesley Hardin's legacy as an outlaw has made him a colorful character and the subject of various media works from his own time up to the present day. Many people came to know of Hardin through the TV ad for Time-Life Books "Old West" series. During the description of one book in the series, The Gunfighters, the well-known claim is made: "John Wesley Hardin, so mean, he once shot a man just for snoring too loud"
Linda Lawson is an American actress and singer.
