James Garner was an American actor. 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; Cash McCall (1960) with Natalie Wood; The Wheeler Dealers (1963) with Lee Remick; Darby's Rangers (1958) with Stuart Whitman; Roald Dahl's 36 Hours (1965) with Eva Marie Saint; Raymond Chandler's Marlowe (1969) with Bruce Lee; Support Your Local Sheriff! (1969) with Walter Brennan; 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. He also starred in several television series, including popular roles such as Bret Maverick in the ABC 1950s Western series Maverick and as Jim Rockford in the NBC 1970s private detective show, The Rockford Files.
Bruce MacLeish Dern is an American actor. He has received several accolades, including the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor and the Silver Bear for Best Actor. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Coming Home (1978) and the Academy Award for Best Actor for Nebraska (2013). He is also a BAFTA Award, two-time Genie Award, and three-time Golden Globe Award nominee.
Harry Morgan was an American actor and director whose television and film career spanned six decades. Morgan's major roles included Pete Porter in both December Bride (1954–1959) and Pete and Gladys (1960–1962); Officer Bill Gannon on Dragnet (1967–1970); Amos Coogan on Hec Ramsey (1972–1974); and his starring role as Colonel Sherman T. Potter in M*A*S*H (1975–1983) and AfterMASH (1983–1985). Morgan also appeared as a supporting player in more than 100 films.
Death of a Gunfighter is a 1969 American Western film directed by Allen Smithee and starring Richard Widmark and Lena Horne. and features an original score by Oliver Nelson. The theme of the film is the "passing" of the West, the clash between a traditional character and the politics and demands of modern society.
William Scott "Jack" Elam was an American film and television actor best known for his numerous roles as villains in Western films and, later in his career, comedies. His most distinguishing physical quality was his misaligned eye. Before his career in acting, he took several jobs in finance and served two years in the U.S. Navy during World War II.
Eugene Barton Evans was an American actor who appeared in numerous television series, television films, and feature films between 1947 and 1989.
Skin Game is a 1971 American independent comedy western directed by Paul Bogart and Gordon Douglas, and starring James Garner and Lou Gossett. The supporting cast features Susan Clark, Edward Asner, Andrew Duggan, Parley Baer and Royal Dano.
Burton Raphael Kennedy was an American screenwriter and director known mainly for directing Westerns. Budd Boetticher called him "the best Western writer ever."
Support Your Local Gunfighter is a 1971 American comic Western film directed by Burt Kennedy and starring James Garner and Suzanne Pleshette. The screenplay was written by James Edward Grant. The picture shares many cast and crew members and plot elements with the earlier Support Your Local Sheriff! but is not a sequel. It actually parodies Yojimbo and its remake A Fistful of Dollars, using the basic storyline of a stranger who wanders into a feuding town and pretends to work as an enforcer for both sides. The supporting cast features Jack Elam, Harry Morgan, John Dehner, Marie Windsor, Dub Taylor, Joan Blondell and Ellen Corby.
William Bowers was an American reporter, playwright, and screenwriter. He worked as a reporter in Long Beach, California and for Life magazine, and specialized in writing comedy-westerns. He also turned out several thrillers.
Shoot-Out at Medicine Bend is a 1957 American Western film directed by Richard L. Bare and starring Randolph Scott, James Craig, Angie Dickinson and James Garner.
Charles Randolph "Chubby" Johnson was an American film and television supporting character actor with a genial demeanor and warm, country-accented voice.
Sidekicks is a 1974 American made-for-television comedy Western film directed by Burt Kennedy and starring Larry Hagman and Louis Gossett Jr. The film was a pilot for a proposed television show as a continuation of the 1971 theatrical release Skin Game, with James Garner and Gossett.
Johnny Concho is a 1956 American Western film directed by Don McGuire starring Frank Sinatra, Keenan Wynn, William Conrad and Phyllis Kirk. This was Sinatra's first serious Western and the role allowed him to play against type in his portrayal of a person of low repute. The film was unsuccessful for Sinatra, ending a string of 8 hit films going back to 1953's From Here to Eternity.
Willis Ben Bouchey was an American character actor who appeared in almost 150 films and television shows. He was born in Vernon, Michigan, but raised by his mother and stepfather in Washington state.
Bret Maverick: The Lazy Ace is a 1981 American Western television film released as the 2-hour pilot episode of the series Bret Maverick, trimmed to a quicker pace and repackaged as a TV-movie for rerunning on local television stations. The 1981 show was based on the 1957 series Maverick, catching up with professional poker-player Bret Maverick. The film, written by Gordon T. Dawson and directed by Stuart Margolin, occasionally appears under the simpler title Bret Maverick.
Day of Anger is a 1967 Spaghetti Western film directed and co-written by Tonino Valerii and starring Lee Van Cleef and Giuliano Gemma, and features a musical score by Riz Ortolani. The film credits the novel Der Tod ritt dienstags by Ron Barker as its basis, although Valerii and screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi have attested that this credit was primarily included to appease the West German co-producers, and that although some scenes are partially borrowed from it, the film is not an adaptation of Becker's novel.
The Aurora Encounter is a 1986 American Weird Western film directed by Jim McCullough Sr., written by Melody Brooke and Jim McCullough, Jr., and starring Jack Elam, Mickey Hays, Peter Brown, Carol Bagdasarian, and Dottie West. Its plot follows the residents of a small Texas town at the turn of the 20th century who are visited by an alien being after a UFO crashes in their town. The screenplay was based on the Aurora, Texas, UFO incident that allegedly occurred in 1897.
Harry Stradling Jr. was a two-time Oscar-nominated American cinematographer and the son of cinematographer Harry Stradling.
American actor and producer James Garner rose to prominence as a contract player for Warner Bros. in the 1957 television show Maverick as the series initial lead character Bret Maverick. He would continue to be associated with the Maverick brand several times in his career, as his original character Bret Maverick in the 1978 television film The New Maverick, briefly in the series Young Maverick (1979), and the series Bret Maverick (1981–1982). He also appeared in the role of Marshal Zane Cooper in the 1994 western film Maverick, with Mel Gibson portraying the role of Maverick.
