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.
To me James Garner will always be Rockford, but I just saw “Murphy’s Romance” again & what a great movie that is.
Hey gunnarsrud17….yep like all great actors some of their better roles stick with them forever…Garner/Rockford/Maverick…hard to separate the three of them.
As for Murphy’s Romance….he is awesome in Murphy’s Romance …and he deserved his only Oscar nomination for this role…thanks for checking out my Garner movie page
James Garner’s older brother Jack Garner died earlier this week. He was also an actor as well as a pro golfer. There is more information on Gigi’s website.
Hey Flora, I saw the sad news of his brother’s passing earlier this week. Thanks for the information about Gigi’s website update.
Sorry buddy it was my daughter’s 21st this weekend so i’ve been dashing about ignoring my page buddies. The great escape is one of my favourite movies too, based on the truth and excitement plus. I watched an episode of ‘Who do you think you are’ which traces famous people’s ancestors and one relative was in the prison camp. He was still in the line when the German’s discovered the tunnel. They are excavating the tunnels now, especially the third tunnel that was an unused back up one.
I was peed off with the notebook as the leading man was a jerk who didn’t didn’t treat his other lady very nicely. We can’t blame James Garner though, now can we? I remember the Ya Ya sisterhood being a good movie, even for an old cynic like me. I’ve probably seen a few other of his movies, but as usual i can’t recall them. Cheers mate and i hope things settle down over there.
Hey attemptedhumour…thanks for stopping by and I hope that your daughter had a great birthday….I know I can not believe my oldest son is 23….so I am sure you are stunned that your daughter is already 21.
I have seen numerous shows about the true Great Escape and I find them as fascinating as I find the movie….I do not think I have seen the one you are mentioning…but I will try and locate that one…oh the power of you tube.
I have yet to see The Notebook….but I thought Garner played the good character in old age versus the jerk character…The Notebook gains cult status more every year….I need to check out that movie. As always thanks for the comments.
sympathise Cogerson, I’ve had the duplicate thing come up recently on my artists movie page, an artist with only a few precious facts to go on. The writing was mine but I couldn’t change things like the school he went to, the people he met, the films he worked on etc. I did get angry and considered rewriting the whole thing in Greek.
Hey Steve thanks for the support….I have had duplicate issues before but movie pages has always gotten the issue resolved pretty quickly…this time it has been 5 days…and other than one e-mail…no response from them at all….the hub is just sitting there in limbo.
Maybe writing it in a different language is the way to go.
Hello Cogerson. The length of the comment section says it all. Your Hubs are a magnet. The Great Escape is certainly on my top five list of movies. And I see others here feel the same way. That must mean ‘The Magnificeint Seven’ (not a Garner movie) is also on your list somewhere. I enjoyed your work here. Thanks for pulling all this information together.
Hey mckbirdbks …thanks for the great compliment….I am glad we are in the same boat in our like of the Great Escape….I have The Magnificent Seven in my Steve McQueen hub. Its movie score was 48.11 and finished 7th on the McQueen movies….it would have finished 9th on this hub…it actually did not make too much money at the theater at least in the States. Any suggestions of people you would like to see on a page…and I can make it happen.
I did not see William Holden or Kim Novak on your profile page. Both may be worth a look as a potential movie page for you.
Hey mckbirdks….I think you are the second person interested in Kim Novak….but you are the first person to mention William Holden…..I will add both to the list of people to do….Holden should be a good one….a long career with tons of classic movies like Network and Bridge on the River Kwai…thanks for the suggestions.