I loved Garner as Rockford. I think he's very underrated as an actor - it's hard to do that bit so naturally.
And Paddy Chayefsky was a genius.
That is a good movie with a very good cast.
One of the funniest deadpan quips I ever heard was from Garner when asked by Barbara Walters (I think it was her) if he would ever do a nude scene in a film.
He said, “I don’t do horror films.”
I want you to remember, that the last time you saw me,
I was unregenerately eating a Hershey bar...
Paddy Chayefsky also wrote Altered States. He was the writer for the first half of the Altered States movie. Somehow, he lost control of the second half of the movie, and left the production. As such, the first half of the movie is literally right out of the novel. Great book, good movie.
Altered States
Garner was always one of my favorite actors. Until I read his autobiography & found what a wild-eyed democrat he was! :-)
“Critic Judith Crist wondered if “World War Two is itself fair game for laughter” in the New York Herald Tribune...”
Late actor Robert Clary ( died almost 3 months ago ) of “Hogan’s Heroes” spent time in a Nazi concentration camp. Many people know that part. What is a little known fact about the show is that every actor in the show who played a major German character was Jewish.
I missed it the first, second and third times around but finally caught The Americanization of Emily on the tube about twenty years ago and watched it again on TCM before Christmas. Needless to say, Jim Garner was one of my favorites long before Rockford hit the screen, as was Julie Andrews before she became Mary Poppins. Having the two of them starring in an ostensibly anti-war movie with elements of comedy was a brilliant choice that, unfortunately, was about twenty years early for maximum drawing power.
It speaks highly of the movie to learn that both of the leads, on separate occasions, proclaimed The Americanization of Emily their favorite picture in which they had a starring role.
Mr. Roberts was a comedy??