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I always liked Rockford Files because James Garner as Private Investigator seemed the most realistic of TV portrayals. Not everything worked out, often times he got beat up, he was a real guy. So many Detective / PI series had a comic book 'indestructible' quality to them. His reluctant hero attitude always seemed real too. As someone else mentioned, the one's with Tom Selleck as his industry adversary were hilarious.
My favorite quality of the character was resourcefulness - use of fire extinguisher for escape from difficult situation, inserting aerosol can into airplane microwave is another, using bowling ball to simulate going down steps etc.... Confronting someone who was following him by purposefully getting into accident to ID them, the sort of contrarian techniques and bluffs / character impersonation was seemingly perfect for the James Garner persona.
Especially liked the hilarious intros with old fashioned telephone rings and recordings. A favorite was the old lady who calls, rambles on for a bit, and then says, "Is this a machine? I don't talk to machines!" and then hangs up.
The two part version with TT Flowers (the guy who is trying to be ripped off of his property by land baron) where Rockford ends up in the asylum is one of the best. Angel did get so annoying at times I wondered why he didn't distance himself from him but sure was a colorful character with all his grift techniques.
I always liked Rockford Files because James Garner as Private Investigator seemed the most realistic of TV portrayals. Not everything worked out, often times he got beat up, he was a real guy. So many Detective / PI series had a comic book 'indestructible' quality to them. His reluctant hero attitude always seemed real too. As someone else mentioned, the one's with Tom Selleck as his industry adversary were hilarious.
My favorite quality of the character was resourcefulness - use of fire extinguisher for escape from difficult situation, inserting aerosol can into airplane microwave is another, using bowling ball to simulate going down steps etc.... Confronting someone who was following him by purposefully getting into accident to ID them, the sort of contrarian techniques and bluffs / character impersonation was seemingly perfect for the James Garner persona.
Especially liked the hilarious intros with old fashioned telephone rings and recordings. A favorite was the old lady who calls, rambles on for a bit, and then says, "Is this a machine? I don't talk to machines!" and then hangs up.
The two part version with TT Flowers (the guy who is trying to be ripped off of his property by land baron) where Rockford ends up in the asylum is one of the best. Angel did get so annoying at times I wondered why he didn't distance himself from him but sure was a colorful character with all his grift techniques.
Loved that asylum plot!
There's Jim Rockford in a hospital gown sitting up in bed staring out at the wall as his mind has gone on vacation. Nurse or whatever comes in and gives him a pill, soon as that person leaves JR spits it out and reveals his stash of little blue pills!
Great show and a part of my childhood for sure. His lawyer/girlfriend, Beth, was a good recurring character too and another looker.
I read somewhere that Garner destroyed his knees filming some of the stunts in the earlier seasons. You can definitely see he's gimpy as all get out by the end of the show.
One of the first shows to have a house which fit their income past the very early raido/tv shows was All in the Family. It looked well lived in, ordinary furnatiure and nothing fancy. The stuff today it looks like half the people portrayed on tv have a secret funding source.
Rocky lived in the house he'd lived for a long time, with the wife. He had all the memories. Great character since so many could understand. Rockford was unusual, though. He didn't have much, didn't miss it, and got satisfaction out of more than shiny things. But what he had was a deep understanding and care about others. And it didn't always work either. He stood out with all the PI's and others like them who always seemed to make big bucks with glamorous cases.
One of the characters who was just a recurrent one was the girl he tried to help, who attached herself to one thing/group at a time trying to find a place. I think she ended up with the Moonies.
Rockford was a "bottom feeder" who only got work from people who were turned down from reputable agencies. He was willing to use unethical means to work his cases and had a friend in the police department (Dennis ) to watch his back when he went too far. Being an ex-con probably hurt his ability to get better clients.
I used to like James Garner until he went talked bad about Ronald Reagan. Garner was the VP of the Screen Actors Guild when Reagan was the President of the union. Garner said that Reagan did not know what he was doing.
I always liked Rockford Files because James Garner as Private Investigator seemed the most realistic of TV portrayals. Not everything worked out, often times he got beat up, he was a real guy. So many Detective / PI series had a comic book 'indestructible' quality to them. His reluctant hero attitude always seemed real too. As someone else mentioned, the one's with Tom Selleck as his industry adversary were hilarious.
My favorite quality of the character was resourcefulness - use of fire extinguisher for escape from difficult situation, inserting aerosol can into airplane microwave is another, using bowling ball to simulate going down steps etc.... Confronting someone who was following him by purposefully getting into accident to ID them, the sort of contrarian techniques and bluffs / character impersonation was seemingly perfect for the James Garner persona.
Especially liked the hilarious intros with old fashioned telephone rings and recordings. A favorite was the old lady who calls, rambles on for a bit, and then says, "Is this a machine? I don't talk to machines!" and then hangs up.
The two part version with TT Flowers (the guy who is trying to be ripped off of his property by land baron) where Rockford ends up in the asylum is one of the best. Angel did get so annoying at times I wondered why he didn't distance himself from him but sure was a colorful character with all his grift techniques.
Cannon was a good show especially when he used his belly to knock down his attackers or Baranaby Jones where he comes out of retirement to help his kid run the agency.
Again did Jim Rockford ever get paid regularly? I mean he lived in that trailer with his dad on a beach so am guessing he didn't make much money. If the client was a skirt, then it seemed Jim most always got stiffed. *LOL*
I think a lot of his reward was the justice, or whatever measure of it he could find. Some of his clients clearly didn't have much, but he took the case anyway for *them*. He didn't talk about justice but he believed in it. I think his trailer was okay if he could do something for someone else.
The character beside his father I remember best was the lost girl, the one who went from cult to cult looking for a home. She is so sad, and he wants to help but knows there is nothing he can do.
That's one thing which made him someone you cared about. He acted for his clients, but knew in the end that making life better later was their job. He was just giving them a chance.
I wonder if Rockford and the underplayed way the show was done would make it past the first or second episode today.
Great show and a part of my childhood for sure. His lawyer/girlfriend, Beth, was a good recurring character too and another looker.
I read somewhere that Garner destroyed his knees filming some of the stunts in the earlier seasons. You can definitely see he's gimpy as all get out by the end of the show.
Yeah, it definitely was noticeable with his bad knees. I heard he had two or three knee surgeries. Later episodes he's running and it's pretty obvious he's got some problem, I often wondered why they did so many chase scenes with him running, You figured they could have shot it in way didn't really show as many far away shots where he was limping a bit, IDK, seems like they could have been a bit more creative because I ended google searching about him and found about his knee problems as it was so obvious in some episodes.
The show supposedly had a high budget for production, especially for being TV and back In the day, but there was quite a few blooper type things where you could see the cheesy production value. One episode someone falls from a roof and it was filmed in a way that you could clearly see the dummy being thrown from the roof. LOL, especially if you freeze the screen, it was almost laughable. Car chase scenes you could tell they took retakes as you'd see skid marks in the same pattern, little things like that, but overall I really liked the show. I was actually a pretty little kid in the 70's and really remember watching it bit more during the later reruns of the series. Good stuff. Of course on Netflix we just watched the entire series and finished that up a little while ago. They did a few reunion type movies in the 80's and 90's I think it was, got those in the queue and should be coming up. I heard that they weren't as good, but whatever, we will still check them out.
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