James Garner: A Biography
By Raymond Strait
July 1, 1985
…Jim prepared to make his next film, in which he played a heavy. It was another Western with another European location. The film, A Man Called Sledge, was a Dino DeLaurentiis production directed by actor-director Vic Morrow. Most of the filming took place in a small village called Polopos forty miles from Almeria, Spain. Although Almeria was a popular American film makers’ locale, most of the villagers had never traveled very far from home and knew little or nothing about film making.
Jim wrote to a
friend in Hollywood, reporting what he was seeing and how it impressed him.
“It’s amazing,” he wrote. “These people didn’t even know there had been a
Spanish Civil War, and they didn’t even know about World War II until several
years after it was over.” He was taken by the simple lifestyle they enjoyed,
their uncomplicated lives, and the religious commitment. “I admire them,” he
said, “because of their self-dependency.” Hard-working farmers, they grew most
of the food they consumed on small plots of land.
In one scene,
a reenactment of the portrayal of the death Christ, known locally as
“Penitente,” was required. Jim was to be involved in a shootout during a
crucial part of the pageant. “These people are very religious and brought a
rare truth to the scene. They were amazed when the guns started to go off.
Being unsophisticated, it was difficult to for them to separate from fiction
and understand that what we were doing was make-believe. It was that very
puzzlement, however, that made the scene the most realistic in the film and one
of the most realistic I’ve ever seen.”
The villagers
were able to make more money during a few weeks’ shooting then they might make
in a year.
“During the
time we were in the village,” he said, we were all affected by these simple
people. Who can say who has a better life? They were generous to all of us.
They offered us food and water and a simple, natural hospitality without
strings. Their life is hard, but they have none of the taxes, tensions, or
temptations that are part of our daily lives. Who can say who has the better
deal?” Jim’s observations may have reflected the frenetic pace of his own life,
which brought him money and material goods but not enough peace and serenity of
mind. He saw something in this poor village that did not exist in Hollywood.
A Man Called
Sledge was described as having “violent action. A Western programmer starring
James Garner as a downbeat, bad man pulling an impossible gold heist.”
Playing the bad guy was not exactly typical of Jim, but apparently, he was trying anything that came along to get back on the right track and make films that suited his personality and did better at the box office. It was his first time in sometime in which Cherokee was not a co-producer. It was released by Columbia Pictures.
Once again,
the cast was excellent. He was supported by Dennis Weaver, Claude Akins, John
Marley, and his old friend Wade Preston-another line-up of television stars.
The violent story, out of character for the cast, earned the film an “R”
rating. “Garner and his cronies,” wrote one reviewer in Variety, “are
really bad guys, who will kill merely for gold, without any sort of moral or
romantic justification…. Garner and his number two man, Weaver, give flat
under-played performances of cold, cynical hard-drinking men… It does not
really create dramatically engaging or sympathetic characters.”
Roger
Greenspun of the New York Times said, “A Man Called Sledge is
a bit better than mot Italian Westerns and quite a bit better than many recent
American Westerns--and that is still not good enough to satisfy the demands of
its type.”
Jim had always
shied away from playing killers on the screen. It was a radical departure from
what has become known as “the Garner wit,” and shocked fans more than it
entertained them.
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