THE GARNER FILE: MAKING IT LOOK EASY

Watching Charlton Heston in “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial” in London last summer, I found myself thinking of James Garner. On the court are some naval officers who never get to say a word from curtain up to curtain down. They also serve who only sit and listen to the testimony and Captain Queeg’s breakdown night after night.

Still, it’s show biz, and one of those chairs on the court-martial was Garner’s start as an actor. It seems a reasonable guess that he was an imposing presence even without words. He got them soon enough.

The play was in 1954, and by 1957 he was doing “Maverick,” the super-stylish television series--a sort of saddle sitcom it was--that not only established his career but identified the public persona that has made his company a pleasure ever since.

It occurred to me once that James Garner is to the American character what David Niven was to the English character: a lover in preference to a fighter (but capable of heroics), worldly and charming, with elements of the vagabond and the debonair rascal, a sort of innocent rogue with an easy way with urbane dialogue.

If it works, light comedy looks so effortless that the actor seems in fact not to be working at all. Garner has suffered, as Niven suffered, from making excellence look so easy. It took the dramatic roles (Niven in “Separate Tables,” for example, Garner in “The Americanization of Emily” and more recently in “Heartsounds” on television) to confirm what good and versatile actors were at work.

Garner is presently visible in “Murphy’s Romance,” a film of such unabashed gentleness that, for all its sophistication and roundness of character, it seems to have escaped from another time. It contains zero violence and its nearest approach to a sweaty coupling is called off on account of a fit of sneezing.

“People come up to me and say, ‘Thank God, there’s a picture we can take our children to,’ ” Garner said at breakfast earlier this week. “We’ve got three bad words, I believe, one f and two p’s, and for that they were going to give us an R. But they got it down to a PG-13, or whatever it is.”

So peaceable a film as “Murphy’s Romance” is a nice change from “The Rockford Files,” which consisted, as he now remembers it, “of wrecking cars and beating up on old Jim. I’d get beat up two or three times, and then maybe I’d get to beat up on somebody a little, just at the end.”

Garner’s memories of the series are bitter, not least because it was so successful. His lawsuit against Universal for a share of the profits from the series is now dragging on through its fifth year with no resolution in sight.

“I think they’re waiting for me to die,” Garner says. “But I won’t, and if I do, my wife will carry on the suit, believe me.”

At issue are the costs levied against the series, which have kept it out of profit.

Garner, who has invested wisely over the years, can afford to sustain the suit. He also has, as he says, “the luxury of being able to sit back and wait for the good scripts.

“I’m a little too old to play the macho heroes,” he says, “and I don’t want to. But when something comes along like ‘Heartsounds’ or ‘Murphy’s,’ boy, you grab it.”

He is the Murphy of “Murphy’s Romance,” the druggist in a small town (Florence, Ariz., was the location), a mildly eccentric widower who exudes sharp wit and kindness and who befriends Sally Field as a divorcee come to town with her young son to start a horse ranch.

“Now those were people you want to work with: Sally--it was her first time out as a producer; Marty Ritt, the Ravetches, Irving and Harriet. There was a great ambiance, as there was with Blake (Edwards) and Julie (Andrews) on ‘Victor/Victoria,’ and on ‘Heartsounds.’ Everybody liked each other. It’s not always like that, and there’s nothing worse--nothing--than an unhappy company. If this person or that person’s going to be involved with a picture, I won’t do it. Life is too short.”

By now Garner is almost as well known for his car and camera commercials (tailored to his insouciant style) as for the rest of his work. “I figured, what’s good enough for Lord Olivier is good enough for me,” Garner says. “Oh, you still get a little of that nonsense: ‘How could you.’ But there used to be the same kind of snobbery about theater people going to Hollywood to do movies, and then about movie people doing television.

“I wouldn’t do beer commercials. That wouldn’t help me and I don’t think it would help the beer, and it certainly wouldn’t make me happy. I pick and choose and do things I believe in. I tested those cars and thrashed ‘em pretty good.”

Garner has no idea what his next project is. “My agent, Bill Robinson, says he’ll give up his 10% of the pictures I do if he can have 1% of the pictures I turn down. But I just do like to do nice movies. I’m not a do-gooder, but there’s a morality in there someplace.”