There are a few American actors whose style can make a movie. Humphrey Bogart, of course, and Clint Eastwood, and Edward G. Robinson. All unique, all able to carry any movie with their sheer presence.
James Garner ranks among them. He epitomizes class, not in the pansy European Charles Boyer manner, nor in the debonair English fashion of David Niven, but in a purely American, two-hundred-and-fifty-proof, stand-up-and-take-off-the-cowboy-hat-for-a-lady sort of way. Garner also delivered one of the best movie lines I've ever heard, in a way only he could have done. In the 1985 movie "Murphy's Romance," Garner lets loose his annoyance with Sally Field's deadbeat ex-husband (Warning: Language alert):
"I don't know why Emma took you in in the first place. I'd bed you down with the dogs. And I'll tell you something else mister...you might be a lot younger and stronger than I am, but you're about to get your ass kicked from here to the state line. And I'm wearing the boots that can do it!"
The older I get, the more often I want to say that.
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