(thanks 11db11!)nbsp;

I can recall watching the pilot for The Rockford Files on NBC as a ten-year old kid and while not completely understanding everything that was going on, finding the show intriguing enough to come back week after week for almost the entire run of the series. Nothing lasts forever, and I was sad to see it vanish in 1980 (as far as original episodes went), but as with nearly any TV show that gains popularity and notoriety, reruns kept things going if I happened to be around to catch one. Of course, James Garner did much more memorable work in films before and since. Some of my favorite performances of his were in The Great Escape (1963), The Americanization of Emily (1964, the actor’s favorite role), Grand Prix (1966), Marlowe (1969) and Victor Victoria (1982). But, of course, since I was raised more on the tube, it’s Jim Rockford I’ll remember the best. I don’t have a favorite episode per se, but I absolutely recall rolling on the floor laughing at the episode where someone tries to bump off Rockford by sticking a canister of laughing gas in his car and hoping he’d have an accident:

(thanks 11db11!) 

This sequence makes me laugh harder today because it’s an homage of sorts to the scene in North By Northwest where a drunken Cary Grant (as Roger Thornhill) is put behind the wheel of a stolen Mercedes Benz and sent down a dark road towards certain doom off a cliff. Of course, he survives by taking the wheel and zig-zagging away from that cliff and down a highway until he brakes into the back of a patrol car. Jim got a wall tap to wake him out of his sunnier drive above. Anyway, another fallen star in another year too full of them. I’ll let TCM roll me out of this post with one of their tributes while I get ready for a slightly longer walk home tonight…