Garner’s passion for racing, people wasn’t acting

In “Grand Prix,” the 1966 movie during which James Garner was first bitten by the auto racing bug, Garner’s character Pete Aron ignores the move-over flag at the Monaco Grand Prix touching off a spectacular crash. His teammate suffers a career-ending injury as Garner’s car is launched into Monte Carlo harbor.

Although that scene is based in fact — the great Alberto Ascari took a similar plunge during the 1955 running of the Grand Prix — it would not have happened in real life, not after handsome James Garner became a real-life off-road racer, competing in the deserts around Las Vegas and the Baja Peninsula down in Mexico.

James Garner was much too meticulous about driving a racecar to cause a wreck like that.

“The thing about Garner was that, while he wasn’t the world’s most fearless driver, he had the best retention of any man who ever drove for me,” off-road pioneer Vic Hickey said when the actor/racer was inducted into the Off-Road Motorsports Hall of Fame. “On a pre-run if he hit a bump, he’d come back five days later and tell you where it was within 10 feet.”

James Garner might have been more famous for his roles as TV’s Bret Maverick and Jim Rockford. But virtually every account of his life that was retold after he died on Saturday at age 86 spoke of his passion for auto racing.

It began with the filming of “Grand Prix.” The real Formula 1 stalwarts of that era, men such as Graham Hill and Sir Jack Brabham, said Garner could have been one of them, had he just started a little earlier.

They didn’t have to tow Jim Garner’s car around the track, like they did with Yves Montand, or put Jackie Stewart in the car and pull his balaclava up real high, so you couldn’t tell it was Stewart and not the actor Brian Bedford, who portrayed Garner’s teammate in “Grand Prix” and couldn’t drive a lick.

Jim Garner did his own driving in the movie. Like his pal Paul Newman, he had a natural feel for going fast.

He began driving off-road buggies, cars and trucks, sometimes partnering with famous racers such as Parnelli Jones.

“He just loved it,” said Mint 400 founder Norm Johnson, who said he last spoke with Garner about two years ago, when the famous off-road race was being reorganized. “He was an actor, sure, but when he got to the track, he was James Garner, race car driver. He was just like Paul Newman. Everybody loved the guy.”

KJ Howe, who became Mint 400 director the year after Garner stopped running in it, was introduced to the actor by a fellow friend, three-time Indy 500 winner Johnny Rutherford, at Indianapolis one year.

“When he found out I had something to do with the Mint 400, he talked about how it was the most fun and just went on and on,” Howe said. “He was most vociferous about driving in the 400, and down in Baja. It surprised me how enthusiastic he was; it was such a fledgling sport then.”

Garner would drive the pace car at the Indianapolis 500 three times, in 1975, 1977 and 1985. Rest assured that when Jim Garner drove the pace car, it did not crash into a photographer’s stand with astronaut John Glenn and Chris Schenkel on board, which is what happened in 1971.

Even after they started assigning the pace car duties to retired champions such as Johnny Rutherford, Garner was a fixture at Indy during the month of May.

On Monday morning, after writing the opening paragraphs of this column, I received an email from a race fan named Frank R. Davis. He wanted to share an anecdote about James Garner upon his passing.

Davis was living in Cincinnati during the 1980s when after a slow day at the office he drove the hour-and-a-half to catch the last couple of hours of Indy 500 practice. Entering the hallowed speedway through the south tunnel, he exchanged greetings with the bikers and roughnecks, who to this day park their hogs just on the other side of the south tunnel entrance, near the walkway to the Hall of Fame Museum.

By then it was “Happy Hour,” when the fast drivers attempt to put a big number on the speed chart just before the end of the day, when the track cools.

Frank Davis was sitting nearly alone in the wooden bleachers near the skullcaps and leather vests when he noticed a woman pushing a teenage girl in a wheelchair. The teenager appeared to be suffering from a neurological disorder.

It was then James Garner appeared.

He, too, had noticed the girl in the wheelchair. He changed his path. He squatted low and reached his hand through the fence to take the teenage girl’s hand. Garner spoke with her for several minutes; you could see the joy on her face, Frank Davis said.

“His kindness and empathy still evokes strong emotion some 30 years later,” he wrote in his email.

There were no cameras, no press. Just a teenage girl in a wheelchair, and her mother, and a famous actor with the kindest of hearts. And those bikers and their leather vests.

“Now there’s a man,” one said after James Garner wished the teenage girl and her mother well in the shadow of the Turn 2 hospitality suites, where the rich and famous gather to watch the race.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.