Welcome back to Once Upon a Time! On today’s episode of the series that looks at American actors working abroad, we shine a light on a popular Hollywood leading man who made but one lone foray across the Atlantic to star in a European film. This time, let’s look at a favourite of many fans of classic film and television, James Garner.

Jimmy was born “Bumgarner” in the spring of 1927 in a town that no longer exists – Denver, Oklahoma. In the early 1960s, it was decided that the central Oklahoma communities of Del City, Midwest City and Norman needed water so a reservoir was built and christened Lake Thunderbird. By the time a 1963 land survey was taken, Lake Thunderbird had been built, nearby Norman’s city limits had been expanded and Denver was no more; today, some of it is part of Norman, some buried under 58 feet of water. Anyways…

James and his brothers suffered a blow when their mother died when they were kids and they were sent to live with relatives. When their father remarried – for the first of many times – the boys rejoined their father and his new bride – the first one of which beat all three boys. Jimmy grew up and joined the National Guard, seeing combat in Korea. Next stop: Hollywood.

Garner’s big break came when he landed the role of Bret Maverick on Maverick, one of the plethora of TV westerns on in the 1950s. He then moved easily into film featuring in a handful of notable films, western and otherwise; Boys’ Night Out, The Great Escape, The Thrill of It All, Move Over, Darling, The Americanization of Emily, Grand Prix. Finally, Dino De Laurentiis came calling.

We talked about Dino of Campania in the episode of Once Upon a Time featuring Burt Reynolds and Navajo Joe. De Laurentiis produced that film and had by this point brought many more notable productions to the screen including The Bible: In the Beginning, Danger: Diabolik and Barbarella. After the film we will get to in a moment, De Laurentiis continued his streak of high-profile films; Serpico, Death Wish, 1974’s Three Tough Guys with Isaac Hayes and Fred Williamson, King Kong (1976), 1984’s Dune and scores of other films right up until 2007. In his 60 years in the business, he produced over 500 films; movies starring Ingrid Bergman and Gina Lollobrigida and Hayden Christensen and Jon Bon Jovi. Dino De Laurentiis died in 2010, aged 91.

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Now to the main event. “Savage! Ornery! Brutal! When Sledge Hits Town It Stays Hit!” In the spring of 1969, James Garner traveled to Andalucia, Spain to appear for Dino De Laurentiis in A Man Called Sledge. In a complete and utter departure, Garner plays a villain, a “grimly evil thief” who organizes his regular gang of cutthroats to rob a shipment of gold that is making a trip heavily guarded by forty riders. The shipment though does make a stop at a prison and around this stop Luther Sledge (Garner’s character’s great name) hatches a plan.

This movie has a pretty good cast which makes for easy and familiar viewing for North American audiences. Along for the ride are noted western actors Dennis Weaver and Claude Akins. Weaver was already popular through his many small and big screen roles including on TV in Gentle Ben. He was about to start a run as McCloud and a year after this film he appeared in Duel for Steven Spielberg and Akins was in the middle of a prolific run on TV and in films. For me, John Marley will always and only be Jack Woltz in The Godfather. Tony Young is a deep cut face I always like to see. I wrote about him in Chrome and Hot Leather and he also can be seen with Presley in Charro!, Black Gunn with my man, Jim Brown and a few other things though not much. Prettying up the place is Laura Antonelli. I first fell for the beautiful Italian when I saw her in the bonkers Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs, a film in which she may never have looked better. She did, though, appear – usually undraped – in decorative roles in many popular Italian “sex farces” through the 70s. Throughout much of that decade, she was the companion of Jean-Paul Belmondo.

Perhaps the most startling thing about this flyer of a film, even more so than James Garner playing a bad guy, is the director. Somehow, A Man Called Sledge was co-written and directed by none other than Vic Morrow. Vic (Blackboard Jungle, King Creole) was handed the keys to a handful of episodes of his show Combat! and he directed seven of them. During that show’s run, Morrow directed and he and Leonard Nimoy combined to produce a film called Deathwatch that starred Nimoy. Five years after that effort, Morrow was in Spain shooting Sledge for De Laurentiis. It was his last feature behind the camera and the father of Jennifer Jason Leigh was later killed on the set while shooting Twilight Zone: The Movie. Poor Vic Morrow was actually decapitated by a helicopter’s rotor blade.

A Man Called Sledge is a middling but watchable spaghetti western. While Garner does play it “rotten” as opposed to his usual “affable”, his character still manages go about his nefarious business in a somewhat lighthearted way. Or maybe that is just how the viewer perceives it as it is Rockford, after all. But Jim never gets really sinister like, say, Henry Fonda did. Also playing against type, Hank played it really rotten in Sergio’s Once Upon a Time in the West. I’m always on the lookout for a good winter movie and Sledge starts out in some pretty frigid conditions; soon enough though the action moves to terrain that is hot and dusty.

This movie is certainly worth watching but the set-up and pieces of the finale are disappointing though the ending itself is not without its drama and grit. The middle third is quite enjoyable. The action inside the prison gets pretty intense and Morrow and his editor handle the pacing well. There are a couple of complications that add to the drama and the involvement of the other inmates is a sound plot point. During the safe-cracking scene, Marley gets a chance to shine and as usual with any film of this time shot in Andalucia, the scenery and the practical settings lend much to the action; not just to the action but to the barren and desolate, the vicious and unrelenting tone of this film and others like it. Fittingly, A Man Called Sledge ends with treachery and a barrage of revenge, violence and death.

Garner himself has been disparaging of this film over the years, gently joking that while the poster warned “Not Suitable for Children” it should have said “Not Suitable for Consumption” and that he didn’t know how Dino De Laurentiis had talked him into it. But it’s no worse than other spaghettis of the time and it boasts a recognizable cast and Andalucia. Now, consider James Garner’s next films; four of his next five were “western comedies”, one for Disney. It was as if Garner wanted to expunge Luther Sledge from the record.

After this run of films, in the fall of ’74, Garner made his debut as the genial Jim Rockford and he proceeded to cement his place in the hearts of millions of fans of classic television. But once upon a time Jimmy was a part of ExPat Cinema and he did indeed play a heavy in a film directed by fellow thespian Vic Morrow.