James Garner changed what good guys could be like on screen

I secretly always wanted to marry James Garner, and was foiled only by the fact that, as humorist Jean Kerr once wrote of her designs on George S. Kaufman, he was already married and I never met him.

I cannot imagine I was alone in this desire – in her introduction to Garner’s 2011 memoir, Julie Andrews revealed a similar devotion and for pretty much the same reasons I had: Garner, who died at home Saturday at age 86, effortlessly combined strength and humility, humour and capability, frankness and empathy to create an ideal Alpha-male, of the sort that hadn’t existed before, at least not in drama.