- Place – De Lane Lea/CTS Recordings Studios Wembley
- Time – 1981
- Artist – Gigi Garner & James Garner
James Garner is an American film and television actor whose career has spanned more than five decades. He has starred in more than fifty movies and in several television series such as Maverick and The Rockford Files He was one of the first Hollywood actors to excel in both media.
In 1981 I was booked on a session in Studio 2 to record a couple of titles with Gigi Garner.
Being a massive fan of her father, I thought I might get the opportunity to ask her a few questions about him.
After a couple of days, I was thrilled when her father arrived to see how the session was going. He looked every bit the movie star with a voice that reverberated around the room.
He was in the UK filming Victor Victoria, a new movie he was starring in with Julie Andrews. Henry Mancini, who had written the music for the film, was coincidently next-door in studio one recording the score for the movie, with John Richards, the studios top film recording engineer.
Garner was charming and friendly to everyone. Listening to the payback of his daughter’s recording, he seemed very impressed with her performance.
During a break I was making some notes on the track-sheets, when I overheard Gigi telling her father about an argument she had earlier at the reception desk, with our all-knowing security guard Albert. Gigi wanted her father to go and have words with Albert concerning this issue. Garner was fabulous in handling this situation with his daughter.
Before confronting Albert, he asked her exactly how and why the argument started, breaking down every line one by one, going through the complete story with her.
It turned out the she had asked Albert for a line on the phone so she could make a call. He had told her to wait because he was busy ordering a cab for a client, then the whole thing blew up from there.
After listening to the entire story, he told her that he thought she was the one who had been a little out of order, and took the time to tell her why. She ended up agreeing and later apologised to Albert.
Although the sessions were a lot of fun, the highlight of every day for me would be the arrival of Garner towards the end of the session. He was an easy person to get along with, insisting everyone call him Jim. It was like we had all known each other for years. There was no conceited arrogant ego that accompanied some of the lesser-known film actors that had visited the studios.
One night I told Jim how my young tape assistant Mark Philips, who was a wonderful quite harmless but eccentric character, was aware that he’d played a part in a long running TV detective series, but had confused him with “Rock Hudson”.
Jimmy laughingly said, “He thinks I am that fag!”
It wasn’t a well-known fact with the public at that time, that Rock was homosexual.
Mark being as unpredictable as ever said to Garner, “Do you wanna see what a real star looks like?”
“Ok” he replied.
Mark walked to the corner of the room with his back to everyone, put on his leather jacket, turned up the collar in an Elvis style, put on a pair of mirrored sun glasses and ruffled up his hair. With his hands on his hips, he swaggered over to Garner and stopped directly in front of him in a statuesque pose.
Garner being taller than Mark, leaned down slightly to look directly into Mark’s mirrored sunglasses, then running his finger across his eyebrow looking at his reflection, Jimmy said,
“Yep, you’re right, I guess that’s what a real star does look like”.
Everyone roared with laughter, but nobody laughed louder than Mark.
James Garner, Steve Collier, Gigi Garner, Kenny Denton
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