# What is the best James Garner movie?

> Garner's screen career takes in POW-camp breakouts, tongue-in-cheek westerns and late-life tearjerkers. A few picks drew Oscar attention, while others survive mainly as Sunday-afternoon TV favorites.

*By YPB Team · Published November 6, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/what-is-the-best-james-garner-movie*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **Hour of the Gun** — score 1000/1000
   John Sturges's 1967 western that opens with the O.K. Corral gunfight and follows the vendetta that came after, with Garner as Wyatt Earp and Jason Robards as Doc Holliday.
2. **The Great Escape** — score 953/1000
   John Sturges's 1963 POW-camp epic, with Garner as Flight Lieutenant Hendley, the 'Scrounger', alongside Steve McQueen and Richard Attenborough.
3. **Support Your Local Sheriff!** — score 835/1000
   Burt Kennedy's 1969 western spoof, with Garner as a drifter who takes the sheriff's badge in a gold-rush town, co-starring Walter Brennan and Joan Hackett.
4. **Move Over, Darling** — score 734/1000
   A 1963 comedy co-starring Doris Day as a wife declared dead who returns home on the day Garner's character remarries, remaking My Favorite Wife.
5. **The Americanization of Emily** — score 734/1000
   A 1964 anti-war satire written by Paddy Chayefsky and directed by Arthur Hiller, with Garner as a cowardly Navy aide opposite Julie Andrews.
6. **Grand Prix** — score 659/1000
   John Frankenheimer's 1966 Formula One drama, with Garner as American driver Pete Aron; the film won three Academy Awards for its editing and sound.
7. **36 Hours** — score 659/1000
   A 1965 World War II thriller in which Garner's US intelligence officer Jefferson Pike is drugged by German intelligence and convinced the war is over, to extract D-Day secrets.
8. **My Fellow Americans** — score 659/1000
   A 1996 comedy with Garner and Jack Lemmon as feuding former US presidents on the run after uncovering a scandal.
9. **Duel at Diablo** — score 571/1000
   Ralph Nelson's 1966 western, with Garner as an army scout hunting his wife's killer, co-starring Sidney Poitier and Bibi Andersson.
10. **Sunset** — score 571/1000
   Blake Edwards's 1988 Hollywood murder mystery, with Garner playing Wyatt Earp a second time opposite Bruce Willis as cowboy star Tom Mix.
11. **Marlowe** — score 571/1000
   A 1969 neo-noir adapted from Raymond Chandler's The Little Sister, with Garner as private eye Philip Marlowe and an early screen fight scene by Bruce Lee.
12. **The Children's Hour** — score 467/1000
   William Wyler's 1961 film of Lillian Hellman's play, with Garner as Dr. Joe Cardin, fiancé to Audrey Hepburn's teacher, alongside Shirley MacLaine.
13. **Victor/Victoria** — score 467/1000
   Blake Edwards's 1982 musical comedy set in 1930s Paris, with Garner as Chicago nightclub owner King Marchand falling for Julie Andrews's cross-dressing singer.
14. **Space Cowboys** — score 467/1000
   Clint Eastwood's 2000 adventure about four ageing test pilots sent into orbit, with Garner as the preacher 'Tank' Sullivan beside Eastwood, Tommy Lee Jones and Donald Sutherland.
15. **The Thrill of It All** — score 467/1000
   Norman Jewison's 1963 comedy written by Carl Reiner, with Garner as an obstetrician whose wife, played by Doris Day, becomes a TV commercial star.
16. **Sayonara** — score 343/1000
   Joshua Logan's 1957 drama of US servicemen in Japan, led by Marlon Brando, with Garner in an early supporting role as Captain Mike Bailey; it won four Oscars.
17. **Murphy's Romance** — score 343/1000
   Martin Ritt's 1985 small-town romance with Sally Field, which earned Garner his only Academy Award nomination, for Best Actor.
18. **Support Your Local Gunfighter** — score 343/1000
   A 1971 comic western, again directed by Burt Kennedy, in which Garner's con man Latigo Smith is mistaken for a notorious gunslinger.
19. **Maverick** — score 343/1000
   Richard Donner's 1994 big-screen western starring Mel Gibson as Bret Maverick, with Garner, the original TV Maverick, as Marshal Zane Cooper.
20. **Skin Game** — score 0/1000
   A 1971 comedy western set before the Civil War, with Garner and Louis Gossett Jr. as con men who run a repeated slave-sale swindle.
21. **The Notebook** — score 0/1000
   Nick Cassavetes's 2004 adaptation of the Nicholas Sparks novel, with Garner as the elderly Noah reading a love story to Gena Rowlands.
22. **Fire in the Sky** — score 0/1000
   A 1993 drama based on Travis Walton's alleged 1975 alien abduction in Arizona, with Garner as the state investigator Lt. Frank Watters.

Tags: movies, 60s, actors, classics, westerns, james garner