Trivia / The Rockford Files

• The Danza:
  • James Garner as Jim Rockford.
  • Rita Moreno as Rita Capkovic.
• Directed by Cast Member:
  • Stuart Margolin called the shots on two episodes (and two of the TV movies).
  • James Garner directed "The Girl in the Bay City Boys' Club" (his only directing job).
  • Occasional guest star Dana Elcar directed "The Attractive Nuisance".
  • In a sense, James Whitmore Jr. would count here as well. He played the recurring role of Freddie Beamer in "Beamer's Last Case" and "Nice Guys Finish Dead". After Whitmore was fully established as a director, he directed the first TV movie, "I Still Love L.A.".
• He Also Did: Garner's fellow cast member in The Americanization of Emily and The Great Escape James Coburn, while never appearing on the show, took his only turn in the director's chair with "Irving the Explainer."
• Life Imitates Art: Fiscal Dynamics in "Profit and Loss", a company with no real value and seemingly successful through "cooking the books", accurately predicted the Enron scandal by nearly three decades.
• The Other Darrin: Rocky was played by Robert Donley in the pilot, before Noah Beery Jr. took over the role for the series proper.
  • John Randolph played Richie Brockelman's father in the series about Richie, but when the character turned up in a Rockford episode, Harold Gould took over the role.
• Real-Life Relative: Joseph Campanella and his brother Frank appear together in "In Hazard".
  • And of course, James Garner's brother Jack appeared quite a few times in small roles.
• Tyop on the Cover: In the credits for the episode "Find Me If You Can", Joan Van Ark is credited as Joan Van Arc.
• Underage Casting: In "Say Goodbye to Jennifer", Héctor Elizondo plays Rockford's friend, John 'Mitch' Micelli, who was a buddy of Rockford's from the Korean War. While Garner, born in 1928, was old enough to serve in Korea (and did so in real life), Elizondo, born in 1936, would have been 14 or 15 in real life at the height of the Korean conflict.
• You Look Familiar: James Garner's brother, Jack, appeared throughout the show's run as a number of different characters, one of which (Police Captain McEnroe) was a semi-regular in the final season and appeared in each of the reunion movies.

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