The Only ‘The Rockford Files’ Cast Members Still Alive Today

“This is Jim Rockford. At the tone, leave your name and message.” Every week for six seasons, that flat little greeting came out of a beat-up answering machine in a Malibu trailer, and every week the caller on the other end had a fresh problem for Jim. Then came that driving theme by Mike Post and Pete Carpenter, which climbed to number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the summer of 1975 and won a Grammy. If you grew up with The Rockford Files, you can probably still hear it.

NBC aired 123 episodes from September 13, 1974, to January 10, 1980, and The Rockford Files cast came back for eight CBS movies between 1994 and 1999. Now a new Jim Rockford is on the way, with David Boreanaz taking over the trailer in January, and NBC even switched the old answering machine back on. We told you how James Garner’s daughter Gigi feels about that. So with the show headed back to TV, it is a good time to ask which of the originals are still with us. We checked every one of them this week, and the last few answers are the happiest.

Is Noah Beery Jr. still alive?

Jim’s dad, Joseph “Rocky” Rockford, was a retired trucker who kept begging his son to get a respectable job, and Noah Beery Jr. played him with so much warmth that Rocky showed up in 101 episodes. Beery came from Hollywood royalty. His father was silent film villain Noah Beery Sr., his uncle was Oscar winner Wallace Beery, and he made his own screen debut at age seven in his father’s 1920 picture The Mark of Zorro.

Before Rockford he had spent decades as a favorite sidekick, riding alongside John Wayne in Red River and clowning as Joey on Circus Boy. After the series ended he kept working into the 1980s, including a run as Luther Dillard on The Yellow Rose.

Beery died on November 1, 1994, in Tehachapi, California, at age 81, of a cerebral thrombosis, according to Wikipedia and the Deseret News obituary that ran the next day. When the reunion movies began that year, Rocky was kept alive as an off-screen presence before the later films let the character go. The man who played Jim’s toughest police boss outlived him by less than a decade.

Is James Luisi still alive?

Lt. Doug Chapman was the cop who could not stand Jim Rockford, and James Luisi played that irritation beautifully in 23 episodes from season three through season six. Before acting, Luisi had a whole other life. He played college ball at St. Francis College, was drafted by the Boston Celtics in 1951, served in the Army during the Korean War and played one NBA season with the Baltimore Bullets.

He moved on to Broadway, and in 1976 he shared a Daytime Emmy for playing George Washington. Soap fans later knew him as Duke Earl Johnson on Days of Our Lives.

Luisi died of cancer on June 7, 2002, in Los Angeles at age 73, according to Wikipedia and his Los Angeles Times obituary. Georgia Phillips, his wife of 41 years, survived him. Jim had rougher friends than Chapman, though, and one of them was a music legend.

Is Isaac Hayes still alive?

Gandolph “Gandy” Fitch was a hulking old cellmate of Jim’s, the kind of prison buddy who makes you nervous just by remembering your name. Isaac Hayes played him in three episodes in the mid-1970s, only a few years after “Theme from Shaft” won him the Oscar for Best Original Song.

Hayes kept acting alongside his music, and a whole new generation knew his voice as Chef on South Park from 1997 until he left the show in 2006.

His family found him unresponsive beside a running treadmill at his Memphis home on August 10, 2008. He was 65, ten days short of his 66th birthday, and the cause was listed as a stroke, according to Wikipedia and RNZ. The man at the center of all these friendships was gone six years later.

Is James Garner still alive?

Creators Roy Huggins and Stephen J. Cannell built Jim Rockford for James Garner, the star Huggins had launched as the gambler on Maverick. Rockford was an ex-con who had served time for a crime he did not commit, and he would much rather talk his way out of a fight than throw a punch. Garner won the 1977 Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for the part.

He also did a lot of his own stunts, and it cost him. His knees needed repeated surgery and his back gave him trouble, and after he was hospitalized with a bleeding ulcer, NBC ended the show midway through season six. Garner later sued Universal over the show’s profits and settled in 1989. He bounced back with an Oscar nomination for Murphy’s Romance, plus Space Cowboys and The Notebook, and he made all eight Rockford movies in the 1990s.

Garner died of natural causes at his Los Angeles home on July 19, 2014, at age 86, as TheWrap and Variety reported at the time. His wife, Lois, whom he married in 1956, survived him along with their daughters. He left behind a Los Angeles cop who had stood by Jim for 25 years.

Is Joe Santos still alive?

Sgt. Dennis Becker was the friend on the force who kept bailing Jim out and kept getting chewed out for it. Joe Santos played him in 89 episodes and earned an Emmy nomination, and Becker finally made lieutenant in season five. Santos was born Joseph Minieri in Brooklyn, and Rockford came along after film parts in The Panic in Needle Park and The Friends of Eddie Coyle.

After Rockford he became one of TV’s go-to police officers, with lieutenant roles on Hardcastle and McCormick and Magnum, P.I. In 2004 he played consigliere Angelo Garepe on The Sopranos, and he played Becker again in every one of the eight reunion movies.

Santos died on March 18, 2016, in Santa Monica, California, at age 84, a few days after a heart attack, his agent told CBS News. “It is with great sadness that I can confirm that our father Joe has passed,” his son Perry told the San Francisco Chronicle. That left Jim’s most unreliable friend, the one fans loved most.

Is Stuart Margolin still alive?

Evelyn “Angel” Martin was a weaselly con man who met Jim in prison and spent every episode selling him out for a few bucks. Somehow viewers adored him. Garner admitted he never quite got it. “I confess I’ve never understood why Rockford likes Angel so much because he’s rotten to the core,” he wrote in his 2011 memoir, The Garner Files, as Fox News recalled.

Stuart Margolin won back-to-back Emmys for Angel in 1979 and 1980. He was also a gifted director, behind the camera for episodes of Magnum, P.I., Quantum Leap and Northern Exposure, and he spent 22 years living on Salt Spring Island in British Columbia.

Margolin died of natural causes on December 12, 2022, in Staunton, Virginia, at age 82, his stepson Christopher Martini told The Hollywood Reporter. “The two most profound moments in my life… the birth of my kids and being bedside as my step-father passed this morning,” his other stepson, actor Max Martini, wrote on Instagram. With Angel gone, four of the show’s faces are still with us, and the first one went on to become a TV detective himself.

Is Tom Selleck still alive?

Lance White was the private eye Jim Rockford could not stand: handsome, polite and so lucky that clues fell into his lap. Tom Selleck played him in two episodes, “White on White and Nearly Perfect” and “Nice Guys Finish Dead,” and by December 1980 he was starring as Thomas Magnum on his own Hawaii detective show. Garner became his mentor. “Jim was a mentor to me and a friend, and I will miss him,” Selleck said when Garner died, as CBS News reported.

He still talks about Garner’s advice. This summer he told Ted Danson’s podcast that Garner warned him, “You don’t have much power, but if they want you, you’ll never have more power than you do right now,” according to Fox News.

Yes, Tom Selleck is alive. Born January 29, 1945, he is 81. He played Frank Reagan for 14 seasons until Blue Bloods ended in December 2024, and Hello! reports he has signed on for an Apple TV comedy led by Elizabeth Banks. If you want a laugh, here is what he looked like without the mustache. Jim’s own lawyer is also still working, and she just turned up in a horror movie.

Is Gretchen Corbett still alive?

Beth Davenport was Jim’s long-suffering attorney, and sometimes more than that, and Gretchen Corbett played her for the first four seasons. She left in 1978 because of a dispute between the producers and Universal, which held her contract. She came back as Beth in several of the 1990s movies.

Corbett went on to star in the 1985 science fiction series Otherworld and guest on Magnum, P.I. and Murder, She Wrote. Then she went home to Portland, Oregon, where she built a second career in theater, acting at Portland Center Stage and directing plays there. She also turned up on Portlandia and in the Nicolas Cage film Pig.

Yes, Gretchen Corbett is alive. She is 81, going by the August 13, 1945, birthdate most references give, though some list 1947. She is in The Cycle, a werewolf film Shudder released on October 23, 2026, which Film Threat called a must-see. One of Jim’s old police bosses also found a second life in horror, and he has a birthday this week.

Is Tom Atkins still alive?

Lt. Alex Diehl was the first police brass to give Jim grief, and Tom Atkins played him in the early seasons before reprising him in the 1990s movies. Atkins had served in the Navy before studying at Duquesne University in his hometown of Pittsburgh, and his best years in Hollywood were still ahead of him.

John Carpenter cast him in The Fog in 1980, and two years later Atkins got his first lead in Halloween III: Season of the Witch. He followed it with Night of the Creeps, which he has called his favorite horror role, and he played Michael Hunsaker in Lethal Weapon. His more recent credits include City on a Hill and the Creepshow series.

Yes, Tom Atkins is alive. Born November 13, 1935, he is 90 and turns 91 on Friday. He is still a favorite on the horror convention circuit, and in May he joined a Halloween III reunion at Texas Frightmare Weekend, according to PopHorror. The oldest surviving Rockford star, though, only visited the trailer three times and walked away with an Emmy.

Is Rita Moreno still alive?

Rita Capkovic was a former call girl who kept landing in trouble, and Jim kept helping her out of it. Rita Moreno played her in three episodes, and her first one, “The Paper Palace,” won her the 1978 Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress for a Single Appearance. She and Garner had been friends since before Maverick, and in her memoir she called him “my old friend Jim Garner.”

Moreno is one of the few people to win an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony. She won the Oscar for West Side Story, the Grammy for The Electric Company and the Tony for The Ritz.

Yes, Rita Moreno is alive. Born December 11, 1931, she is 94 and turns 95 next month, and she is still on stage. This month she was booked for an evening of stories with Mo Rocca at the McCallum Theatre in Palm Desert, and in late October she accepted a life and legacy award at a Día de Muertos gala in Los Angeles. “We don’t get to choose how many years we’re given, but we do get to choose what we do with them,” she told the crowd, according to Hola. Jim Rockford would have let that message play all the way through.