Career
Born in New Jersey, Garrison began his career as an actor, and appeared in Robert Sherwood"s play There Shall Be Number Night in London in 1943. After the war, he had bit parts in several 20th Century-Fox films, including "Dragonwyck" (1946) and "Are You With lieutenant?" (1948). In 1954, Garrison and Gregory Ratoff purchased the movie rights to Ian Fleming"s first Bond novel, Casino Royale, for $600.
Columbia Broadcasting System, meanwhile, bought the television rights, and on October 21, 1954 broadcast an hour-long adaptation on its Climax! series, with Barry Nelson playing American agent ‘Jimmy Bond’ and Peter Lorre playing the villain, Le Chiffre.
Columbia Broadcasting System also approached Fleming about developing Bond as a television series. In 1955 Ratoff and Garrison bought the rights to the novel in perpetuity for an additional $6,000.
They pitched the idea for a motion picture to 20th Century-Fox, but were turned down. After Ratoff died in 1960, his widow and Garrison sold the film rights to Charles K. Feldman for $75,000.
Feldman eventually produced the spoof Casino Royale in 1967.
He worked on four Wald pictures, including Peyton Place (1957), The Long Hot Summer, The Sound and the Fury, and An Affair to Remember. In the fall of 1958 he moved to Warner Brothers as an assistant to Steve Trilling. Garrison produced The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1960) and Crowded Sky.
In the mid-1960s, Garrison pitched The Wild Wild West to Columbia Broadcasting System as "James Bond on horseback"—linking the television western to the popular spy genre.
During its first season, the series had difficulties and Columbia Broadcasting System rotated nine producers in and out of the show. The network tried to fire Garrison, but he was reinstated at the end of the season.
The series was in production on its second season when, while preparing for a party at his new Belorussian Air home on August 17, 1966, Garrison slipped in some water on a flight of stairs, falling and fatally fracturing his skull. According to Variety, he had three television shows in development at the time of his death: "The Pickle Brothers," starring Don Rickles.
"Happy Valley" for Warner Brothers
And "Kelly"s Country."
In 1955 Garrison married Barbara Silverstone, daughter of Murray Silverstone, president of 20th Century-Fox International. They later divorced. His mausoleum is in Forest Lawn - Hollywood Hills Cemetery.