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1923-2011 |
 JAMES ARNESS as MATT DILLON in "GUNSMOKE" |
He was a very private man
who lived calmly with fame
of TheColumnists.com
The death of James Arness last Friday (June 3) at age 88 ends a most fabulous chapter in TV history. He embodied one of the most enduring characters in the history of the medium--Frontier Marshal Matt Dillon of "Gunsmoke," perhaps the most successful TV drama of all time.
Arness played other roles before "Gunsmoke" and a precious few after the show ended its incredible 20-year run, but he'll always be remembered for the role that originated on radio with someone else playing the part. It was the role that John Wayne turned down when they tried to get him to give up his movie career and come to television for good.
"Don't worry about me," Wayne told them. "I have the man for the role and you'll never regret signing him up."
The man was Jim Arness, Wayne's friend and acting protege, who had appeared in smaller roles in several of The Duke's films, including "Big Jim McLain," "The Sea Chase," "Island in the Sky" and "Hondo." Wayne had urged him to take the role of Matt Dillon because "You're too big for the movies anyway."
Arness was certainly big, all right. Some sources say he was 6 foot 7, but I think I'll go with most of the sources and say he was 6 foot 6. Anyway, the point is he towered over everybody any time they put him in a scene with others. The Duke figured he'd dwarf all comers on the TV screen and that would set him apart from the horde of TV western stars crowding the tube in 1955 when "Gunsmoke" elbowed ites way into the prime time lineup.
If you were a TV columnist, as I was from 1977 to 1999, you knew it was a waste of time to ask CBS to arrange an interview with Arness. He didn't do them--and hadn't done any in a long, long time. Still, I started asking anyway once Arness agreed to go back to work as Matt Dillon in a series of made-for-TV movies that revisited Dodge City and the characters in "Gunsmoke." The answer was always, "Sorry, but he isn't talking to anyone."
Then, in 1993, I was stunned to get a call from a friend at the network who said Arness had agreed to do one interview to help promote what ulotimately turned out to be the final "Gunsmoke" movie. He asked if I wanted to be the lucky guy. When I regained consciousness, I locked that interview down as securely as possible.
For me, it was a monumental coup. I loved the "reunion" movies that brought Arness back to his iconic role. The writers had moved the Matt Dillon character on from his old stalwart setting and given him new emotional depth. Arness took an eager interest in the re-invention of Marshal Dillon and, in those few movies, reminded me what a fine actor he could be when playing a man he knew intimately, a man who had been tailored over the years to fit him like a glove.
Arness quietly explained to me what it was like back in 1955 to take on a role that already had been defined to a great degree by that fine actor William Conrad, who had played the part on radio, but was considered too "unheroic" in physical build to play the part on television. In Arness' mind, "Gunsmoke" had been shaped by its writers as "an intellectual western" and that already set it up a notch over all the others.
"I just stepped into a whole character and tried to stay on my feet and not bump into the furniture," he told me. "I don't think any series ever got onto television that was that fully evolved. They had fine-tuned this over several seasons and had those characters and their relationships down pat."
Arness decided to play Matt Dillon from the "less is more" style. He radiated strength and resolve just by being himself. He didn't need to talk about it to make you believe it was real. Once Arness was in place on the dusty streets of Dodge City, the writers just worked to keep that quiet power intact.
Always an admirer of good dramatic writing, Arness reveled in the quality of the scripts he was getting.
"It was so strongly written that you could almost bumble your way through it," he said. "It would take a really bad actor to screw it up."
Arness made sure I understood that he never felt trapped in the Matt Dillon role. He considered getting it to be "providential." He described his career before that as one where he had small parts, but lots of opportunity to sit around "back out of hte light" and watch really fine actors work, among them John Wayne and Spencer Tracy.
"I was not the kind who was really trying to become a skilled craftsman," he confessed. "I wasn't overly tuned to that kind of thing. I was absorbing things, though."
Arness and his equally giant-sized brother, Peter Graves, who died last year, both broke into movies in the 1940s and were seen together as Loretta Young's brothers in "The Farmer's Daughter" (1947). Both had roles that later would prove embarrassing because of their size. Graves was in the schlocky sci-fi film "Killers From Space" (1954), playing a man who died in a plane crash, but was brought back to life by invaders from the planet Astron Delta. Arness did him one better, playing the title role in the 1951 classic shocker "The Thing From Another World," a giant "vegetable man," who finally was "cooked" by high voltage power lines after killing lots of scientists at an isolated Arctic research station.
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...being eletrocuted in the title role of "The Thing From Another World" (1951) |
Arness pretty much described himself as an actor who didn't really sit around discussing the philosophy of acting with other actors. He said John Wayne was like that, too. All business on the set and ready to socialize when the shooting was finished for the day.
On "Gunsmoke," Arness said actor Milburn Stone, who played "Doc," was a very influential member of the ensemble.
"He was born and raised in Kansas
aro;und 1900 on what was then the remnants of the frontier,"
Arness told me. "I remember him so well talking about when
he was a young boy, how they'd cruise into town and walk up and
down the streets where some of the old guys who had lived at
the time of Dodge City were out on the porches, whittling away
and telling their stories. Milburn had the highest kini of regard
for all that. It was almost sacred to him."
As he talked about those days on the set with Stone, Arness got
a reverent look in his eye and you could tell how much he missed
those good times--20 years with a great ensemble of characters
who were more than fellow cast members, but rather true friends.
"He was such a marvelous guy that
you liked him immediately," Arness said of Stone. "Yet,
at the same time, he was very much a disciplinarian dedicated
to this project called 'Gunsmoke.' In his mind, this was a chance
to show that period, that region and those people in the best
way they'd ever been depicted. It was an opportunity he'd waited
years for and--boom--here it was!"
In contrast, Arness was just having fun. "At that age, it
was fun time for me. IO enjoyed it. To me, the whole business
was just something I fell into."
Arness said he and the other cast members were shocked when "Gunsmoke" suddenly took off in its second season and became a monster hit. Everywhere they went, th;ey were recognized. They were in demand for everything.
"I couldn't even describe it to you--what that felt like," he recalled. "It hit us so big and so fast."
When I asked him about his aversion to publicity, that's when I discovered he wasn't always that way.
"When you do the same show, playing the same character 600 times, you rnn out of things to say," he explained. "By nature, to over-publicize things is hard for me to do. Having a show on year after year is publicity enough. Do more and it starts going against you. Don't stay out there until they start throwing rotten eggs at you."
By the time "Gunsmoke" was over, Arness returned to work in another western series, "How the West Was Won," and, after that, NBC lured him back to do a modern police show called "McClain's Law" (1981-82), Arness felt uncomfortable about the whole thing.
"That show was such a total switch," he chuckled. "Talk about a fish out of water. For 20 years, I'd been out in the boonies with nobody around and suddenly here I was downtown on the streets of San Pedro, waiting to cross on the green light and crowds all around me."
When I asked Arness if he was ever troubled by roads not taken in his career, he said he'd "never had the slightest thought of that type." He con;sidered himself a lucky guy to get a great role that fit him perfectly in a show that people loved enough that they kept it going for 20 years.
"No director ever sent me a script saying, 'Hey, this is the next 'Gone With the Wind,'" he said. "I never got such a script, never had any remote sort of offer to do something else great. Today they'd offer me 'The Thing, Part Two." And I might even take it."
That interview turned out to be a very warm-hearted chat and I came away from it realizing Arness was not a guy who laid down rules for you to follow and didn't warn me away from any topics, not even his time with "The Thing." I liked him a whole lot and admired him even more for his honesty and his straightforward manner. He was a regular guy, not the icon I envisioned him to be in advance.
In its grand days, "Gunsmoke" was not a program I gobbled up every week. My Dad loved it and I guess I absorbed a great deal of it just being in the room while it was on the TV set. But in more recent years I've gone back to it many times and now recognize what a precedent-setting western it was for its time. It was not an action show, but a serious drama set in the old west. Arness didn't chew any scenery, even in the most dramatic moments. He played Matt Dillon with quiet deliberation--and, in so doing, created a visual memory that will live forever for his fans and not just those who were lucky enough to meet him.
©2011 by Ron Miller. This column first posted June 6, 2011.
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