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The "Gunsmoke" episodes are shot in
four days-one for rehearsal, three for actual
filming. The cast and crew reports at six
a.m. and knocks off around eight p.m.
"Jim comes home so tired," says Mrs.
Arness, a pretty brunette, "he never says a
word. He just looks doped with fatigue ....
Half the time he's so tired he's asleep be-
fore he can eat."
Arness on the set is the exact antithesis
of Arness on the screen. As Matt Dillon, he
is calm; as Jim Arness, he cannot sit still. ~~
He stands, paces, jumps up and down on
one leg, clicks the trigger of his revolver Hair problem got you
incessantly, hums, whistles, sings snatches
of song. He memorizes his lines rapidly in the doghouse?
and, once they're in his head, seems unable
to wait to say them. Occasionally his tem-
per explodes violently, but just as often, he
explodes with laughter.
Unlike so many of the younger actors
around today, Arness does not have to
stumble, fumble, and scratch his navel red
before he gets into the characterization of
Matt Dillon. He is as remote from the
greasy, mumbling Actors' Studio types as, Get Wildroot
FOR
say, Cary Grant, and in his own way he is
as debonair and dignified as the latter. His Cream-Oil Charlie!
co-workers say that he ad-libs well. Some- HANDSOME
times, the "character-building" parts of
shows-scenes between Chester, Doc and WELL-GROO ED
Matt-are almost entirely ad-libbed scenes.
There is a good deal of pleasant horse- A.!R
play-no pun intended-on the "Gunsmoke"
set. Dennis Weaver, a veteran of the Actors'
Studio in ew York and a former track
star, and Milburn Stone, who has played
in more than 150 movies, are continually Just a little bit of
conspiring with Amanda Blake to play jokes
on Arness. He, in turn, tries constantly to Wildroot and ... WOWJ
break them up while they are on camera.
If the script calls for him to hand Chester a
piece of paper, he will write a four-letter around Hollywood do. Success hasn't as he. He began keeping more and more to
word on it while Chester isn't watching, changed him hardly at all." himself, getting away whenever he could.
hoping Chester will smile and spoil the Arness was born James Aurness in Min- In the summers he would go on camping
take. "You got to be on your guard all the neapolis, Minnesota, on May 26, 1922 ( co- trips into the north woods, but in his last
time on this set," Weaver says. incidentally, his mentor, John Wayne, also few years in high school he felt the need to
Miss Blake, incidentally, is even better- was born on May twenty-sixth). He dropped get away even when he wasn't on vacation.
looking off-screen than on. Her red hair is the "u" out of his name at the suggestion "As much as a teen-agei· can, I became a
natural, and she has lovely blue-green eyes. of MGM production chief Dore Schary. As a bum, more or less," Arness says. 'T d skip
a boy, he and his younger brother, Peter, school and go on the road, sometimes hitch-
went to John Burroughs Grade School, hiking, sometimes riding the rails. Other
he TV relationship between Matt and Ramsey Junior High and West High. He times, in season, I'd go hunting. It seemed
T Kitty is a miracle of subtle delineation. sang in school choruses at all three, and also like the only time I felt happy was when I
There has never been any open expression was in the Hennepin A venue Church choir. was off by myself, sitting in a duck blind or
of the fact that she is his girl; the two Peter also acts, under the name of Peter going across country for birds. That was
have never so much as held hands or Graves. He took a different name because life-I thought. What I didn't realize was
kissed, except one time in a commercial. he didn't want to trade on Arness' reputa- that I was trying to escape life. I knew I
Yet the strong sexual attraction between tion. He is now the star of "Fury," another had to decide what I was going to do with
them is obvious in the way they look at each "adult" Western on NBC-TV. myself, and I wanted to postpone that de-
other and talk, even when they are talking Arness' unusual height, an asset .in his cision as long as possible."
about things that have nothing whatever to role as Matt Dillon, actually was a tre- There is still a trace of the bum left in
do with love. Amanda says it is sometimes mendous handicap when he was a boy. He Arness. He describes his favorite form of
a relief to her that she doesn't have to kiss grew like a weed from the age of nine, and activity on vacation as "doing nothing."
Jim, even though she wouldn't find it an soon became an object of much good- Riding is work for him, so he doesn't ride.
especially trying task; "I would be taking natured banter from his friends. It also got Shaving is pa1t of every actor's job, so he
my life in my hands every time I kissed him into trouble occasionally. When he goes for days without shaving. He seldom,
him," she says, "because I would have to was about fourteen he was provoked into a if ever, watches television. 'Tm looking
stand on so many boxes." Arness has not fight with an older, tougher boy who was forward to the day, years from now-I hope
gone on record as to how he feels about not quite as tall as he. "Jim had tried to -when I can see the re-runs," he says.
kissing Amanda. Since he is normal in most talk him out of it," his brother remembers, "Then they'll all be new to me." He does
other ways, he presumably would enjoy it. "but the kid wasn't having any. He figured occasionally look at his brother's show.
He may be normal, but he is a highly that, being older than Jim, he could take During the summer vacation between his
complicated human being, and decidedly him. He wound up on the ground with a junior and senior years in high school,
not the simple, earthy giant he at first bloody nose and a black eye." Jim wasn't Arness hitch-hiked to Galveston, Texas, and A
glance appears to be. "Jim's not a glib per- hurt, but the other kid's mother arrived shipped out on a Gulf freighter. The en- R
son," says Weaver. "You can be around in time to -ee her boy on the ground. treaties of his family, plus a certain amount G
him a long time and still keep on discoverin' "You bi bully!" she screamed. "Why of con~cience, took him back to Minneap- O
areas you didn't rightly know were there." don't you l .ck on somebody your own size?" olis. The experience left him with two S
( Weaver, in person, sometimes resembles That was only one of many incidents. He strong influences-a love for the water, y
Chester when he speaks.) "He doesn't shove always felt older than the kids he was with, which is still strong today ( his biggest am-
himself onto you, the way a lot of actors and younger than the kids who were as tall bition is to buy a sloop capable of sailing 71