Acting Career
After his discharge, Arness entered Beloit College in Wisconsin. He began his performing career as a radio announcer at Minneapolis station WLOL in 1945.
Arness came to Hollywood by hitchhiking and soon began acting and appearing in films. He began with RKO, which immediately changed his name from "Aurness". His film debut was as Loretta Young's (Katie Holstrom) brother, Peter Holstrom, in The Farmer's Daughter (1947).
Though identified with westerns, Arness also appeared in two science fiction films, The Thing from Another World (in which he portrayed the title character) and Them!. He was a close friend of John Wayne and co-starred with him in Big Jim McLain, Hondo, Island in the Sky, and The Sea Chase, and starred in Gun the Man Down for Wayne's company.
An urban legend has it that John Wayne was offered the leading role of Matt Dillon in the longtime favorite television show Gunsmoke, but he turned it down, recommending instead James Arness for the role. The only part of this story that is true is that Wayne did indeed recommend Arness for the part. Wayne introduced Arness in a prologue to the first episode of Gunsmoke, in 1955. The Norwegian-German Arness had to dye his naturally blond hair darker for the role. Gunsmoke made Arness world-famous and would run for two decades, becoming the longest running drama series in U.S. television history by the end of its run in 1975. The series' season record was tied only in 2010 with the final season of Law & Order. Unlike the latter show, Gunsmoke featured its lead character in each of its twenty seasons; Gunsmoke also aired 179 more episodes, and was in the top 10 in the ratings for eleven more seasons, for a total of thirteen, including four consecutive seasons at number one.
After Gunsmoke ended, Arness performed in western-themed movies and television series, including How the West Was Won, and in five made-for-television Gunsmoke movies between 1987 and 1994. An exception was as a big city police officer in a short-lived 1981-1982 series, McClain's Law, co-starring with Marshall Colt. His role as mountainman Zeb Macahan in How the West Was Won made him into a cult figure in many European countries, where it became even more popular than in the United States, as the series has been re-broadcast many times across Europe.
James Arness: An Autobiography was released in September 2001, with a foreword by Burt Reynolds. Arness noted that he realized, "f I was going to write a book about my life, I better do it now ... 'cause I'm not getting any younger."
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