Early Life
Arness was born James Aurness in Minneapolis; he dropped the "u" when he started acting. His parents were Rolf Cirkler Aurness, a businessman, and his wife Ruth Duesler, a journalist. His father’s ancestry was Norwegian; his mother's was German. The family name had been Aursnes, but when Rolf's father, Peter Aursnes, emigrated from Norway in 1887, he changed it to Aurness. Arness and his family were Methodists. Arness' younger brother was actor Peter Graves (1926–2010). Peter used the stage name "Graves", a maternal family name.
Arness attended John Burroughs Grade School, Washburn High School and West High School in Minneapolis. During this time, Arness worked as a courier for a jewelry wholesaler, loading and unloading railway boxcars at the James J. Hill's Burlington freight-yards in Minneapolis, and logging in Pierce, Idaho. Despite "being a poor student and skipping many classes", he graduated from high school in June 1942.
Read more about this topic: James Arness
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“There is a relationship between cartooning and people like Miró and Picasso which may not be understood by the cartoonist, but it definitely is related even in the early Disney.”
—Roy Lichtenstein (b. 1923)
“All my life I’ve been running, from welfare officers, thugs, my father. See, there they are [the killers]. There on the bridge. I’m a dead man. Nosseros told me that. He told me. He said, “You got it all, but you’re a dead man, Harry Fabian.””
—Jo Eisinger, and Jules Dassin. Harry Fabian (Richard Widmark)