Posted on 10/27/2006 3:58:44 AM PDT by 7thson
Did anyone catch BOR last night? He has a new weekly segment highlighting a TV icon. Last night he had James Arness - Matt Dillon from Gunsmoke. Mr. Arness is 83 years old. He is a very humble man, from what I saw of the mini-interview. I also found out that he was in WW II, wounded at Anzio, and spent 18 months in recuperation.
That was one of my favorite westerns growing up. When I was a little kid, it would confuse the hell out of me when Bruce Dern kept on showing up in different episodes. I was always thinking - didn't Matt kill this guy already.
Here are two trivia items concerning him from IMDB -
Very, very often during his career, this huge actor was surrounded by co-stars standing on apple boxes or had to perform standing in a ditch just so he could be in a shot.
His status as a Republican disappointed Lady Bird Johnson, who was a fan of "Gunsmoke" (1955).
I think he died in the end of "The Fighting Seebees", but I'm not sure.
What a great guy. He was my late grandfather's favorite. My grandfather was a big Gunsmoke fan, so much so that he would tell people their babies looked just like Festus. Way to win friends.
Saw a Gunsmoke episode last week where Ken Curtis (Festus) gets in a fistfight with an Army sergeant played by Victor French. I would have loved to see how the fight ended, but two of the sergeant's troopers knived him in the back.
I think your right, he jumped on a bulldozer and drove it into a fuel tank. Somebody above mentioned his death at the hands of an octopus. I guess:
"What we have here is a failure to communicate", Strother Martin recites his most famous line.
Their mother is Mary Martin, of Peter Pan and other musicals, fame.
Mary Martin is the mother of FKNA J R Ewing. Senility is my name.
You're right. I actually went to double-check. Arness and Graves' parents were from Minnesota.
As long as we're on the trivia subject...Remember that older lady actress, really gorgeous white hair, tiny thing? Her son/sons/kids were actors, too. I can't remember her name.
Bruce was such a good bad guy he got killed on every western on TV. I saw an interview of Dern where he told a story about how John Wayne beat the crap out of him filming a fight scene for "The Cowboys".
That's why I got a little annoyed with O'Reilly for pronouncing it "Arnez" --making it sound more like Desi Arnaz's name than Arness's.
The name "-nes" (liternally, "nose") in Scandinavian languages means peninsula, IIRC.
Many Scottish and British surnames and place names also have "-ness" at the end, with same meaning.
[ /OT etymology ]
24 is a good show. You are right about all the "PC" crap on the TV now. I can't satnd to watch it. At least TV Land and TCM movies (despite the fact that I can't even stand the sight of Ted Turner) have some good shows on.
LOL... I heard the commie, Ed Asner, say he was terrified of Wayne when they filmed El Dorado.
Well, who could pass a chance to kick assner's ass?
"ness" would mean "point" or "ker" ~ that first part, "Aur", has to mean "silver", or "shiney", right?
Hmmm, I'd be out of my depth if I claimed to know the answer to that.
Maybe you're right, though: "The first part of the name Aurboða, the aur of many significations may be referred to eyrir, pl. aurar, which means precious metal, and is thought to be borrowed from the Latin aurum (gold)." --from here
But we're getting pretty far OT. Thanks for the ridiculously esoteric discussion though. There aren't too many Old Norse fanciers out there since C. S. Lewis died.
Ed Asner said they were playing catch baseball and Asner bragged he had thrown the ball in such a way it was impossible to catch. Since John Wayne didn't catch the ball, Asner was able to make a big deal of it.
In my nimd when I read that, I thought Asner isn't near the person John Wayne was.
I think Kitty was the owner and operator of the best Saloon in Kansas[ignoring the women taking the cowboys upstairs in every episode].
"Ker", however, is Gaelic, but you also find it as "Car"
Isn't his brother Peter Graves?
Did I read somewhere that it was John Wayne who recommended Arness for the Gunsmoke role?
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