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 saw Peter Graves on a Geico commercial the other day (Graves is Arness' brother.)
My hubby and I were remarking how well Graves looked, and I was wondering how Arness was fairing. Glad to hear he's
doing so well.
Those aside, it was a great, great western and it taught a lot of people about good and evil, standing up for truth and justice, and that - yes - you had to use violence to stomp on evil. As BOR said - Arness and John Wayne played the same type of character - big, strong, silent types who kicked the snot out of bad guys!
Thanks! What a nice website!
Makes me wish for the good ol' days of just three networks with quality content.
LOL!
Yeah, me too. Thanks goodness for nostalgia TV and DVDs.
Kewl beans! Thanks!
He was in one of our family's favorite horror flicks: Them.
Thanks for the link!
what's a BOR?
I googled BOR???
I got:
Board of Registry
Burnt Orange Report
Bureau of Reclamation
etc...etc.
Someone please help this unsavy TV watcher....what the hell it means....PS I was watching the World Series last nite and not one BOR showed up.
Here is his bio from IMDB -
At various times in his life a rancher, deputy sheriff and rodeo performer, this huge, towering (6' 5") beast of a man was born George Glenn Strange in Weed, New Mexico, on August 16, 1899, but grew up a real-life cowboy in Cross Cut, Texas. Of Irish and Cherokee Indian descent, he taught himself (by ear) the fiddle and guitar at a young age and started performing at local functions as a teen. In the late 1920s, Glenn and his cousin, Taylor McPeters, better known later as the western character actor Cactus Mack, joined a radio singing group known as the "Arizona Wranglers" that toured throughout the country. They both started providing singing fillers in film westerns in the early 1930s. Glenn would play extra or bit roles for a number of years -- whether a cowhand, rustler, henchman, sidekick, or harmonica-blowing warbler. Eventually in the late 30s his billing improved and he evolved into a full-time bad guy in hundreds of "B" westerns. He was seen (or glimpsed) in many of the popular western serials of the day, including The Hurricane Express (1932), Law of the Wild (1934), The Lone Ranger Rides Again (1939), and Riders of Death Valley (1941). It was his massive build that helped him break into the Universal horror picture genre of the 1940s. Boris Karloff had grown weary and fearful of his Frankenstein Creature typecast and abandoned the role. Glenn was the perfect man for the job and made his monstrous debut with House of Frankenstein (1944), quickly followed by House of Dracula (1945). It was he who played the Creature in the cult horror/comedy classic Bud Abbott Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) as part of the monstrous trio alongside Bela Lugosi's Dracula and 'Lon Chaney, Jr.' 's Wolf Man. As the B western faded off into the sunset in the 1950s, Strange moseyed on over to TV work, capping off his career with a steady, albeit minor, role as Sam the bartender on the classic "Gunsmoke" (1955) series from 1962 until shortly before his death from lung cancer in 1973.
Bill O'Reilly
I use BOR because people on FR use it. I thought it was recognizalbe but I guess I was wrong.
I never did either. Maybe, when we watched it, we just absorbed it as the Matt Dillon character.
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