Matinee Classics - James Arness Biography & Filmography

James Arness ACTOR

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JAMES ARNESS BIOGRAPHY & FILMOGRAPHY:

James Arness was born on may 26th, 1923 in Minneapolis, Minnesota with the middle name King, born to Rolf and Ruth Duesler Aurness. His younger brother, Peter Graves, also grew up to pursue a career as an actor. While attending West High School in Minneapolis, he became involved in acting in a number of school productions, although he never intended to pursue a career in entertainment.

After earning his high school diploma he enrolled at Beloit College, but after only one semester he was drafted into the United States Army in 1943. However, after suffering a leg injury, he was discharged from his service and later with convincing from his brother, he decided to take a radio course at the University of Minnesota.

This lead to a teacher at the college taking notice of his vocal talents and helped him secure a job as an announcer for a local radio station. Soon he decided to move out west to Hollywood and see if there was any chance he could break into the film industry.

He found a number of small extra roles in film and also enrolled at the Bliss-Hayden Theatre School since up until that point he had no real formal training as an actor. During one performance in a school production, a industry agent, Leon Lance saw him perform on stage and helped Arness get his first real film role in, "The Farmer's Daughter" (1947).

After the film was released, he began to gain the attention of the public and continued to do some stage acting in such productions as, "Candida". He was not yet being cast in major roles but the industry was slowly beginning to take notice of him and he made appearances in such classic science fiction thriller films as, "The Thing from Another World" (1951) and "Them!" (1954).

When he was working on another stage production another agent took notice of him by the name of, Charles K. Feldman who represented John Wayne. This was the real take off point for his career as now he was beginning to get cast in more substantial roles.

It was his most famous role on the television series, "Gunsmoke" (1955-1975) that took his popularity to a whole new level of stardom. He portrayed, Marshall Dillon and the show aired for twenty seasons making it the longest running drama series ever in United States history.

When this series was cancelled in 1975 he had no trouble being cast on another highly popular television min-series called, "How the West was Won". Other roles he added to his resume throughout his period as an actor were on such films with friend John Wayne as, "Big Jim McLain" (1952), "Hondo" (1953), "Island in the Sky" (1953), "The Sea Chase" (1955) and the television series, "McClain's Law" (1981). He also reprised his character from, "Gunsmoke" in a series of movies, "Gusmoke: The Last Apache" (1990), "Gunsmoke" To the Last Man" (1992), "Gunsmoke: The Long Ride" (1993) and "Gunsmoke: One Man's Justice" (1994).

James Arness then chose to retire from the industry and on June 3rd, 2011 he passed away in Los Angeles, California. He married twice throughout his lifetime, first to Virginia Chapman from 1948 through 1963 and together they had three children. His second marriage was to Janet Surtrees in 1978 and they remained together until he passed away. One of his children, daughter, Jenny Lee Arness also pursued a career as an actress, but sadly on May 12th, 1975 she took her life. His other children were, Rolf Aurness and an adopted son, Craig from Virginia Chapman's first marriage who also passed away in 2004.

His remains are interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.