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Janet Arness Talks About Her Husband James Arness

By Henry C. Parke

In 1951, when Janet Surtees was only 3, her family moved from Chicago to Los Angeles, but not because any of them were seeking a showbiz career. “My parents wanted to get away from the cold. My father worked for a locomotive company in Chicago. And when he came out to California, he worked for Pathe Film Labs. It was a simpler time. Clean air, no traffic, and on weekends, my folks would take us on drives into the mountains or to the ocean.”

Growing up, “I had no interest [in] the film industry.” She only knew one person in the business. “I was working at a dress shop, and June, the woman who owned it, her husband was Glen Alden, Jim’s [Arness] makeup artist. Glen liked me, and he kept telling Jim about me. I had been dating somebody, then we broke up, and June said, we’re having Jim over for dinner. Why don’t you come and meet him? And I said, OK.” It was 1975, and Jim had been playing Matt Dillon for 20 years. Janet was well-aware of Gunsmoke. “My son was watching Gunsmoke every Monday. I was sitting in the living room, talking to June, and Jim walks in. I had no idea how tall this man was,” she recalled with a laugh. “I mean, he was like a giant. They introduced us. We had dinner and talked about … I don’t even remember what. Jim walked me out to my car afterwards and he said, ‘Gee, I’d like to have your number.’”

“Our first real date was flying up to Mammoth in his Cessna. My dad, my brother and my uncle were all private pilots, so I was used to flying small planes. It was a beautiful day, around the end of May. We flew up, went to the market, bought cheese, salami, bread, and some drinks, rented horses and rode up into Red’s Meadow. We took this trail that Jim had been on many times. It was beautiful because of the waterfalls. We found a camping place, nobody was there, and we sat on a log, made sandwiches and talked. And what really impressed me was when we were getting ready to leave. Previous campers had left paper and cans there. Jim picked up all the trash and put it in his saddle bag. And I thought, well now this is a good guy.”

© Janet Arness. Property of the Arness estate, 2024.
© Janet Arness. Property of the Arness estate, 2024.

It was lucky that Janet loved flying, because it became a big part of her life with Jim. Over the years on Gunsmoke, “he didn’t want to be away from his kids on location; that’s why he actually got his pilot’s license, so he could take off at a certain hour, and be with them for dinner. He had a de Havilland Beaver, a plane they use up in Alaska. Jim used the Beaver to land on beaches so he could go surfing, like down in Mexico.”

Although she was in Jim’s life during that last season of Gunsmoke, “I didn’t visit the set. I was working. I knew Dennis Weaver very well, and his wife Gerry,” because even though Weaver had left Gunsmoke, and his character of Chester, in 1964, “he and Jim stayed friends forever.”

When Gunsmoke was abruptly cancelled, “Everybody was surprised. Jim realized, my gosh, he’d been on the show for 20 years; you can’t complain. And yet he felt like Gunsmoke could have gone a couple more years. But he said, ‘That’s the business. Go with the flow.’”

James Arness had not planned to go directly from one TV series to another. “I don’t think he was really intending to do anything for a while. After 20 years he kind of wanted to give the public a rest from him,” Janet said with a laugh. But then along came the series How the West Was Won. And although it had been co-created by prolific Gunsmoke writer Jim Byrnes, it had not been written with Arness in mind, because everyone assumed he would still be doing Gunsmoke. Arness had his doubts. “Especially after playing Matt Dillon for 20 years, going into this new character; he really didn’t know. But he liked the writing, and he really thought the story was good, so he decided to do it.”

“Personally, I feel that Jim was a lot more like Zeb Macahan than he was Matt Dillon. Jim was a very outdoorsy type of guy. He loved adventure, and that was Zeb, this mountain man. I just thought he fit that part perfectly.” Arness had full cast approval, and against one MGM executive’s wishes, he picked Bruce Boxleitner to play the second lead, Zeb’s nephew. “Jim was determined: if he hadn’t gotten Bruce, he wasn’t going to do it. Jim felt there was a chemistry there with Bruce. He and Bruce became really close friends.”

“When Jim and I first got married [in December 1978], and I was going to be on the set for the first time, Bruce said everybody was waiting to see who was going to be Jim’s wife,” she laughed. “But everybody was really sweet and kind and congratulated us. You know, most husbands don’t want their wives on the set, but Jim and I were very close and he enjoyed having me there.” Once she walked off into the woods, looking for arrowheads. “Jim wrapped early, and he said, where’s Janet? Nobody could find me. And he had guys on their horses looking all over for me!”

They had a more dramatic adventure while shooting The Alamo: 13 Days to Glory, “in Brackettville, Texas. There was a storm, and lightning hit the generator. Jim came running and he said, ‘Nobody got hurt, but it’s gonna pour rain, it’ll be muddy as heck, trucks everywhere, and we won’t be able to get out!’ So we jump in the car, Jim’s driving, it’s pouring, and as he’s going up this hill, we’re sliding down in the mud. And I said, ‘Oh, Jim, I can see the headlines: MATT DILLON KILLED AT THE ALAMO!’”

That same year, 1987, Jim starred in the first of five Gunsmoke movies, 12 years after the final episode. “He was still getting fan-mail about Gunsmoke after all those years. So, he thought, I’ll try it and see how they like it. I particularly like the one with James Brolin and Ali McGraw. And the one with Bruce. The first one was shot up in Canada, and they didn’t have the regular crew or makeup people. But it was great because I got to meet Amanda [Blake], and what a sweetheart she was. They had the Gunsmoke set built up there, and it looked exactly like the setup at CBS. And when she saw the set, she got a few tears in her eyes, and Jim kinda put his arm around her and said, ‘It’s great, isn’t it?’”

Janet Arness still thinks it’s great. She still watches Gunsmoke. “I like the early years, you know, the half hours. But I like them all. Whenever I can hear his voice, I go, ‘Oh, yeah!’”

About Henry C. Parke

Henry’s new book, The Greatest Westerns Ever Made, and the People Who Made Them, published by TwoDot, is now available. The Brooklyn-born, L.A.-based writer has contributed articles to the INSP blog since 2016, been Film Editor for True West since 2015, and has written Henry’s “Western Round-up,” the online report on Western film production, since 2010. His screenwriting credits include Speedtrap (1977) and Double Cross (1994). He’s the first writer welcomed into the Western Writers of America for his work in electronic media. He’s done audio commentary on nearly 30 Spaghetti and domestic Westerns.

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