The morning light came in from a single high window and fell across the dirt floor in bars. October 1962 CBS Studio Center, Los Angeles Stage nine The number one rated television show in America was filmed there. Marshall Matt Dillon’s Dodge City had been built on that sound stage. A full Western street with a saloon and a Marshall’s office and a livery stable.
Real dirt brought in by the truckload from a quarry near Lancaster. Hitching posts prop horses and painted backdrop of the Kansas plains hanging behind the buildings. It was a sound stage. But if you stood in the right spot at the right hour and you didn’t look up at the rigging, it could fool you. It had fooled a lot of people for seven years.
It would fool a lot more people for 13 more. The man who walked in through the side door at 6:00 in the morning that Monday was a man who had been fooled by sets like this for a long time. He had been fooled and he had done his share of fooling other people and he knew how the trick worked. He was wearing a black wool work shirt a dark brown leather vest with a tarnished silver star pinned to it.
Dark wool trousers brown leather Western boots a worn brown wide-brimmed felt hat. He carried a small leather travel bag in his right hand. He was 55 years old. He stopped just inside the door. He looked around the set. He took it in. The saloon facade the Marshall’s office the dirt on the floor He smiled the small smile.
He had not been on a television set before. A young production assistant 23 years old in a plaid shirt with a clipboard came hurrying over. Mr. Wayne, Mr. Wayne, we weren’t expecting you for another hour. I came early, son. I always come early. Old habit. Yes, sir. Mr. Arness is in his trailer. He asked us to let him know the moment you arrived.
Don’t bother him. Let me look at the set first. I want to see what Jimmy has built here. Yes, sir. The production assistant withdrew. Wayne walked out onto the dirt-covered floor of the sound stage. He walked slowly. He looked at the saloon facade. He ran his hand along the wood of the hitching post.
He looked up at the rigging high above and saw the painted backdrop of the Kansas plains hanging from steel cables. He smiled again. A few crew members in the rafters and at the edges of the set noticed him. They stopped what they were doing. Word spread the way word spreads on a sound stage, which is to say without anyone having to speak.
Within 5 minutes, James Arness came out of his trailer. Arness was 40 years old at the time. He was 6’7. He had a weathered, handsome face with a prominent nose and dark hair combed back. He was already in his Marshal Matt Dillon costume. The dark wool vest, the light Western shirt, the gun belt, the tarnished silver marshal’s badge, because he had been getting ready for the day’s first scene.
He walked across the sound stage toward the figure standing by the saloon facade. When he got close enough, he stopped. He took off his hat. He held it in his left hand. He held out his right. Duke. Wayne turned. He saw Arness. He smiled the small smile and it became a bigger smile. Jimmy.
The two men shook hands. Then they didn’t quite let go. Arness pulled Wayne into a one-armed embrace, his right hand still gripping Wayne’s, his left arm coming around Wayne’s shoulder. Wayne returned it. Thank you for coming. Duke, I cannot tell you what this means. Thank you for asking. Jimmy, it’s been a long time.
7 years? 7 years? Duke, I owe you everything. I have been wanting to find a way to to say that for a long time. You don’t owe me anything, Jimmy. You earned this. I earned the work, Duke. I did not earn the door. You opened the door. All right. Then I opened the door. And you walked through it. And I have been watching you walk through it for 7 years, and I have been proud of every step.
Now, where do you need me? Arness laughed. It was a relieved laugh. Duke, you are going to be in a two-part episode. You play Marshal Dillon’s old mentor from Texas. He comes to Dodge to help with a cattle rustler who has murdered a deputy. We have you for 4 days of shooting. Today is establishing shots and the first scene with me at the saloon.
Sounds good. Our director this week is a young man, Edmond Pierce. He is He is new. CBS hired him 3 months ago. He has not done a Western before. All right. Duke, I just want you to know that that if at any point you have a problem with how he is directing, you come to me. You come to me directly. I am the executive producer on this show.
Whatever you need, you come to me. Jimmy, I have been working with directors for 36 years. I’ll be fine. All right, Duke. Where is he? Arness pointed across the set. There was a tall canvas director’s chair set up near one of the cameras. The name Pierce was stenciled on the back in white letters. A young man was sitting in the chair with one leg crossed over the other and a clipboard in his lap and a lit cigarette in his right hand.
He had not stood up when Wayne entered the set. He had not stood up for Arness, either. He was looking at his clipboard. Wayne looked at the young man in the chair for a moment. He nodded slowly. He’d seen young men like that before. He knew the type. He had been in the business long enough to see every type at least twice.
All right, Jimmy. Duke, it’s all right. Arness watched Wayne walk across the sound stage toward the director. He stayed where he was. He put his hat back on. He felt something in his chest that he had not felt since he had been a young actor on his first set. The feeling that he was watching something he might need to step into.
He stayed where he was. He watched. Wayne approached the director’s chair. He stopped about 3 ft from it. He stood waiting. Edmund Pierce did not look up. Yes, Mr. Pierce. Yes, what is it? John Wayne. Pierce looked up. He blinked once. He had known Wayne was coming. He had read the production schedule.
He had even practiced what he was going to say to Wayne in the mirror that morning. Because he had decided in advance that he was going to set the tone of the relationship at the very beginning. He had decided in advance that he was going to make sure John Wayne understood who was in charge of the sound stage.
He had decided that this was important. Edmund Pierce had decided a lot of things in his 28 years that turned out to be important only to him. Did not stand up, Mr. Wayne. Welcome to Gunsmoke. Glad to be. Here? You’re early. I always am. We don’t really need you for another hour. The lighting set up for your first shot isn’t ready. I’ll wait.
You can wait in your trailer. I’d rather walk the set, son. I like to know where the doorways are. Pierce smiled. It was a thin smile. Mr. Wayne, let me explain how television works. This is not a movie set. We don’t have time for actors to wander around the set looking for inspiration. We work fast here.
We shoot eight pages a day. So, when I tell you to wait in your trailer, I am giving you a professional courtesy. I’m letting you avoid getting in the way. Wayne did not respond at first. He took a small breath. He nodded once. All right, son. That’s all right with you? It is. Good. Trailer’s that way.
Wayne turned. He started walking toward the trailers. He had taken about three steps when Pierce called after him. Mr. Wayne. Wayne stopped. He turned around. Yes. One more thing. The hat. We’re going to need you to take it off when you’re not on camera. The hat. The hat. The hair and makeup people need to see your hair before each take.
So, when you’re not in the shot, the hat comes off. All right? All right. Wayne started walking again. Pierce called after him a third time. And Mr. Wayne, one more thing. Wayne stopped a second time. He did not turn around as quickly this time. He stood with his back to Pierce for a moment. Then he turned. Yes. The walk.
We’re going to need you to to pick up the pace a little. I noticed when you came in, you walk a little a little slowly. We’ll need it brisker for the scenes. All right. Just so we don’t have to do extra takes. All right. Wayne stood there for another second. Then he walked across the sound stage. James Arness had heard every word.
The acoustics of a sound stage were like that. Sound carried. Arness stood by the marshal’s office prop building. He had taken his hat off again. He was holding it in both hands. He was rolling the brim slowly between his thumbs and forefingers. His knuckles were white. He did not move. He was waiting.
He was waiting because John Wayne had not asked him to step in. And John Wayne had told him 5 minutes earlier that he would handle directors himself. And James Arness, who had been carrying a debt to John Wayne for 7 years, knew that the most important thing he could do right now was respect the man enough not to step in front of him before he asked.
So, he waited. He watched Wayne walk to the trailers. He watched Pierce sit back down in his chair. He watched the production assistant scurry around delivering coffee. He watched the cinematographer adjust a light. He watched the morning unfold. Wayne came out of his trailer 20 minutes later. He had his hat back on.
He came out and he walked across the sound stage and he took his place at the chalk marks near the saloon facade. His first scene was a reaction shot. Marshall Dillon’s old mentor watching the saloon from across the street, recognizing a face inside. Pierce stood up from his chair. He walked over. Mr. Wayne, stand on the mark.
I am on the mark. You’re 6 in off. I’m not. You are. Wayne looked down at his boots. He was on the chalk mark. He looked at Pierce. Son, what? I’m on the mark. Pierce looked down at Wayne’s boots. He saw Wayne was on the mark. He nodded slowly as if he had expected to find something and was disappointed not to find it. Fine. Now, the hat.
What about the hat? It’s tilted wrong. Tilted wrong how? It’s too low. I can’t see your eyes. We need to see your eyes for the reaction. All right. Wayne reached up to adjust the hat himself. Pierce did not let him. What Pierce did, which would be remembered by every crew member on Stage 9 for the rest of their lives, and which would be written about in James Arness’s autobiography 39 years later, and which would be discussed in quiet voices in the coffee rooms of CBS for decades after that, was this. Pierce reached up. He put his right hand on the front brim of John Wayne’s hat. He gripped the brim between his thumb and forefinger. He lifted the hat, not just to adjust it. He lifted it. He lifted it up and off Wayne’s forehead at an angle, the way a man lifts a teacup he is inspecting for a chip. He tilted his head as he did it. He looked at Wayne’s exposed forehead. He looked at Wayne’s hair. He said, in a voice that the entire sound stage could
hear, “There. Now I can see your face. The sound stage went silent. Wayne did not move. He did not raise his hands. He did not speak. He stood absolutely still with the director’s hand on his hat. His eyes were locked forward on Pierce’s face. Pierce, still holding the hat slightly off Wayne’s head, smiled a thin smile.
Better. We’ll keep it like this for the take. Just a quarter inch higher than you usually wear it. That way I can see your eyes. He started to set the hat back down on Wayne’s head. Wayne raised his left hand. He raised it slowly. He did not strike at Pierce’s hand. He did not slap it away. He just raised his own hand up and took the brim of the hat from Pierce’s fingers, the way a man takes a glass from a careless waiter.
He set the hat back on his own head. He adjusted it himself. He put it exactly where it had been before. I’ll wear my hat the way I wear it, son. Mr. Wayne. With respect. I’m the director. You are the director. I make the decisions about how the actor looks on camera. You do. So, when I tell you to wear the hat a certain way, that is how you wear it. All right.
Wayne reached up. He took the hat off his own head. He held it in his left hand against his chest. There, no hat. Problem solved. Pierce blinked. Mr. Wayne. Yes, son. You can’t do the scene without the hat. You don’t want me to wear it the way I wear it. So, I won’t wear it. We’ll do the scene without the hat.
That is not That is not what I asked for. That is what you are getting. Pierce looked at Wayne. He looked at the hat in Wayne’s hand. He looked across the sound stage at the cinematographer who was pretending, very hard, not to be watching. He looked at the chalk marks at his feet. He felt something that he had not felt before in his life.
He felt a thing slip away from him. Mr. Wayne. I think you are being difficult. I am being a man, son. There is a difference. I think we should call a break. All right. Pierce raised his megaphone. He started to call a break. He did not finish. What he heard from across the sound stage was the sound of boots on dirt.
Heavy boots. Slow, deliberate boots. He turned. James Arness was walking toward him. Arness was 6′ 7”. He weighed 250 lb. He was in full Marshall Matt Dillon costume. He was walking slowly across the dirt-covered sound stage floor. He was not running. He was not hurrying. He was walking the way Marshall Matt Dillon walked across the main street of Dodge City when somebody had done something.
Marshall Matt Dillon was going to have to do something about Edmund Pierce. 28 years old, from Boston, who weighed 160 lb. Watched James Arness walk toward him. Arness stopped about 4 ft from Pierce. He did not say anything at first. He reached up. He took off his Marshall Matt Dillon hat. He held it in his left hand against his chest.
He reached down to his vest with his right hand. He took hold of the tarnished silver Marshall’s badge that was pinned to the vest. He unpinned it. He held it in his right hand. He looked at it for a moment. He held it out toward Pierce. He extended his arm fully. The badge sat on his open palm. “Mr. Pierce.” Pierce was very pale. “Yes.
” “Mr. Arness, that is John Wayne. I You touched John Wayne’s hat. I In 33 years of working in this industry, I’ve never seen anyone touch John Wayne’s hat. I’ve never seen anyone speak to John Wayne the way you have spoken to him this morning. And I’m going to tell you something, Mr. Pierce, and I’m going to tell it to you only one time.
Yes, Mr. Arness. You are going to leave this sound stage. You are going to go to Mr. Arnold’s office. Mr. Arnold is the executive in charge of Gunsmoke at CBS. You know him. You met him last week. I’m going to call him in 2 minutes and tell him you are coming. When you get to his office, you are going to wait.
He will see you when he is ready to see you. He will then explain to you, in whatever terms he chooses, the various ways in which you have made today the most expensive day of your career. You will listen. You will not argue. You will accept what he tells you. Mr. Arness, I am not finished, Mr. Pierce.
Yes, Mr. Arness. In my hand is my marshal’s badge. The badge that this character has worn for 7 years. The badge that has been in a shadow box on my wall every time I have come home from this set in 7 years. I’m holding it out to you because I want you to take a good look at it. I want you to take a good look at it, and I want you to remember it.
Because if I learn at any point in the next 40 years that you have spoken to John Wayne again, in any context, in any room, on any sound stage, in any city, I’m going to find you. And I am going to remind you of this badge. Do you understand me, Mr. Pierce? Yes, Mr. Arness. Get off my set. Pierce did not say anything else. He turned.
He walked toward the side door of the sound stage. Two CBS production executives in dark suits, who had appeared out of the corners of the room as if they had been there the whole time, fell in beside him. They did not touch him. They walked him to the door. The door opened. The bright daylight from outside cut across the sound stage.
Pierce stepped through. The door closed. The sound stage was silent. Arness stood there with the badge in his right hand. He pinned it back onto his vest. He put his hat back on. He walked over to John Wayne. Wayne had not moved during any of it. His own hat was still in his left hand against his chest.
He was watching Arness. Arness stopped in front of him. He looked down at Wayne. The two men did not say anything for a moment. Then Arness said quietly, “Duke, I am sorry.” “You don’t have anything to be sorry for, Jimmy. I should have stepped in earlier.” “You stepped in when it was time, Duke. He touched your hat.” “He did.
” “I have been on this lot for 7 years. I have never seen anything like that.” “It happens, Jimmy. You meet a young man here and there who has not yet learned what touching another man’s hat means. It happens. He will learn.” “He learned today. I should have I should have the way he spoke to you. The walking thing.
The hat thing. The I should have Jimmy, sit down a minute.” Wayne walked over to one of the prop saloon chairs that had been set up at the edge of the dirt street. He sat down. He gestured for Arness to take the chair across from him. Arness sat down. The two men were the same height when seated, even though Arness was a foot taller standing up.
“Jimmy, listen to me. Yes, Duke.” “You did exactly what you needed to do. You waited. You watched. You let me handle it the way I needed to handle it. And then when it was beyond what I could handle without help, you came in. That is how this is supposed to work. That is what a friend does. That is what a good man does.
I’m proud of you. I am proud of how you did that. Just now.” Arness looked at the dirt floor. “Duke, I have been waiting for 7 years to do something for you. To repay the door. The door you opened for me. And I have been waiting and waiting and there has not been a chance. There has been nothing. Until today.
Today you walked onto my set and a young man I should not have hired touched your hat. And all I could think while it was happening was was that I had been waiting 7 years for this moment. To be able to do something for you. And it it was not it was not what I would have wanted it to look like. But it was something. Wayne was quiet for a moment.
He looked at the younger man across from him. He looked at the marshal’s badge on Arness’s vest. He looked at the hat in Arness’s hands. He smiled a small smile. Jimmy. Yes, Duke. You did not owe me a door. You did not owe me anything. I told you that this morning and I am going to tell you again now. Whatever you did just now, you did not do because you owed me.
You did it because you saw a thing that needed doing and you did it. That is who you are. That is who you have always been. The door I opened, the door at CBS in 1955, was not me giving you something. It was me telling other men what I had already seen in you. The thing in you was already in you. I just told them it was there.
I did not put it there. Duke. What? That is the kindest thing anybody has ever said to me. It is also the truest. Jimmy. So remember it. The two men sat in the saloon chairs at the edge of the sound stage for a long while. The crew, who had been waiting in stunned silence, began very slowly to go back to their tasks.
The cinematographer adjusted his lights. The sound man checked his boom. The production assistant brought two cups of coffee over to the saloon chairs. Set them down on a small wooden barrel between Wayne and Arness. And withdrew without saying anything. Wayne and Arness drank their coffee. A new director was sent over from another stage at CBS 45 minutes later.
His name was Andrew McLaglen. He was 42 years old. He had directed Westerns for 15 years. He was a friend of John Ford’s. He walked onto stage nine, took off his hat to Wayne, took off his hat to Arness, and asked them what they would like to shoot first. They shot the rest of the day’s scenes. They finished on schedule.
The two-part Gunsmoke episode aired in February 1963. It was the highest-rated Gunsmoke episode of that season. McLaughlin directed the next 10 episodes after that. He stayed on the show for two more seasons. Edmond Pierce was reassigned by CBS to a daytime soap opera. He directed three episodes there.
He was let go in 1963. He went back to Boston. He went into corporate communications work for an insurance company. He stayed there for 30 years. He never directed another television show. He never spoke about Stage Nine to anyone. When his obituary appeared in the Boston Globe in 1998, it mentioned that he had briefly directed for CBS in 1962.
It did not mention Gunsmoke by name. The obituary was written by his daughter. She did not know the story. James Arness kept the story for 39 years. He kept it for two reasons. The first was that John Wayne had asked him to keep it. Wayne had asked him on the morning it happened, sitting in the saloon chair with the coffee between them.
Wayne had said, “Jimmy, don’t tell this story while I am alive. It would not help anybody. Promise me.” And Arness had promised. The second reason was that he did not want to. Arness was not a man who told stories about other men’s bad mornings. He was not a man who built himself up by tearing other men down.
He was a man who carried things quietly. He had been raised in Minnesota in a Lutheran family. He had served in the army in Italy in 1944. He had been wounded at Anzio. He had carried a piece of shrapnel in his right leg for the rest of his life. He knew about carrying things, so he kept the story.
He kept it through the rest of Gunsmoke’s 20-year run. He kept it through Wayne’s death in 1979. He kept it through his own retirement from acting in the early 1990s. He kept it through the death of his second wife. He kept it for 39 years. In 2001, Arness was 78 years old. He had been thinking about writing his autobiography for a long time.
His friends had been pushing him. His grown children had been pushing him. He had finally agreed. He sat at his writing desk in Brentwood for the better part of a year. He wrote in longhand on yellow legal pads with a fountain pen. He wrote about his childhood in Minnesota. He wrote about the war. He wrote about his early acting days.
He wrote about getting cast as Marshal Dillon. He wrote about the 20-year run of Gunsmoke. Toward the end of the manuscript, in a chapter he titled simply The Duke, he sat for 2 days and wrote nothing. He looked at the legal pad. He looked out the window. He thought about the morning of October 1962.
He thought about the promise he had made to Wayne in the saloon chair that morning. He thought about it for 2 days, then he picked up the fountain pen and he wrote the chapter. He wrote it the way he remembered it. He did not embellish. He did not make himself larger in the story than he had been. He gave Wayne his due.
He gave Pierce what he had earned. He gave the crew their place. He wrote it short and he wrote it clean. At the end of the chapter, he wrote a single paragraph that became, over the following years, one of the most quoted paragraphs in any Hollywood autobiography. I was 40 years old that morning. I was the lead actor on the number one rated television show in America.
I was 6 ft 7. I’d served in the army in the war. I’d been on a hundred sets. I thought I knew what authority looked like. I did not. I was 40 years old before I learned what authority looked like. Authority looked like a man taking off his own hat. Authority looked like a man saying, “I’ll wear my hat the way I wear it, son.
” Authority looked like a man who did not raise his hand when his hat was touched because raising the hand would have been beneath him. Authority did not look like the man who touched the hat. Authority looked like the man who did not need to. The autobiography was published in November 2001.
Arness was alive when it came out. He did interviews. He answered questions. He spoke kindly about everyone he had worked with. He never named Edmund Pierce by name in any interview, even though the chapter named him in the book. He referred to Pierce only as the young director in conversation. The book sold modestly. It was not a best-seller.
It went out of print after a few years, but the chapter about Wayne and the hat was photocopied and shared. It was discussed in old Hollywood circles. It was read aloud at industry dinners. Younger actors who had never met Wayne or Arness read the chapter and learned something they had not learned in their acting classes.
The chapter is still being read. It is still being shared. It is being read tonight somewhere by a young man who is 28 years old, who thinks he knows how authority works. Who is about to walk onto a set tomorrow morning and meet a man older than him. Maybe he will learn. Maybe he will not. But the chapter exists. And the lesson exists.
And the story exists. James Arness died on June 3rd, 2011. He was 88 years old. He died quietly in his sleep at his home in Brentwood. His obituary in the Los Angeles Times mentioned and service in World War II. his 20-year run as Marshal Matt Dillon, his three children, and his autobiography. It did not mention the chapter about Wayne and the hat.
It did not need to. The marshal’s badge from Gunsmoke was in a shadow box on the wall of his study when he died. The shadow box had a small bronze plaque beneath it. The plaque had a single sentence engraved on it. The sentence said, “He earned his hat.” “I just told them what I saw.” That was the kind of man James Arness was.
That was the kind of man John Wayne taught him to be. That is the lesson of October 1962. That is the lesson of Stage Nine. A young director who thought television was the future. An old movie star who had built half of Hollywood. A 6-ft 7 marshal who had been waiting 7 years to repay a debt or and a hat.
A worn brown felt cowboy hat lifted a quarter inch off a man’s head by a hand that did not know what it was lifting. Some men spend their whole lives looking for an opportunity to repay a debt. Some men never find it. Some men find it when they least expect to. On a Monday morning in October in a sound stage in Los Angeles when a young man they have not yet learned to fire walks across a dirt floor and touches the hat of the man who taught them everything. That is how this works.
That is the only way it works. A door opened in 1955, a debt repaid in a You know what? The story kept for 39 years or the chapter written in 2001 and a lesson that goes on being learned by men who have not yet had their hats touched and by men who have not yet learned that touching another man’s hat is the most expensive thing they will ever do.
October 1962. Stage Nine. CBS Studio Center. Los Angeles. A hat was touched. A badge was unpinned, a door was repaid. That is the story. That is the whole story.
