The actor who killed Bruce Dern three times and still couldn’t get rid of him: “Just die already”
You may well know the scene in 1975’s Monty Python and the Holy Grail in which a knight repeatedly refuses to face up to the fact that he has lost most of his limbs, exclaiming ‘Tis but a scratch!’ while wanting to fight on, but did you know something similar occurred ten years earlier on a major US TV show?
Well, it did, although it wasn’t as funny as the Pythons’ effort, and it happened more behind the scenes than in front of the camera. The actor in question was Bruce Dern, and the show was Gunsmoke, the long-running western series that launched the careers of some of the best-known actors in the business, including Burt Reynolds, Jodie Foster and William Shatner.
While filming a scene in which his character was shot and was supposed to die, Dern’s director pleaded with him to ‘Just die already’. Dern recalled to CBS: “Yeah, oh, yeah. (laughs). The director was Mark Rydell, who later directed me in (1972 western) The Cowboys. And you know, I got shot and I had to fall on the bar floor. And I twitched, and I went, ‘Oh, God, my- oh, why did the bullet go in there?’ (laughs) or something like that.”
But Dern’s drawn-out writhing around on the ground didn’t really go down too well with the others on set, as he added, saying: “(Co-star) Jim Arness looks down at me and he says, ‘My God. That’s pretty interesting, but who gives a shit about how you die. Just die already. Get it over with, you know what I mean? Otherwise, we’re gonna cut away, and you’re still alive’. I said, ‘Well, that’s the point, because then I can come back in another episode (laughs), ’cause I’m not dead!’”
Arness’ frustration, however, was made more understandable when you consider the fact that Dern made no less than four guest appearances on Gunsmoke, all as villains, and Arness had to dispatch him via his pistol on three different occasions. At least in The Cowboys, Dern was able to turn the tables somewhat and got to fire a bullet into the most famous movie cowboy of all time, John Wayne.
Arness spent 20 years on Gunsmoke as Marshal Matt Dillon and even returned in the 1980s and ‘90s for one-off specials. Dern meanwhile diversified away from acting in westerns and had a stellar career in films like Sydney Pollack’s They Shoot Horses, Don’t They in 1971, Ryan O’Neal’s neo-noir The Driver in 1978, and then much later in his career the 2013 comedy road drama Nebraska, for which he picked up an Academy Award nomination for ‘Best Actor’.
Made in black and white, the film told the story of an elderly man taking a cross-state trip with his son in order to try to claim a million-dollar sweepstakes prize. Dern gave one of the finest performances of his six-decade career in the film, which was nominated for six Oscars and co-starred Better Call Saul’s Bob Odenkirk.
Despite turning 90, Dern has continued to act right up until this year, having once promised to go until he was 100 for no other reason than to stop James Caan (who died in 2022) from taking any more of his parts.
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