Hollywood Connections: From Giant Carrots to Gunsmoke

Never assume things about a performer from one movie. You never know who’s hidden within that scary costume.

Take the movie monster often referred to as a Giant Carrot, who was not quite the star of The Thing from Another World.

The Thing from Another World

For many movie fans, the 1951 movie The Thing from Another World (also known as The Thing) is cheesy. After all, it’s a monster movie from the 1950s. We can’t take it seriously, can we?

Take a look at its credits. It was co-produced by the hugely respected director Howard Hawks, for Pete’s sake! The director was Christian Nyby, who worked on classic Howard Hawks movies such as The Big Sleep and Red River! And classic TV shows, ranging from The Twilight Zone to Lassie and Kojak.

Note: The movie was based on a 1938 novella Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell Jr., one of science fiction’s most influential (and controversial!) editors. That novella is still in print today. You can buy the authorized eBook through the publisher Wildside Press or Amazon.

Many horror and monster movie fans view The Thing from Another World as a classic. A claustrophobic black-and-white classic set at a frozen base in Antarctica.

Sure, by today’s standards, the special effects of the original movie don’t hold up. (But the scene where the scientists practically set fire to the entire set still shocked me.)

I refuse to call the original version “cheesy” just because it was made in a different era. I save that for something like the laughable From Hell It Came. Read more fan appreciation from a post on The Movie Screen Scene.

Partway through The Thing from Another World, we get a good look at the creature. Many cynical moviegoers have called it the “giant carrot.” Before I saw the movie, I thought of the creature as a “giant walking carrot.” I was prepared to laugh. I was not prepared for the creature to be an effective design.

Folks, it was an effective creature!

It did not look like a giant walking carrot. It was a huge, threatening creature. A deadly one.

Kudos to the guy who got under all that makeup and into that costume. Kudos to him for risking life and limb for a movie many modern moviegoers might sneer at.

What a job, right?

The actors who play creatures like this do a thankless job. Sometimes, they don’t even get credited for their role. They’re rarely recognizable. You can learn about the behind-the-scenes stuff, including the makeup, in the article The Thing From Another World — Supplement on Cinemaspection.

It’s easy to think that this was probably some stuntman. Or some random actor who would play monsters and never get much recognition.

Whoops. Think again.

So Who Was That Guy in the Giant Carrot Costume?

The actor in the “giant carrot” costume? That was none other than James Arness! Maybe younger moviegoers don’t know who this was, but your parents or grandparents probably watched him growing up.

In 1955, just a few years after playing the Creature in The Thing from Another World, he would go on to lasting fame as Matt Dillon in the classic TV Western Gunsmoke. The TV show would go on to have 635 episodes. 635?! Until 2017, Gunsmoke kept the record of the show having the most scripted episodes. James Arness portrayed Matt Dillon until the show went off the air in 1975. (1975!)

While he wasn’t the Tallest Cowboy (because that guy was 7 feet and 6 inches tall), James Arness was 6 feet and 7 inches tall! For some time, he was believed to be the tallest leading actor to have his own TV series. (Brad Garrett broke that record.)

James Arness was recognized for his contributions to the budding television industry. A star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Recognized by People Magazine as #6 in the top 25 television stars of all time in 1989. Ranked as #20 when TV Guide put out its 50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time list in 1996.

Tributes poured in when he died in 2014, at the age of 88.

You can still watch interviews with him on The Television Academy website.

Depending on your location, you can stream episodes of Gunsmoke on Paramount+.

James Arness was also the older brother of actor Peter Graves. Peter Graves did everything from the Billy Wilder movie Stalag 17 to the original Mission: Impossible TV show. Not to mention the deadpan humor of Airplane!

Like Gunsmoke, you can stream the original Mission: Impossible on Paramount+.

Listen to It!

Like many TV shows at the time, Gunsmoke started as a radio show. It was created as an adult Western, an antidote to shows like The Lone Ranger. (It’s a noir and hard-boiled Western.) You can download episodes from Old Time Radio sites like Old Radio World. Or buy them from places like Old Time Radio Catalog.

A Brief Aside on John Carpenter’s The Thing

In 1982, the movie was “remade” by John Carpenter as The Thing. It’s one of those remakes that’s closer to the source material. (It’s also known as John Carpenter’s The Thing.)

I avoided John Carpenter’s The Thing for years because critics at the time loathed it. Watching it was a revelation. A gruesome, gory, and shocking revelation.

Those critics can bite me.

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