Peter Graves was born Peter Duesler Aurness in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a son of parents Rolf Cirkler Aurness (1894–1982), a businessman, and his wife Ruth (née Duesler, died 1986), a journalist. His elder brother was actor James Arness (1923–2011). Graves' ancestry was Norwegian and German. The family name originally was "Aursnes," but when Rolf's Norwegian father, Peter Aursnes, immigrated to New York City in 1887, he changed the spelling. Peter used the stage name "Graves", a maternal family name. He used the name Graves to honor his mother's family, and also so as to not be confused with his older brother, James Arness, who was the star of the television series Gunsmoke.
Graves graduated from Southwest High School in 1944, and spent two years in the United States Army Air Forces near the end of World War II. He then enrolled at the University of Minnesota on the G.I. Bill, and was a member of Phi Kappa Psi fraternity.
Throughout Graves' career he appeared in more than seventy films, television shows, and television movies. In the 1950's, Graves joined the NBC television series
Fury, as the rancher and adoptive single father, Jim Newton.Graves also was featured in the 1953 World War II film,
Stalag 17. He soon after had starring roles in three classic sci-fi movies:
Killers From Space (1954),
It Conquered The World (1956) and
Beginning Of The End (1957).
From 1960-61 Graves starred as leading character Christopher Cobb in 34 episodes of the TV series
Whiplash. In the story line Cobb is an American who arrives in Australia in the 1850's to establish the country's first stagecoach line, using a bullwhip rather than a gun to fight the crooks that he encounters. The series also starred Anthony Wickert. Graves also starred in the British made ITC series
Court Martial playing U.S. Army Lawyer Major Frank Whittaker (one of the series two American Leads starring opposite Bradford Dillman's Captain David Young ) as well as guest roles in such series as
Alfred Hitchcock Presents,
Cimarron City,
Route 66 and
The Invaders,(episode; "Moonshot") In 1967, Graves was recruited by Desilu Studios to replace Steven Hill as the lead actor on
Mission: Impossible. Graves played Jim Phelps, the sometimes gruff leader of the Impossible Missions Force or IMF, for the remaining six seasons of the series. After the series ended in 1973, Graves played a cameo-type support role in the feature film
Sidecar Racers in Australia which was released in 1975. Graves also made a guest appearance in the teen soap opera
Class of '74 in mid-1974, playing himself.
Graves was cast as Palmer Kirby in the 1983 ABC miniseries,
The Winds Of War. He played opposite Robert Mitchum, Jan Michael Vincent, Deborah Winters and Ali MacGraw in what became in 1983, the second most watched miniseries of all time (after
Roots). After playing mainly serious roles in the 1970's, he acted as Captain Clarence Oveur in the early 80's comedies
Airplane! and
Airplane II: The Sequel.
In 1988 a Hollywood writers' strike resulted in a new
Mission: Impossible series being commissioned. Graves was the only original cast member to return as a regular (although others made guest appearances). The series was filmed in Australia, and Graves made his third journey there for acting work. The new version lasted for two seasons, ending in 1990. Bookending his work on
Mission: Impossible, Graves starred in two pilot films called
Call To Danger, which were an attempt to create a
Mission: Impossible-style series in which Graves played a government agent (the Bureau of National Resources) who recruited civilians with special talents for secret missions.
The 1960's version of the pilot, according to Patrick White in
The Complete Mission: Impossible Dossier (which White reports was actually the second such pilot, but Graves was not involved in the first), is credited with winning Graves the role of Phelps; after
Mission: Impossible ended in 1973, Graves filmed a third version of the pilot (this one structured as a made-for-TV movie), but it did not sell as a series. The concept was later used in the brief 1980s adventure series
Masquerade.
During the 1990's, he hosted the documentary series Biography on A&E. He also acted in a number of films featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000, which subsequently featured running jokes about Graves' Biography work and presumed sibling rivalry with Arness. The films that have been featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000 include SST: Death Flight, It Conquered The World, Beginning Of The End, Parts: The Clonus Horror, and an uncredited voiceover in The Eye Creatures. The film Killers From Space was featured in The Film Crew, Michael J. Nelson's follow-up to MST3K. Graves himself parodied his Biography work in the film Men In Black II, hosting an exposé television show. He also played Colonel John Camden on the television series 7th Heaven. In 1995, Graves starred with Charlton Heston, Mickey Rooney and Deborah Winters in the Warren Chaney docudrama, America: A Call To Greatness.
In the 1996 film version of Mission: Impossible, the character of Phelps (played by Jon Voight, Graves had refused to play the role) was re-imagined as a traitor who murders three fellow IMF agents only to be killed himself at the end of the film, a decision that disappointed Graves, as well as many fans of the original series.
On October 30, 2009, Graves was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
AirTran Airways featured Graves in a series of web-only "Internetiquette" videos in 2009 in which Graves appeared in a pilot's uniform and references classic Airplane! lines. The videos were part of an AirTran Airways campaign to promote their in-flight wireless Internet access.
In the summer of 2009 Graves signed on as a spokesman for reverse mortgage lender American Advisors Group (AAG). Graves appeared in a national commercial in which he marketed reverse mortgages.
Graves' final project was narrating the computer game epic Darkstar: The Interactive Movie, released November 5, 2010.
After returning from a brunch on March 14, 2010, Graves collapsed and died of a heart attack at the age of 83. He was four days shy of his 84th birthday. It was reported that one of his daughters attempted to revive him, but was unsuccessful.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
