RIP Peter Graves

As it says.

: (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmHOteBVqKI

oh no!

;_;

and ned, i am a bit concerned that you of all people forgot this MST3K bit about mr. graves:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gy0Gd2-GdOI

Who said I forgot? But I didn't want to flood the thread immediately.

Awww, RIP Mr. Graves, you were awesome.

clarence, you have clearance... from jesus :(

aw man

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sp-BYkOGkw

srsly, not significant enough to make it off the rolling obit thread

/shakeymo

Good interview from last fall:

The Minnesota native, who is still best known as the ramrod-straight super spy Jim Phelps on the award-winning CBS series "Mission: Impossible," at first turned down the script for "Airplane!," which was written and directed by David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker.

"I read it and thought, 'Gee, this is dangerous,' " recalls Graves, relaxing in the living room at his Santa Monica home. "It was in terrible taste . . . I read it and thought, 'I can't do this.' "

His wife, Joan, felt the same way. "She said, 'You can't do this.' It was because my career had been (playing) these straight-shooting, iron-rod-up-the-back kind of fellows. This would be a challenge to play a guy who is looking at a little boy."

So he turned it down. About 10 minutes later, he received a call from the film's producer Howard Koch, who asked if he would meet with the young filmmakers. "I went in and said, 'You should have Harvey Korman do it, he would be perfect.' They said, 'We want somebody of your stature and dignity' and so forth who plays it absolutely straight. They had Bob Stack doing the same thing, Lloyd Bridges and Leslie Nielsen and many others. So I said OK. They say you are supposed to stretch as an actor, so let's go stretch it."

Meanwhile, on a famous earlier role:

Three years later, he galvanized the screen in Paramount's "Stalag 17" as the undercover Nazi spy Price, whose identity is discovered by a cynical sergeant ( William Holden in his Oscar-winning performance). Even today, that revelation comes as something of a shock.

"I desperately wanted a contract at Paramount," says Graves. He had auditioned for the studio but didn't impress the brass. Still, his then-agent, Paul Kohner, got Graves an interview with the talent department for the role. "I went in and talked for a while and the man said, 'Sorry, kid, you are absolutely wrong for this. I mean the guy is supposed to be a German spy. You look too American, boy.' "

Kohner didn't give up. He was friends with Wilder and arranged a meeting at the filmmaker's house on a Saturday afternoon. "It was a nice time," Graves recalls. And that meet and greet led to a screen test. "They must have tested 50 guys that day. I was good that day and got the part."

Wilder, he says, "was one of the smartest guys in the world." And Holden was "a beauty. He was a big movie star at that time, and he knew it with confidence. He wasn't showing off. He never played the star. He was just a hell of a nice guy."

I watched the Mission Impossible tv series frequently enough that the face and voice of Peter Graves are deeply incisised on my brain. I can't say he ever made any kind of a difference to my real life, but he certanily entertained me often enough. RIP.

In addition to the clip Eisbaer posted above, the constant "Biography" riffs during the MST3K ep. "Parts: The Clonus Horror" never cease to be funny.

Just breaking.