Actor Peter Graves found dead at his home in Pacific Palisades

LAT ^ | March 14, 2010 | staff reporter

[Daffynition]

Actor Peter Graves was found dead Sunday at his home in Pacific Palisades, according to law enforcement sources. Graves, who stared in "Mission: Impossible," "Airplane!" and Billy Wilder's "Stalag 17"--apparently died of natural causes, the sources said.

Graves was 83, according to a biography on the website IMDB.com.

[snip]

[tang-soo]

Probably best remembered as James Phelps, the leader of the Mission Impossible team from the 1960s show. Another example of Hollyweird’s perversion of American Anti Communism patriotism was turning his character (played by Jon Voight) in the 1996 movie with Tom Cruise into a traitor. Cold War hero was really just in it for the money.

[tang-soo]

Nope - right series, wrong episode. It was the Demon with a Glass Hand by Harlan Ellison. He was eventually credited with part of the writing credits of The Terminator after a lawsuit. Frankly, I didn't see it. It was a good episode, many consider it the best OL show, but I think it a stretch to claim the Terminator infringed on Ellison's work.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088247/

[cva66snipe]

I hope I remember this correct about “Airplane.” They said that out of the serious actors they had in the movie they had to explain to Robert Stack why things were funny, but Peter Graves got it every time.

I wouldn't doubt it. Graves in the movie acted like Nielsen's long lost brother. LOL.

[Natural Born 54]

Yes, he is definitely still alive at age 86.

A good site to use for such matters is deadoraliveinfo.com. To check James Arness, here is the link resulting from a search:

http://www.deadoraliveinfo.com/dead.nsf/anames-nf/Arness+James

[Future Snake Eater]

“Beginning of the End”...also a classic MST3K episode. Directed by Bert I. Gordon. I loved the shot of the giant grasshoppers crawling on some Chicago skyscraper that was obviously grasshoppers crawling on a postcard image of the building...lol...

[Future Snake Eater]

“Beginning of the End”...also a classic MST3K episode. Directed by Bert I. Gordon. I loved the shot of the giant grasshoppers crawling on some Chicago skyscraper that was obviously grasshoppers crawling on a postcard image of the building...lol...

Peter Graves was in a few MST3K episodes, actually. He was a scientist in a Roger Corman movie involving an “Invastion of the Body Snatchers” type movie where the main alien looked like a big pickle. He was also a presidential candidate in “Parts: The Clonus Horror”—a movie later remade by Michael Bay in “The Island.”

[DemforBush]

RIP to a childhood favorite. You were one of the best, Peter!

[ICAB9USA]

Thanks for the pic. It was a good and decent show.

[valkyry1]

//but I think it a stretch to claim the Terminator infringed on Ellison’s work. //

Yes I think ypu are right.

[djf]

Wow. Another Icon.

RIP, sir.
Your legacy will live for years.

[Bender2]

I cannot recall if my first memory of Peter Graves was as Jim Newton in the Saturday Morning Kid Show "Fury" (1955-1960) or as the crud stoolie Price in 1953's Stalag 17 from seeing it with my parents at the drive in.

Either one, he was a class act all the way!

And if I ever had to spend a night in a Turkish Bath... I would want Peter at my back!

Eh, make that... on my flank?

At my... side?

[Bender2]

“Whiplash” - The story of American Christopher Cobb and his foundation of Australia's first coach-line, which he established in the colony of New South Wales, Australia: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054577/

[Bender2]

Re: Also was in THEM and THE THING (from another planet).

Sober up! That was Peter's brother James Arness... as FBI Agent Robert Graham in Them! and the Creature in The Thing from Another World.

[theDentist]

Good bye Peter. Thanks for it all... Mission Impossible... Stalag17, and mostly for Airplane and the great line... “Billy have you ever seen a grown man naked?”

[DollyCali]

I didn’t see Remembrance..will see if I can find it at library. Thanks

[TET1968]

Two quotes...very different in content, yet almost identical in motive .
One you laugh at....the other scares the crap out of you.

A. “Joey, you like movies about gladiators?”

B. Col. Hans Landa:
“Now if one were to determine what attribute the German people share with a beast, it would be the cunning and the predatory instinct of a hawk. But if one were to determine what attributes the Jews share with a beast, it would be that of the rat. If a rat were to walk in here right now as I’m talking, would you treat it to a saucer of your delicious milk? “

Perrier LaPadite: “ Probably not.”

Col. Hans Landa:
“ I didn’t think so. You don’t like them. You don’t really know why you don’t like them.
All you know is you find them repulsive.
Consequently, a German soldier conducts a search of a house suspected of hiding Jews.
Where does the hawk look?
He looks in the barn, he looks in the attic, he looks in the cellar, he looks everywhere *he* would hide, but there’s so many places it would never occur to a hawk to hide.

However, the reason the Führer’s brought me off my Alps in Austria and placed me in French cow country today is because it does occur to me because I’m aware what tremendous feats human beings are capable of once they abandon dignity.”

[abb]

And don't forget this one!

Beginning of the End

http://www.us.imdb.com/title/tt0050177/

[RaceBannon]

Yeah, that had to be it, I forgot. :)

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

***Sober up!***

OK, so I made a mistake! But he did star in that great movie POOR WHITE TRASH aka BAYOU, the movie my folks wouldn’t let us see as kids! ;-)

[ReneeLynn]

Wow.