GRAVES, PETER
(Peter Aurness 1925– ). American actor.
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SCIENCE FICTION, FANTASY, AND HORROR FILM CREDITS
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Acted
in: Red Planet Mars (Harry Horner 1952); Killers from
Space (W. Lee Wilder 1954); It Conquered the World
(Roger CORMAN 1956); The Beginning of the End (Bert I.
GORDON 1957); "I'll Be Judge, I'll Be
Jury" (1963), episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour; "Moonshot,"
episode of The Invaders (1967); Mission Impossible
(tv series) (1967-73, revived 1988-89); The President's Plane
Is Missing (tv movie) (1973); Where Have All the People
Gone? (tv movie) (John L. Moxey 1974); Scream of the Wolf
(tv movie) (Dan CURTIS 1974); The Mysterious Monsters (documentary;
narrator) (Robert Guenette 1976); SST—Death Flight (tv
movie) (David Lowell Rich 1977); Death Car on the Freeway
(tv movie) (Hal Needham 1979); "Return of the Fighting 69th" (1979),
episode of Buck Rogers in the Twenty-Fifth Century; Parts:
The Clonus Horror (Robert S. Fiveson 1979); Airplane
(Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker 1980); Airplane
II: The Sequel (Ken Finkleman 1982); "The Sailor" (1982),
"Nurse's Night Out" (1983), episodes of Fantasy Island;
Tennis Court (tv movie) (Cyril Frankel 1984); Mad Mission
3 (Tsui Hark 1984).
Directed: "Kidnap" (1972), episode of Mission Impossible.
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Without a
scintilla of biographical information, I can readily imagine that, in high
school, James Aurness was the star of the football team, dated all the
cheerleaders, and was the center of a circle of admirers; meanwhile, his
younger brother Peter, a bookish nerd, played on the chess team, studied a lot,
and earned better grades, all the while burning with secret envy at his
brother's accomplishments. Certainly, envy was the only possible emotion Peter
Graves could have felt in the 1950s: while big brother James Arness, last name
re-spelled, was becoming rich and famous killing bad guys in the television
series Gunsmoke, kid brother Peter Graves, last name abandoned, was
earning little money and no recognition killing giant grasshoppers in Bert I.
GORDON's The Beginning of the End, along with other, equally dubious
work. But cosmic justice sometimes prevails; though Graves sometimes seemed
tentative and inadequate as a youthful science fiction hero in 1950s films like
Killers from Space, a few wrinkles and premature gray hair soon imbued
him with an admirable air of authority, and he was an intelligent choice to
replace Steven Hill as the leader of the Mission: Impossible team,
utterly plausible as the man who devised those incredibly intricate schemes and
directed their execution with firmness and precision. Then, a decade later,
while James Arness was having less and less success in his post-Gunsmoke
endeavors, Graves was triumphantly called back to star in the revived and
otherwise-recast Mission: Impossible, still the best actor for the part.
Earlier, Graves had suffered through some
of the worst science fiction movies of the 1950s, including the inane Red
Planet Mars and It Conquered the World, but his better-than-average
acting improbably helped to make The Beginning of the End one of
Gordon's most successful films. Among other later roles, he was the uncertain
center of that uncertain television movie, Where Have All the People Gone?,
a film seemingly inspired by the desire to remake Panic in Year Zero
(Ray MILLAND 1962) while leaving out all the interesting parts, and he
displayed a fine sense of comedy utterly beyond his brother's abilities in Airplane
and Airplane II: The Sequel. Now enjoying a dignified semi-retirement as
one host of A&E's Biography series, Graves might well suggest an
episode devoted to his own career, which would certainly be far more
interesting than an episode about his big brother Jim.
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