Wednesday, August 30, 2017

Wigged Out! (and a mini-bonus)

Yes, I have been, thanks to the breakneck schedule of the last few weeks. So as I'm recharging my engines, I decided to share a small smattering of photos that have various actors showing off follicle headgear that isn't their own. (And, yes, we're letting Charlton, Revolta, Widmark, Bogart and all the other toupee-wearers off the hook this time. It's just some wigs for specific roles or skits...) This one is Ed Sullivan, sporting a Beatles 'do during his hey-day as a variety show host par excellence.

We practically worship Errol Flynn, who was bewigged in his big break of a film Captain Blood. 1930s movie wigs for men almost always had that matted-down, neatly-combed quality that only went away during the heat of battle or some other physical degradation. (Ever notice in old movies - Clark Gable ones being an example - that the more roughed-up and "messy" the leading man is made to be, the better he looks to modern eyes?!)
Flynn's wig for The Adventures of Robin Hood was peculiar in style and cut. I'm just not fond of it, though he's marvelous in the movie.
His own hair - as seen here during swordplay lessons for Captain Blood - was just beautiful! Thankfully, he got to wear it that way in one of my favorite movies of his, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex.
In the 1940s, men's period wigs often resembled a bi-level or "mullet!" Such was the case in The Three Musketeers with Van Heflin, Gig Young and Gene Kelly.
In the 1936 rendition of Last of the Mohicans, Henry Wilcoxon and Hugh Buckler were outfitted with powdered wigs while Bruce Cabot (!) was given a bald cap and Huron-style strip of hair as the villainous Magua.
Ivanhoe had George Sanders in a wig, as well as the thin-haired (and just plain thin!) Mel Ferrer. Leading man Robert Taylor I can't speak to. He may have gotten by with just some curling under.
For Scaramouche, Ferrer was sporting the powdered look as chief antagonist to Stewart Granger.
John Malkovich enjoyed trotting around in his powdered wig during Dangerous Liaisons, with Glenn Close and Michelle Pfeiffer embroiled in all the machinations.
In the fairly recent series Turn: Washington's Spies, JJ Feild sometimes appeared in a powdered wig...
...though it has to be said that his wig was far from the "mane" attraction when it came to his role on the show. (Incidentally, this actor has to have set some sort of record for appearing in projects that contain a colon ":" - Apart from Turn:, there is K19: The Widowmaker, The Tulse Luper Suitcases - four of them, each with a colon in the title, Sally Lockhart Mysteries: The Ruby in the Smoke, Telstar: The Joe Meek Story, Blood: The Last Vampire, Pure Mule: The Last Weekend and Captain America: The First Avenger! Or maybe we've just gotten increasingly obnoxious with our movie and TV titles...)
Jesus! Well, this - King of Kings - is the first portrayal of Jesus in a Hollywood motion picture to actually show the man's face for a significant period of time. Blue-eyed (!) Jeffrey Hunter has the honors. It's a surprisingly entertaining movie thanks not only to his searing beauty, but also due to some delicious villainy from Rita Gam and Frank Thring.
Four years after King of Kings, Max Von Sydow got in on the messiah action in The Greatest Story Ever Told, a plodding, if sometimes beautiful, epic. I can honestly say that I do NOT prefer his hair over Hunter's (or much of anyone else's!)
Chunky funnyman Roy Kinnear donned a fuzzy fright wig for his part in the 1964 comedy French Dressing.
Richard Pryor wafts to and "'fro" during a TV appearance.
In the unsold TV pilot Preview Tonight, Hugh O'Brian played Joseph in "Seven Rich Years and Seven Lean" and was granted a pouffy wig for his trouble. (He's seen here with Ilka Windish as Potiphar's wife)
The effect is even more pronounced once he has some money in his pocket and adds on a jaunty headband! You won't believe who his female costar is in the large photo (but you will once I reveal who she is.)
Dark, lean, lanky Hugh was forever being cast as Indians in his early movies. In White Feather (starring Robert Wagner and Jeffrey Hunter), he was given a wig with curly-cue circles styled in near the temples...
Blue-eyed Hunter was given a couple of wigs for his role as an Indian in Seven Cities of Gold, as well as brown contact lenses for both this and White Feather. Perhaps it was these two (painful) experiences that led him to forgo them in King of Kings? For more palefaces being shoehorned into Native American roles, look yonder.
No post about male wigs is ever complete without the inclusion of poor Bob Wagner and his infamous Prince Valiant mop.
While basically true to the comic strip from which the movie sprang, it was the cause of much taunting and derision. Thankfully, even Wagner was able to joke about it later. (Janet Leigh's hairpiece, however, is making me hungry for some pastry!) For some oddball film hairstyles in general, check this out.
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By the way, Hugh O' Brian's lady love in the photo above is young Katharine Ross, already a TV veteran but one year before The Graduate sent her careening into a full-time feature film career for a period of time. And now for the mini-bonus (and note, I said "mini!" LOL)  I assure you, I am not about to suddenly begin making this blog about me, but as I am in a theatre frame of mind at the moment and as it's the eighth anniversary of the place and I often indulge a bit to that end around this time, I will share a few moments of wiggery from my own life...
Halloween circa 1990. Serving up some Miss Joan Crawford (actually Mommie Dearest) realness. This is before I scratched below the surface to know more about the real JC.
Around 2000 or so, as the Bride of Frankenstein.
Roaring around as a Cave Man at my house. I learned pretty early on in my Halloween parties at home to wear a light costume! My first one was as Superman and the fake latex muscles in the bodysuit kept me nice and overheated the entire time!
Camping it up as Cupid. Didn't get too warm at all in this get-up! (The second time I wore this costume, during which I won a contest, I had tan lyrical sandals on.)
Did y'all know that Cupid's favorite beverage is bottled domestic?  LOL
A great pal of mine and I went as Hall & Oates to a 1980s themed 40th birthday party.
Back home for another one of my infamous parties, and another abbreviated costume, as what I later jokingly referred to as "Heidi the Barbarian!" (Note the footwear again, never a strength of mine when costuming! LOL)
I have always hated my hair and for the stage I am forever fussing with it, trying to come up with just the right look. It took until 2009 (!) before I was ever allowed to let go of all that and wear a wig for a part. This was "1776," in which I was Edward Rutledge, youngest congressional delegate who gets the show-stopping song, "Molasses to Rum."
That very same year, I got to wear a wig again on-stage! This time as Pharaoh in "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat." So much fun getting to Elvis it up (and with no bothersome arms or legs to the costume! Ha ha!)
See what I mean?
Finally, I share a few more photos from "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum."
In the moments just before Intermission.
My own locks, such as they are, arranged in what I call a Roman bust configuration. LOL
Not a wig, but it was nice to have a big, fun helmet for most of the show!
Again with the legs....!  What's a fella to do?
I just couldn't resist one last photo during the closing matinee in that stairwell. The light was ridonkulous and for the first time in recorded history my eyes didn't look like two raisins lying in bowl of butterscotch pudding.  LOL  (Friends and family accused me of using eye enhancement - whatever that is - on these pictures and I protested the opposite. For one thing, I never lie... It was solely the great light, which I wish I could carry around with me. Knots Landing never even had it so good!)
What wound up being my favorite pic, though, was this one after being run through an "Infrared" filter. This had me aching to play the Francis X. Bushman role in a silent Ben-Hur!
Thanks, everyone, for your continued support of Poseidon's Underworld as we mark our eighth and head into the beginning of the ninth year. I'm close to running out of things to talk about (obviously, if I've moved on to myself!), but not quite. More fun to come soon!

Tuesday, August 22, 2017

Please Stand By!

You know we're forever complaining about not having enough time in the day to accomplish all we want to, but this time it's really hit a fever pitch! Not only am I smack dab in the middle of a three-week run of "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" (portraying Captain Miles Gloriosus), but I haven't been able to take off even a moment of work, my 50th birthday occurred this past Saturday and tomorrow I've been enlisted to sing at my annual work convention, at which I always put in overtime hours! So it's beyond nuts.

All this happens to be going on just as we have reached our EIGHTH year in business (so to speak) at Poseidon's Underworld. So it's doubly frustrating that I cannot shake loose any time to prepare a special post to commemorate the occasion. However... I do expect to have quite a bit more time on my hands once this show has closed on August 27th. In fact, I may even be bored for a while, considering how much time it has taken to prepare for.  Please be patient. I'll be back very soon! In the meantime, a couple of pics of your webmaster in action on stage as well as some close-ups taken in a very sunny stairwell which afforded some Hollywood-style lighting!

Gloriosus arrives to claim his bride (while exclaiming all his own virtues!)
Gloriosus still telling the world through song just how wonderful he is...
Mistaking a high-born Roman lady for a much-used courtesan
Bemoaning the "death" of his bride (who at this point is a male slave in drag, in order to pull the wool over his eyes!)

Back with more Underworld shenanigans soon!

Wednesday, August 16, 2017

A Matter of Graves Importance...

On Saturday of this week (8/19/17), yours truly will be turning "The Big 5-0!" Suddenly it seems I'll have gone from looking for a daddy to being considered one. (Actually, this transference has been taking place over time for a while now...) My hair is now probably 75% white (!) and I might be quite upset by that were it not for the fact that a) I've always loathed my natural hair color, b) I'm grateful to have hair at all and c) I've always liked tan, blue-eyed silver foxes, so hope springs eternal that I might be one myself perchance! Ha ha!  One of my chief crushes in this category was today's featured actor, Peter Graves.

Graves embarked on an acting career in the early-1950s, but really didn't hit his stride until the late-1960s when he became the face of a highly-popular and enduring television series. Then, when his time in the spotlight had passed, he found a new second-career in a sort of reality television (though not the reality television that pollutes our airwaves today.)

Peter Dueslar Aurness was born on March 18th, 1926 in Minneapolis, Minnesota to a Norwegian father Rolf and a German-English mother Ruth. Peter was the second child born to the medical supply salesman and his newspaper columnist wife, the first born being James three years prior. The strapping, athletic, Nordic boys would grow up to be remarkably tall, with Peter hitting 6' 3-1/2" and James a towering 6' 7".

When WWII broke out, James was drafted into the U.S. Army (his dreams of being a naval fighter pilot dashed because he was 5" too tall for the duty.) He suffered a severe leg injury during the Battle of Anzio, earning him a Purple Heart along with a lifetime of nagging leg pain. Peter joined the U.S. Air Force after high school and then used the G.I. Bill to attend the University of Minnesota following the war.

Both young men had an interest in radio announcing and pursued that at one time or another. Peter in high school and James after the war. In time, James hitchhiked to Hollywood and sought work as a film extra, landing a featured role in The Farmer's Daughter in 1947 that led to more acting work. Before too long, in 1951, Peter followed to sunny California and, not wanting to become confused with his brother (now known as James Arness), he took another family name and emerged as Peter Graves.

Already married in 1950 to Joan Endress, young Graves won roles in Up Front, the westerns Rogue River (as Rory Calhoun's step-brother) and Fort Defiance (as Dan Clark's blind brother) and, appropriately enough, the part of a radio announcer in Angels in the Outfield. The handsome twenty-four year-old Graves is seen here during a break in filming of Fort Defiance with Tracey Roberts.
Now starting to achieve steady work as an actor, Graves received first billing in the low-budget sci-fi oriented Red Planet Mars, playing a scientist who is getting radio transmissions from Mars with instructions on how to achieve peace on Earth! (He's seen with costar Andrea King here.)

1953 was a very busy year for Graves, though he was already working more in supporting roles rather than being granted leads, albeit in higher grade pictures such as Stalag 17 (starring William Holden in his Oscar-winning part) and Beneath the 12-Mile Reef (as antagonist to young Robert Wagner and Terry Moore.) Shown below is costar Gilbert Roland taking exception to Graves' attitude.
He also supported Robert Stack in the western War Paint and was one of several actors darting around East of Sumatra (note a young Earl Holliman in this photo), a movie which starred Jeff Chandler, Marilyn Maxwell and Anthony Quinn.

When he did earn the lead in a film, it was usually a low-rung sci-fi piece such as 1954's Killers from Space, in which he played a doctor kidnapped by aliens (and apparently operated on by them!), having to convince disbelieving authorities that there is a pending invasion of giant monsters. As you can see, his lean torso was frequently bared for the screen.

He also supported Rory Calhoun again in The Yellow Toma- hawk, worked alongside Van Heflin and Anne Bancroft in The Raid (seen here with Heflin and Lee Marvin) and costarred with Edward G. Robinson in Black Tuesday. There, the two played death row convicts who escape from prison just prior to their execution. All along, Graves was also making appearances on then-popular anthology TV series such as Chevron Theatre, Schlitz Playhouse, Fireside Theatre and The Pepsi-Cola Playhouse.

1955 continued in the same vein with featured roles in quite a few movies. Robbers' Roost was a revenge western starring George Montgomery and with Richard Boone (seen here), Wichita starred Joel McCrea and Vera Miles, The Naked Street starred Farley Granger, Anne Bancroft and Anthony Quinn and The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell starred Gary Cooper.

There was also that same year, The Long Gray Line with Tyrone Power and Maureen O'Hara, directed by John Ford, and The Night of the Hunter, with Robert Mitchum, very effectively directed by Charles Laughton in his only attempt at doing so in a feature film. Graves played a convict whose hidden loot causes plenty of trouble for his wife and children from the deranged Mitchum.
Graves also landed the lead in the low-budget western Fort Yuma, a cavalry versus Indians yarn with little to distinguish it from countless others like it.

In 1955, Graves began filming the TV western Fury, the title referring to a fifteen-hands high horse. Graves played a rancher with an adopted son played by Bobby Diamond who enjoyed a special bond with the horse. The youth-aimed show filmed for five seasons and ran through 1960, with reruns airing beyond that.

Also in 1955, Graves brother Arness began what would become a legendary run on Gunsmoke as Marshall Matt Dillon, enjoying a rather unspoken love for Miss Kitty, played by Amanda Blake. The western ran for twenty seasons and lives on today in reruns. Arness' unusual gait in the show - strained further by horseback mounting and riding - was a result of that old WWII injury at Anzio.

As for Graves, he also got the lead in 1956's It Conquered the World, as another scientist having to fend off an alien when disgruntled fellow doc Lee Van Cleef invites it to Earth to wreak havoc. Other roles in Hold Back the Night (with John Payne, shown here) and Canyon River (with George Montgomery) came to him that same year.

Graves is shown here with Underworld favorite Constance Ford in a 1956 episode of The Millionaire, in which he plays a struggling artist whose wife has faith in him though her mother protests otherwise.

In between the filming of Fury, Graves still managed to occasionally star in a film, such as with Bayou in 1957, in which he played a New York architect in love with a Cajun gal amid much local tension.

There was also The Beginning of the End, in which he and Peggy Castle had to fend off giant grass- hoppers (!) that were created on an experimental farm outside Chicago, Illinois. More down to earth was Death in Small Doses in which he played a U.S. agent investigating drug use and trafficking amongst long-haul truck drivers (shown here with Mala Powers.)

In 1958, he costarred with Barry Sullivan in Wolf Larsen, a remake of the earlier Edward G. Robinson film The Sea Wolf. This was followed in 1959 by a supporting part in the soapy Stranger in My Arms, starring June Allyson and Jeff Chandler. He played a deceased soldier whose story was revealed in flashback (and whose mother was played by Mary Astor.)

Graves would remain busy on television for several years after this, with no feature films on his resume until 1965. He went to Australia to film a season of the western stagecoach series Whiplash, popped up on Route 66, worked on The Alfred Hitchcock Hour with Albert Salmi, played a congressman on the TV version of The Farmer's Daughter and guest-starred on The Virginian, among others.
In 1965 came A Rage to Live, one of those sudsy Warner Brothers stories about nympho- maniacal Suzanne Pleshette dividing her time between Bradford Dillman, Ben Gazzara and Graves. You can check it all out right here! His long-suffering wife in the film was played by Bethel Leslie.
By this time he was costarring on another show, Court Martial, with one of his fellow Rage actors, Bradford Dillman. The two JAG lawyers traveled the globe investigating various crimes. The series only lasted one season. In the meantime, he guested on Run for Your Life, Daniel Boone, The F.B.I., The Invaders and other shows.
He appeared with Dean Martin and Alain Delon in the western romp Texas Across the River in 1966 and the following year was selected to play Doris Day's leading man in her latest confection, The Ballad of Josie. The cattle-rancher versus sheep-farmer frolic was among the least favorite of Day's films, though she liked the people working on it with her. (Her husband had signed her to the project without discussing it with her first!)
In what was a rarity for him, Graves directed an episode of Gunsmoke, his brother's series, though oddly enough it was one in which the focus was on Milburn Stone and Ken Curtis and not Arness. Though Graves was still making the odd feature film, he was asked to take on another lead role on television. He was somewhat reluctant to do so since he was beginning to win bigger and better roles again after a fallow period, but ultimately he said yes. It would wind up being his lifelong claim to fame.

Mission: Impossible hit the airwaves in 1966 starring Steven Hill, Greg Morris, Martin Landau, Barbara Bain and Peter Lupus. After 28 episodes the first season, Hill parted ways from the show when his religious beliefs prevented him from working the hours that were scheduled for the complicated spy program. Graves came on as his replacement (without any sort of acknowledgement in the story) and stayed for the duration.
One episode had him falling for an enemy agent played by Joan Collins. Their bit of romance was uncharacteristic for the show, which generally downplayed personal feeling in lieu of complex strategy, precise planning and mechanical marvels.

As the IMF (Impossible Missions Force) leader, it fell upon Graves each week to discretely locate the a tape recording of his instructions along with an envelope containing photos of key players. Thereafter the tape would "self-destruct in five seconds" and he would select the team for the job (though there was usually precious little variance in who was brought on board the mission.)
 
The second and third seasons of Mission contain the most iconic collection of performers on the show: Graves, Bain, Landau, Morris and Lupus. At the close of this season, Bain and Landau departed and the core team was all-male. Graves, Morris and Lupus were joined by Leonard Nimoy and an assortment of female agents made appearances along the way.
The fifth season went in an entirely new direction with young Lesley Ann Warren being brought in as the regular female component of the IMF. Despite her doing good work on the show, the fit was never really right and she was soon off the series as well. (Humpy Sam Elliott, who had also joined the show during this time, but was never properly utilized, also hit the road rather quickly.) Nimoy also departed at the end of this season. (Somehow he looks better than ever in these pics with Warren! Love that waxy, tan face! LOL)
For the sixth and seventh seasons (the last), Lynda Day George was brought in as the female agent, though pregnancy required her to be replaced for a time with Barbara Anderson. During all these incarnations of the show, Graves, Morris (and to a lesser degree, thanks to the producers having attempted to write him out) Lupus remained a constant. Graves directed one episode in season seven, marking the second and final time he took on that duty.
In its day, Mission: Impossible was "must see TV" and was considered one of the most stylish and intelligent of drama programs then airing. It was helped in no small part by the exhilarating theme music of Lalo Schifrin. In 1969, Graves was nominated for an Emmy in the role of Jim Phelps, but lost to Carl Betz of Judd for the Defense. Twice he was nominated for, but lost, Golden Globe awards for Mission (losing to Betz in Judd for the Defense again and Mike Connors in Mannix), but finally won one in 1971.
The very buttoned-up show generally provided little in the way of beefcake (even though Lupus had been a bikini-clad bodybuilder prior to his hiring!), but every great once in a while there might be a brief flash of skin such as in the 1971 season six episode "Underwater" in which the forty-five year old Graves rocked a blue and white-striped Speedo!
The show having ended in 1973, Graves would proceed to a variety of TV-movies to stay active. The President's Plane is Missing (with Buddy Ebsen), Scream of the Wolf (opposite Clint Walker), the detective show pilot The Underground Man and Where Have All the People Gone? kept him in the public eye. He'd also done things as "himself" such as hosting the 1971 CBS Thanksgiving Day Parade with Julie Sommars, as seen here.

He returned to Australia, a favorite locale of his, for the low-budget Sidecar Racers (starring Ben Murphy) with more of the same TV fare back home like Dead Man on the Run (with Pernell Roberts) and SST: Death Flight (with everyone and his grandpa!) The highly unlikely The Gift of the Magi, a TV musical, cast him as O. Henry while John Rubinstein and and Debby Boone played the young marrieds of the famed story.

By now, Graves was solidified as a stalwart, very-straight male lead in many TV-movies or low-budget features, often playing fathers, doctors, secret agents and the like with only an occasional variance (such as the highly-obscure Spree, 1979, in which he was a coolly vicious drug peddler tormenting a group of teens) or the 1979 miniseries The Rebel, in which he portrayed George Washington.

As the decade drew to a close, he was still working in low-budget fare like The Clonus Horror, taking part in showy telefilms such as The Memory of Eva Ryker (with Natalie Wood) and guest-starring on TV in shows such as Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. But his reputation as a rather stone-faced, all-purpose leading man was about to be tossed on its side.

In 1980, Graves was handed a script which he felt was the worst piece of junk he'd ever read (and that was saying something!) However, after meeting with the young filmmakers who had devised the project, he realized how stupidly brilliant the movie could be. Airplane! was a wild spoof of all the jetliner disaster movies that had begun back in the 1950s (Zero Hour, 1956, being the particular target) and had proliferated all during the '70s with Airport and its sequels.

Graves, with pretty much the same genial, straight-laced demeanor he'd brought to so many other programs, played an airline pilot who is, in fact, a not very discreet pedophile! As a young boy visits the cockpit (something that was once a staple of luxury air travel, often resulting in a souvenir plane to take home), Graves asks him a series of hysterical leading questions like, "Joey, have you ever been in a Turkish prison?," "You ever seen a grown man naked?" or "Do you like movies about gladiators?"

He was perfect in the part and was joined by other actors of a similar ilk such as Robert Stack, Lloyd Bridges and Leslie Nielsen (the latter two, in particular, capitalizing to a great degree on this newfound aspect of their lengthy careers.) When a slapdash sequel was produced within two years, he was back in the pilot's seat. The jokes were a tad cruder ("Jimmy, do you like it when Scraps holds onto your leg and rubs up and down?") and the concept even more lunatic (the "airplane" of the title ends up in space!)
After this, Graves worked in the epic 1983 miniseries The Winds of War (returning briefly for its 1988 sequel War and Remembrance), did time on the usual havens for actors of a certain vintage such as The Love Boat, Fantasy Island (as seen below with a wheelchair-bound Eve Plumb!) and Murder, She Wrote, and then found himself presented with a most unique proposal.
A serious writer's strike fell in the mid-'80s and left the TV landscape filled with reruns and non-scripted programming. As a way around it, a new rendition of Mission: Impossible was created, to be filmed in Australia, where Graves had spent many a day. The series used scripts from the original series, updated somewhat for a more modern time, and employed a raft of actors who fit the archetypes from the early days of the show. Terry Markwell as the femme fatale, Anthony Hamilton as the strongman, Phil Morris (son of original cast member Greg) as the gadgetry expert and Thaao Penglis as master of disguise.

Soon enough, the strike was over and new scripts could be commissioned for the redux. However, Markwell departed the show when she felt her role wasn't prominent or fulfilling enough. (Her character's death was the only time in the show's history that an agent was killed and disavowed.) More widely-known (thanks to the miniseries V) Jane Badler was brought in to take her place. The new rendition of the venerable series never really caught on and it was cancelled after 35 episodes.
After working as a guest on The Golden Girls, Burke's Law and Diagnosis Murder, Graves found a way to put his old skills as a radio announcer to good use. In 1994, he came on board to host some of the installments of the wonderful A&E series Biography. The utterly classy program which spent an hour relaying the life story of a prominent celebrity or historical figure earned Graves an Emmy (for hosting the one devoted to Judy Garland.) Graves continued to share hosting duties on the series with Jack Perkins until 2001.

In 1996, he was approached once more to revive his Mission: Impossible character Jim Phelps in the big-budget Tom Cruise remake, but recoiled when it was determined that the character would turn out to be a traitor, heavily tarnishing the incredibly loyal and stalwart image that he'd created over time. He turned the part down, though Jon Voight took it over and had no compunctions about shitting on the iconic character. Many of the series' fans, including this one, were turned off at the move (and I've never seen any further installments beyond this one), though a new and jaded generation couldn't have cared less about such things.

In 2001, he also acted in the highly-anticipated TV-movie These Old Broads, featuring Debbie Reynolds, Elizabeth Taylor, Shirley MacLaine and Joan Collins, but which promised more than it delivered in the final analysis.

He wasn't completely done acting, though. He made eleven appearances on the popular show Seventh Heaven as Stephen Collins' imposing father (with Barbara Rush playing his wife) over the course of a decade's time. Reruns of the long-running show ran into serious trouble, however, when Collins was revealed to have molested a number of minors in real life over a span of time...

Graves and his old Mission costar Barbara Bain reunited briefly in order to act as presenters at the Screen Actors Guild annual awards ceremony in 2006.

In 2010, at the age of eighty-three, lifelong smoker Peter Graves was felled by a heart attack, ending a sixty year career before the camera. His lifelong best friend and brother James Arness died the very next year at age eighty-eight. (The two never acted together during their long years as performers.) When he died, Graves left his wife Joan a widow just six months shy of their 60th wedding anniversary. They raised three children together during their long, successful union.

We salute Peter Graves for his sure-handed work on Mission: Impossible, his outrageous contribution to Airplane! and his tasteful narration of Biography along with admiring his continued desire to seek out roles that challenged him as an actor even as Hollywood pressed hard to keep him in his shellacked, straight-arrow, grey-haired mold. (What a head of hair it was, too, lasting thickly up to the end!) And, of course, we always love seeing his icy blue eyes and salt 'n pepper locks in anything.