| Peter Graves  AKA Peter Graves Aurness
Born: 18-Mar-1926
Birthplace: Minneapolis, MN
Gender: Male
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Actor Nationality: United States
Executive summary: Mission: Impossible Military service: USAF (two years) Peter Graves is a familiar face from decades of assorted TV shows, but he is best remembered as the mysterious Jim Phelps, commander of the Impossible Missions Force (IMF) on TV's Mission: Impossible.
As a boy growing up in Minnesota, he was Peter Aurness, the younger brother of James Aurness, who grew up to star in Gunsmoke. As a young actor, Graves had roles on old-time TV dramas like The Pepsi-Cola Playhouse, Schlitz Playhouse of Stars, and TV Reader's Digest. His first film was Rogue River in 1951 with Rory Calhoun. In his first starring role, 1952's Red Planet Mars, Graves played a man who thought he was receiving radio messages from Mars, but was actually establishing communication with God. Graves' most famous films include Billy Wilder's Stalag 17, Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter, and Roger Corman's It Conquered the World.
In his first TV series, The Ray Bolger Show (1953), Graves performed comedy skits and sang and danced. In the western Fury (1955-60), Graves played a widowed rancher who adopted a young orphan boy. Whiplash (1961-62) was another western, with Graves running a stagecoach company. Court Martial was a 1966 military drama.
Graves joined Mission: Impossible in 1967, for its second season, replacing the first season's lead, Steven Hill. Hill had played the team leader Mr. Briggs, while Graves played the team leader Mr. Phelps, but the change was never explained to viewers. Mission: Impossible was intelligent, well-written, and suspenseful. He stayed with the show until its cancellation in 1973. He later played the lascivious Captain Oveur in Airplane!. From 1987 to 2001, he was the host of A&E's Biography.
In 1988, 15 years after its cancellation, ABC executives revived Mission: Impossible when a writers' strike briefly loomed over Hollywood. The idea was to use scripts from the original series, thus obtaining new programming without violating union rules or breaking the strike. Graves returned as Mr. Phelps, surrounded by a new cast of IMF agents, and four episodes were filmed using scripts from the original series, almost verbatim. These episodes were well received, and the strike was soon settled, allowing production to continue for two seasons, with 35 episodes.
Graves should not be confused with the British film actor, Sir Peter Graves (1911-1994), who appeared in many musicals, including Waltz Time, Gaiety George, and Maytime in Mayfair.
Father: Rolf E. Aurness (b. 1894)
Mother: Ruth (Duesler) Salisbury Aurness (b. 1899)
Brother: James Arness (actor)
Wife: Joan Endress (college sweetheart, m. 1950, three daughters)
Daughter: Kelly
Daughter: Claudia
Daughter: Amanda
University: Drama, University of Minnesota
Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity
Endorsement of GEICO
Golden Globe 1971 for Mission: Impossible (best actor, drama)
Emmy 1997 for Biography (informational series)
Kentucky Colonel
TELEVISION
7th Heaven John Camden ("The Colonel", 1997-)
Mission: Impossible Jim Phelps (1988-90)
Mission: Impossible James Phelps (1967-73)
Whiplash Christopher Cobb (1961)
FILMOGRAPHY AS ACTOR
Men in Black II (26-Jun-2002) Himself
These Old Broads (12-Feb-2001)
House on Haunted Hill (24-Oct-1999) Himself
Addams Family Values (19-Nov-1993)
War and Remembrance (13-Nov-1988)
Number One with a Bullet (1987)
The Winds of War (6-Feb-1983)
Airplane II: The Sequel (10-Dec-1982)
Savannah Smiles (12-Nov-1982)
Airplane! (2-Jul-1980)
The Clonus Horror (1979)
SST: Death Flight (25-Feb-1977)
Where Have All the People Gone? (8-Oct-1974)
Scream of the Wolf (16-Jan-1974)
Mission Impossible Versus the Mob (Dec-1969)
The 5 Man Army (16-Oct-1969)
The Ballad of Josie (1-Feb-1967)
Texas Across the River (26-Oct-1966)
A Rage to Live (20-Oct-1965)
Beginning of the End (28-Jun-1957)
It Conquered the World (15-Jul-1956)
The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell (22-Dec-1955)
Wichita (3-Jul-1955)
Robbers' Roost (30-May-1955)
The Night of the Hunter (19-Feb-1955)
The Long Gray Line (9-Feb-1955)
Black Tuesday (31-Dec-1954)
The Raid (4-Aug-1954)
Killers From Space (23-Jan-1954)
Beneath the 12-Mile Reef (2-Dec-1953)
War Paint (28-Aug-1953)
Stalag 17 (1-Jul-1953)
Red Planet Mars (15-May-1952)
Rogue River (15-Feb-1951)
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