Peter Graves

Peter Graves, born Peter Duesler Aurness on March 18, 1926, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, was an American actor whose career spanned more than 70 films, television productions, and television movies. He was the younger son of Rolf Cirkler Aurness, a businessman, and Ruth Aurness, a journalist. His elder brother was actor James Arness, star of the television series Gunsmoke. To avoid confusion with his brother's stage name and to honor his mother's family, he adopted the surname Graves, a maternal family name. His ancestry was Norwegian, German, and English.

Graves graduated from Southwest High School in 1944, where he was a two-time Minnesota state track champion in the 120-yard high hurdles. He served in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II from 1944 to 1945, attaining the rank of corporal and receiving the American Campaign Medal and the World War II Victory Medal. Following his discharge, he enrolled at the University of Minnesota on the G.I. Bill and became a member of Phi Kappa Psi fraternity.

His screen career began to take shape in the early 1950s, with a notable appearance in the 1953 World War II film Stalag 17. In 1955, he joined the NBC series Fury, playing Jim Newton, a rancher and adoptive single father. From 1960 to 1961, he starred as Christopher Cobb in 34 episodes of the British-Australian television series Whiplash, portraying an American who travels to 1850s Australia to establish the country's first stagecoach line. He also starred in the British ITC series Court Martial as U.S. Army lawyer Major Frank Whittaker, and made guest appearances on Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Cimarron City, Route 66, and The Invaders.

In 1962, Graves appeared on Broadway in The Captains and the Kings. In 1967, Desilu Studios recruited him to replace Steven Hill as the lead on Mission: Impossible, in which he portrayed Jim Phelps, director of the Impossible Missions Force, for six seasons until the series ended in 1973. That role earned him a Golden Globe Award in 1971, along with additional Emmy Award and Golden Globe nominations in other seasons of the show. Bookending his work on the original series, Graves starred in two pilot films both titled Call to Danger, the first in 1968 and a third version structured as a made-for-television movie after the series concluded, neither of which sold as a series.

Following the end of Mission: Impossible, Graves appeared in a cameo role in the 1975 Australian feature film Sidecar Racers and made a guest appearance on the teen soap opera Class of 74 in 1974. He then shifted toward comedic work, playing airline pilot Captain Clarence Oveur in the 1980 film Airplane! and reprising the role in the 1982 sequel Airplane II: The Sequel. In 1983, he was cast as Palmer Kirby in the ABC miniseries The Winds of War, appearing opposite Robert Mitchum, Jan-Michael Vincent, Deborah Winters, and Ali MacGraw in what became the second-most-watched miniseries of all time at that point. He reprised the role in the 1988 sequel miniseries War and Remembrance. During this period he also served as host of PBS's Discover: The World of Science.

A Hollywood writers' strike in 1988 led to a revival of Mission: Impossible, in which Graves was the only regular cast member from the original series to return as Jim Phelps. The revival ran for two seasons, ending in 1990, and was filmed in Australia. Graves declined to reprise the role in the 1996 theatrical Mission: Impossible film after the character of Phelps was written as a traitor who murders fellow agents and is killed at the film's conclusion. Throughout the 1990s, Graves hosted and narrated the documentary series Biography on A&E, work for which he won a Primetime Emmy Award for outstanding informational series in 1997. He also appeared in the film Men in Black II, parodying his Biography hosting work, and played Colonel John Camden in the television series 7th Heaven.

In 2009, Graves was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6667 Hollywood Boulevard. That same year, he appeared in a series of web-only videos for AirTran Airways referencing his Airplane! role, and signed on as a spokesman for reverse mortgage lender American Advisors Group. His final project was narrating the computer game Darkstar: The Interactive Movie, released on November 5, 2010.

Graves married Joan Endress in 1950, and the couple remained married for 60 years until his death. They had three daughters together. He was a devout Christian and helped organize a Los Angeles city ban on gas-powered leaf blowers. On March 14, 2010, Graves collapsed of a heart attack outside his Los Angeles home after returning from brunch with his family and was pronounced dead. He was 83 years old.