Mickey Rooney, Master of Putting On a Show

He stood only a few inches taller than five feet, but Mr. Rooney was larger and louder than life. From the moment he toddled onto a burlesque stage at 17 months to his movie debut at 6 to his career-crowning Broadway debut in “Sugar Babies” at 59, he did it all. He could act, sing, dance, play piano and drums, and before he was out of short pants he could cry on cue.

Mr. Rooney’s personal life was as dynamic as his screen presence. He married eight times. He earned $12 million before he was 40 and spent more. Impulsive, recklessly extravagant, mercurial and addicted to playing the ponies and shooting craps, he attacked life as though it were a six-course dinner.

Along with Deanna Durbin, Mr. Rooney was given a special Academy Award in 1939 “for bringing to the screen the spirit and personification of youth.” The next year he received his Oscar nomination for “Babes in Arms.” His second nomination was for his performance in the film version of William Saroyan’s “Human Comedy” (1943) as the messenger boy who delivers telegrams from the War Department telling families in a small California town that their sons have died. That movie seems saccharine and preachy more than 70 years later, but time has not tarnished the desolation on Mr. Rooney’s face when he reads those telegrams.

Nobody ever doubted his talent. Of his “all but unimprovable” performance in “National Velvet,” James Agee wrote, “He is an extremely wise and moving actor, and if I am ever again tempted to speak disrespectfully of him, that will be in anger over the unforgivable waste of a forceful yet subtle talent, proved capable of self-discipline and of the hardest roles that could be thrown it.”

 

Harold Ramis, Director, Actor and Alchemist of Comedy

Remaking Film Comedy With a Straight Face
After his early years working with the improv troupe the Second City and on “The National Lampoon Radio Hour,” Mr. Ramis helped write the paradigm-shifting, 1978 blockbuster “Animal House.” What followed was a string of deliriously funny Bill Murray movies (including “Meatballs,” “Caddyshack,” “Stripes” and “Ghostbusters”) that have become touchstones in comedy today. While Mr. Murray understandably is seen as a kind of auteur of these comedies, it takes nothing away from him to say that Mr. Ramis built their foundation.

Garrick Utley, Former NBC Anchor and Foreign Correspondent

Garrick Utley, a former anchor for NBC News who for many years was one of a rare breed in television news reporting, a full-time foreign correspondent, died on Thursday night at his home in Manhattan. He was 74. He died of prostate cancer, his wife, Gertje Utley, said.

From the battlefields of Vietnam and Iraq to the Soviet-led invasion of Prague, Mr. Utley was a forthright interviewer of troops and commanders in the field and of presidents and diplomats in the halls of power.

Fluent in Russian, German and French, he reported from some 75 countries in a multifaceted career that included 30 years at NBC. He was a bureau chief in London and Paris for the network, chief foreign correspondent, weekend news anchor and substitute for John Chancellor and Tom Brokaw on “NBC Nightly News.” He also hosted magazine programs and moderated the Sunday morning program “Meet the Press.” He later worked for ABC News and CNN.

Clifton Garrick Utley was born in Chicago on Nov. 19, 1939, to Clifton Utley, an NBC radio and television commentator, and Frayn Garrick Utley, a broadcast reporter for CBS and NBC and a Chicago civic leader. He graduated from Westtown School in West Chester, Pa., in 1957, and from Carleton College in Northfield, Minn., in 1961.

After Army service and graduate studies at the Free University in Berlin, Mr. Utley joined NBC in Brussels in 1963 on the recommendation of a family friend, the correspondent Mr. Chancellor, who became his mentor. Mr. Utley was soon covering the war in Indochina.

In 1973 he married Gertje Rommeswinkel, an art historian and author who sometimes accompanied him on assignments. Besides his wife, he is survived by two brothers, Jonathan and David.

'Simpsons' Actress Marcia Wallace

I knew her from the Bob Newhart show.

Jean Stapleton, Who Played Edith Bunker, Dies

An AP story: Jean Stapleton, the stage-trained character actress who played Archie Bunker's far better half, the sweetly naive Edith, in TV's groundbreaking 1970s comedy "All in the Family," has died. She was 90.

TheNY Times puits it differently: Stapleton, Archie’s Better Angel, Dies at 90

David F. Smith/Associated Press - Jean Stapleton, left, and Carroll O'Connor held their Emmy awards in 1972 in Hollywood, CA

 Jean Stapleton, the character actress whose portrayal of a slow-witted, big-hearted and submissive — up to a point — housewife on the groundbreaking series “All in the Family” made her, along with Mary Tyler Moore and Bea Arthur, not only one of the foremost women in television comedy in the 1970s but a symbol of emergent feminism in American popular culture, died on Friday at her home in New York City. She was 90.

Lupe Ontiveros

Actor Jacob Vargas who was by her side Thursday night confirmed Ontiveros passed away on Twitter around midnight Friday. “My friend Lupe Ontiveros just passed away. May you rest in peace. Thank you for your great contribution to film and TV. You will be missed,” wrote Vargas. Onitveros was reportedly suffering from liver cancer, according to TMZ.
One of Ontiveros’ first roles was playing a maid on the television series “Charlie’s Angels.” And since that role she estimated she played a maid at least 150 times on screen, or 300 if you count her stage performances too. For many young Latinos who were sons and daughters of domestic workers Ontiveros was a familiar name long before she became a household name for playing Selena Quintanilla’s murderer Yolanda Saldivar in “Selena.”
   For me, seeing Ontiveros on screen was meaningful because it was a sign that our parents’ work was recognized by Hollywood. Even when Ontiveros played roles in which her character was talked down to or humiliated it was still meaningful because she played the human part—those were real stories many of us had heard before from our moms, aunts and neighbors.
“At first my only lines were ‘Si, señor, no, señor,’ you know, that kind of shit,” Ontiveros told the LA Weekly.

Ernest Borgnine, Oscar-Winning Actor

Mr. Borgnine made his first memorable impression in films at the age of 37, appearing in “From Here to Eternity” (1953) as Fatso Judson, the sadistic stockade sergeant who beats Frank Sinatra’s character, Private Maggio, to death. But Paddy Chayefsky, who wrote “Marty” as a television play, and Delbert Mann, who directed it (Rod Steiger was the star of that version), saw something beyond brutality in Mr. Borgnine and offered him the title role when it was made into a feature film.

He was so good as Judson that he was hateful.

Ermes Effron Borgnino was born on Jan. 24, 1917, in Hamden, Conn., near New Haven. His father was a railroad brakeman. His mother was said to be the daughter of a count, Paolo Boselli, an adviser to King Victor Emmanuel of Italy.

Andy Griffith

Never much cared for Mayberry RFD, though I recognize its place in American culture (such as it is).


Mr. Griffith was already a star, with rave reviews on Broadway in “No Time for Sergeants” and in Elia Kazan’s film “A Face in the Crowd,” when “The Andy Griffith Show” made its debut in the fall of 1960. And he delighted a later generation of television viewers in the 1980s and ’90s in the title role of the courtroom drama “Matlock.”

Andy Griffith was considerably more complex than Andy Taylor and his fellow denizens of Mayberry, although the show was based on his hometown, Mount Airy, N.C. Beginning with the lead in Elia Kazan’s film “A Face in the Crowd” in 1957, the story of a rough-hewn television personality who becomes a power-crazed megalomaniac, Mr. Griffith brought a canny authenticity to dark roles.

In the 2009 movie “Play the Game,” he played an 80-something widowed grandfather who lives in a nursing home and awkwardly jumps back into the singles game. He tries Viagra and experiences oral sex, and says the words “horny” and “erection.”

If that weren’t enough to dumbfound the old Mayberry fans, he made a commercial in 2010 extolling President Obama’s health care legislation. Republican politicians and conservative talk show hosts leapt on him mercilessly, while satirists like Jon Stewart of “The Daily Show” made boisterous fun of the brouhaha. (http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-september-14-2010/mayberry-wtf)

Saying Goodbye to Gil Noble

Well I remember watching him. I did not know he had passed. Saw this item on The Root, which is becoming a new favorite site to visit.

to many fans he was first and foremost Col. Sherman T. Potter

Colonel Potter’s office had several personal touches. The picture on his desk was of Mr. Morgan’s wife, Eileen Detchon. To relax, the colonel liked to paint and look after his horse, Sophie — a sort of inside joke, since the real Harry Morgan raised quarter horses on a ranch in Santa Rosa. Sophie, to whom Colonel Potter says goodbye in the final episode, was Mr. Morgan’s own horse. In 1980 his Colonel Potter earned him an Emmy Award as best supporting actor in a comedy series. During the shooting of the final episode, he was asked about his feelings. “Sadness and an aching heart,” he replied.

A particular favorite of mine.

Arthur wrote about Groucho

"Life With Groucho"/Simon & Schuster - Arthur Marx , at 11, with Groucho Marx, on the set of “Duck Soup” in 1932.

As a child Mr. Marx spent several years on the road with Groucho Marx and the rest of the Marx Brothers’ vaudeville act — Chico, Harpo, Gummo and later Zeppo — before enjoying a celebrity-filled youth in Los Angeles as the brothers rose to stardom. His own show-business career was varied and long, writing Hollywood screenplays and scripts for some of television’s most popular sitcoms.

Taken together, Arthur Marx’s two books about his father offered a bittersweet picture of life in the Marx home. He described himself as desperate both to escape from his father’s shadow and to please him, an impossible task. The comic genius who kept millions in stitches was, in his private life, miserly and emotionally distant.

Uncle Leo

In interviews late in his career, Mr. Lesser spoke about how “Seinfeld” had changed his life, making him a celebrity of the sort he’d never imagined. People would recognize him on the street not by name but as the man who bored Jerry with his tales of Jeffrey’s park triumphs or who once retrieved a watch Jerry had discarded and then tried to sell it back to him. 

“Uncle Leo became a whole new thing for me,” Mr. Lesser told the Canadian newspaper The National Post in 2010. “After sweating out every job, my God. Now it’s everywhere I go. I was at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, watching people put notes in the wall, it’s an esoteric day, very silent, very nice. All of a sudden: ‘Uncle Leo, where’s the watch?’ ”

Anne Francis

A shapely blond with a signature beauty mark next to her lower lip, Francis was a former child model and radio actress when she first came to notice on the big screen in the early 1950s. In what Francis later described as "a tongue-in-cheek, female James Bond," her karate-chopping private eye drove a custom-built Cobra convertible sports car and, when necessary, worked out of a specially equipped mobile surveillance van that masqueraded as a TV service vehicle.


NY Times obit

Detective Sargeant Dietrech

Steve Landesberg, an actor and comedian with a friendly and often deadpan manner who was best known for his role on the long-running sitcom “Barney Miller,”  died on Monday in Los Angeles. He was 74.

ABC, via Photofest-Steve Landesberg, right, with Hal Linden on “Barney Miller.”

On  “Barney Miller,”  which ran on ABC from 1975 to 1982, Mr. Landesberg played Sgt. Arthur P. Dietrich,  an intellectual detective with a quiet manner who seemed to have an unrivaled knowledge of practically any topic that arose, much to the bemusement of his fellow detectives. He was also given to odd, unexpected pronouncements. In one 1980 episode he tells his boss, Captain Miller, that he is working on a case that dates to 1973. Miller says: “That was seven years ago! Nixon was president!” Dietrich’s typically low-key response: “No, he’s got an airtight alibi for this one.''

Mr. Landesberg received three Emmy Award nominations for that role.

Loved that show.


Set in a New York City police station, “Barney Miller” portrayed a group of wisecracking detectives and the oddball characters who ended up there. Some police officers said the show, in which most of the action was in the squad room rather than the street, often represented the real life of rank-and-file officers better than many television detective dramas.


Found a YouTube link that has a video excerpt from the show:

Book him, Danno

He might never have escaped the tagline, but he might not have objected thereto.

United Press International - James MacArthur and his mother, Helen Hayes, on the set of “Hawaii-Five O” for a 1975 episode on which Hayes appeared.

NY Times obit has bottom picture; top one is from an Msnbc obit.

"Hawaii Five-O," one of the longest running crime shows in TV history with 278 episodes, was shot on location in the Hawaiian islands. It was the first Hawaii-based national TV series. Glenn Cannon, a University of Hawaii theater professor who had a recurring role as the district attorney in the original series, said Lord and MacArthur were "a great part" of the team that produced the series and kept it "strong and positive." The use of many local actors, scenery and flavor of the islands led Hawaii residents "to feel very positively about the series," added Cannon, who still acts, directs and leads the local branch of the Screen Actors Guild. "People in Hawaii felt they had an ownership of the series." The drama has been remade by CBS with a new cast this season.

James MacArthur said that one of his favorite "Hawaii Five-O" episodes was a 1975 segment called "Retire in Sunny Hawaii Forever" because it marked one of the rare times that he worked on screen with his mother. Hayes played Danno's Aunt Clara, who visits Hawaii and helps the detectives solve a murder. Asked by the Hawaii Star Bulletin newspaper in 2003 about his fondest memories about working on "Hawaii Five-O," he replied: "Living in Hawaii."

Tom Bosley, ‘Happy Days’ Dad, Dies at 83

‘Bonanza’ Creator

Ricardo DeAratanha/Los Angeles Times - David Dortort in 2009.


David Dortort, a television writer and producer whose idea to create a western drama based not on shoot-’em-ups but instead on the travails of a loving family resulted in “Bonanza,” one of the most popular shows in history, died on Sunday in Los Angeles. He was 93. The cause was uncertain, but he had a history of heart problems, said his daughter, Wendy Czarnecki.

In 1958 Mr. Dortort, an experienced television writer, had also become one of the first writer-producers in television drama. He was serving both functions on a successful half-hour western, “The Restless Gun,” starring John Payne in the traditional Hollywood role of a roving gunman who settles the conflict in each episode — and establishes right and wrong — by shooting the bad guy.

The show was broadcast on NBC, and that network asked Mr. Dortort to develop a western for NBC itself to produce, an opportunity that Mr. Dortort, who studied American history at City College of New York and believed his familiarity with the subject was the equal of that of anyone in Hollywood, seized upon to combat what he called “the myth of the lone gunfighter.” He pitched a show set on a Nevada ranch on the shore of Lake Tahoe after the 1859 discovery of the gold and silver deposits known as the Comstock Lode in Virginia City. Rather than focusing on a single hero, the show would have four: a father, widowed three times, and his three sons. The idea of “Bonanza,” as the show came to be called, was to depict the story of the American West — “one of the great migrations of all time,” he called it — with accuracy.

Ben Cartwright, and his sons Adam, Hoss and Little Joe. I can hear, and can hum, the music to the opening of the show.


“The gunfighter played a small, inconsequential role in the story of the West,” Mr. Dortort explained in a 2002 interview with the Archive of American Television. “The true history of the West is about family, pioneers.”

Because the show was to be partly shot on location, and because color television sets were on the verge of being readily available to consumers, Mr. Dortort urged the network to film “Bonanza” in color, and it became television’s first full-hour western in color, which helped distinguish it from competitors like “Laramie” and “Gunsmoke.” It starred Lorne Greene as Ben Cartwright, the family patriarch (whom Mr. Dortort named after his own father), and, as his sons, Pernell Roberts as the eldest and the most intellectual, Adam; Dan Blocker as the sweet-tempered giant Eric, better known as Hoss; and Michael Landon as the impetuous, hotheaded Little Joe.

“Bonanza” appeared for the first time at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 12, 1959, opposite “Perry Mason” on CBS. Two years later it moved to 9 p.m. on Sunday and became a dominant hit, running for 14 seasons — including three years, from 1964 to 1967, when it was the most-watched television show in the country. Mr. Dortort oversaw production of the show for most of its run. In addition to telling stories based on historical events involving the Comstock Lode and the oncoming Civil War, the show dealt with themes like racial prejudice and religious tolerance. Mostly, though, its drama, and its popularity, were because of its focus on the Cartwrights and their tightknit bond.

“What is the message?” Mr. Dortort said. “Love is the message.”


David Solomon Katz was born in Brooklyn to Jewish immigrant parents from Eastern Europe on Oct. 23, 1916, and grew up in a neighborhood famous for the gangsters of Murder Inc., a milieu he mined for one of his two novels, “Burial of the Fruit” (1947). His second book, “The Post of Honor,” came out two years later. His father, Beryl Dortort, who came to this country, according to family lore, to avoid going to rabbinical school, changed his name to Benjamin Katz and became a successful insurance salesman. Young David graduated from Boys High in Brooklyn and City College, where he studied not only history but also creative writing and was a writing-seminar colleague of Alfred Kazin. He met his future wife, Rose Seldin, an accountant, after he graduated. They married in 1940. It was she who persuaded him to change his name back to his father’s original one.

Drafted after the attack on Pearl Harbor, he served in special services in Torrance, Calif., starting a newspaper and arranging for performances by Hollywood entertainers at an Army hospital. “Burial of the Fruit” was optioned for a film, and he was hired to write it, but it was never made, an experience that made him determined to learn how to write for the screen.

His early movie credits include “The Lusty Men” (1952), a western, directed by Nicholas Ray and starring Susan Hayward and Robert Mitchum, and “A Cry in the Night” (1956), a police drama about a kidnapping, with Natalie Wood. His television work included episodes of “Racket Squad” and “Lassie,” and adaptations of the Walter Van Tilburg Clark novel “The Ox-Bow Incident.” In 1967 Mr. Dortort turned his primary focus away from “Bonanza” to create a second western drama, “The High Chaparral,” set in the 1870s in the American Southwest and starring Leif Erickson as the head of another fragmented ranch family. That show ran for four years.

Mr. Dortort’s wife, Rose, died in 2007. In addition to his daughter, who lives in Petaluma, Calif., he is survived by a brother, Elliot Katz, of Marlboro, N.J.; a son, Fred Dortort, of Berkeley, Calif.; and a step-granddaughter.
September 9, 2010
David Dortort, ‘Bonanza’ Creator, Dies at 93
By BRUCE WEBER

He spied

Early entries of his obituary.2 from the LA Times, 1 from the NY Daily News.

Actor Robert Culp dies after falling at his Hollywood home

March 24, 2010 | 2:02 pm

Culp Actor Robert Culp, best known for his role as an international tennis star and globe-trotting secret agent in the hit 1960s television series "I Spy," died Wednesday morning after a fall at his Hollywood home, authorities said.

The 79-year-old actor was rushed to Queen of Angels hospital shortly after 11 a.m. after hitting his head while taking a walk outside his home in the 1800 block of El Cerrito Place, said LAPD Lt. Bob Binder. He was found by a jogger who called 911, and paramedics, patrol officers and detectives responded to the scene.

He was pronounced dead at the hospital a short time later. A preliminary investigation found "that his death is accidental and there appears to be no sign of foul play," Binder said. An autopsy by the Los Angeles County Coroner's office is pending.

Culp broke into Hollywood in the late 1950s but catapulted to fame playing Kelly Robinson in the hourlong 1965-68 espionage series "I Spy," which was shot in exotic locales around the world.

Besides its popularity, the show also broke the color barrier for dramatic television series as the first noncomedy series to star an African American actor, Bill Cosby.

Off screen, Culp has been active in civic causes, most recently in his efforts to oppose construction of an elephant exhibit at the Los Angeles Zoo.

In 2007, the actor joined with real estate agent Aaron Leider in filing a lawsuit against zoo director John Lewis and the city to stop construction of a $42-million elephant exhibit and bar the zoo from keeping elephants there, accusing authorities at the facility of withholding medical care from the animals and keeping them cramped in small places.

Last year, after temporarily halting construction on the elephant exhibit amid a fierce debate, the City Council voted to go ahead with the project as planned.

A full obituary is coming shortly from The Times.

-- Andrew Blankstein

Photo: Robert Culp in the action-adventure television series "I Spy."

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Robert Culp never cracked Emmy's secret code
March 24, 2010 | 4:48 pm
Robert Culp died TV news

Robert Culp may have portrayed a secret government agent on TV, but there's one thing he never spied on his mantle at home: an Emmy or Golden Globe.

Before his death today at age 78, Robert Culp was nominated by both of those awards, but he had bad luck. Actually, he had really bad luck at the Emmys considering that he lost best drama actor three years in a row (1966-68) to his "I Spy" costar Bill Cosby. Culp was also nominated once for writing (1967), losing to Bruce Geller ("Mission: Impossible"). That other hit espionage TV series, "Mission:Impossible," out-gunned "I Spy" twice in the battle over best drama series (1967, 1968). In 1966, "I Spy" lost to "The Fugitive."

Both Bill Cosby and Robert Culp lost best TV actor at the Golden Globes in 1967 to Dean Martin ("The Dean Martin Show"), but "I Spy" won best TV show that same year. Culp isn't listed as one of the technical winners of that statuette, but he deserves much of the credit for his dashing role as a spy parading as a pro tennis player.

Photo: Robert Culp and Bill Cosby in "I Spy" (NBC)

 Bill Cosby and Robert Culp in "I Spy."


Veteran actor Robert Culp, who teamed with Bill
Cosby to break down racial barriers on the hit
1960s show "I Spy," died Wednesday after
collapsing outside his Hollywood home.

The 79-year-old actor was found on the ground by
a jogger who called 911, cops said.

The actor's son was told he died of a heart attack,
said Culp's manager, Hillard Elkins.

Culp was a versatile actor known for his dramatic
and comedic work on stage, television and movies.

He was debonaire and easily pulled off the man-in-
charge look, making him perfect for his roles as the
arrogant mayor of New York in 1985's "Turk 182"
- and as the corrupt president in 1993's "The
Pelican Brief."

But he first came into national prominence with "I
Spy," a television milestone that ran from 1965-68.
It was the first integrated television show featuring a
black actor as one of the leads.

Culp and Cosby traded quips as the show's cool co-
stars, combining humor and adventure in a style
copied for decades.

He and Cosby were also involved in civil rights
causes, and when Martin Luther King Jr. was
assassinated in 1968 the pair traveled to Memphis,
Tenn., to join the striking garbage workers King had
been organizing.

One of his most acclaimed film roles was as Bob in
the 1969 sex comedy, "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice."

On television he appeared for three seasons in the
1980s as an FBI agent for three seasons on "The
Greatest American Hero." And from 2000 to 2004,
he had a recurring role on the hit "Everybody Loves
Raymond" as Ray Barone's father-in-law.

Culp also worked as a director, and had dozens of
television credits across his half-century in the
business.

Peter Graves

His best known roles are the cool spymaster of television’s “Mission: Impossible”(as the NY Times obituary has it) and best known to younger audiences for a deadpan line in “Airplane!”. I well remember MI; I watched the show religiously.

Peter Graves, centre, with Greg Morris, Leonard Nimoy and Peter Lupus in Mission: Impossible. Photograph: Everett Collection/Rex Features

I do not recall Nimoy being in the show; missing are Martin Landau and  Barbara Bain.Now, having looked at some material on the show, I do not vaguely recall Nimoy being in the show.

The Guardian's obit, and the NY Times's obit follow.


American actor and star of television's Mission: Impossible who made fun of his image in Airplane!

Despite his long career as a serious actor in dozens of films and television shows, Peter Graves, who has died aged 83, might be most remembered for a role that lampooned his square-jawed, stolid screen persona. As the captain of a plane heading for disaster in the spoof movie Airplane! (1980), Graves got laughs by playing it as straight as his other roles. (Although his roles in a number of trashy, low-budget science fiction movies in the 1950s had produced unintentional laughs.)

Audiences around the world were also familiar with Graves as the tall, gruff, deep-voiced, silver-haired Jim Phelps, head of the IMF (Impossible Missions Force), an elite American espionage group, in the TV series Mission: Impossible (1967-73). He won a Golden Globe in the role in 1971.

The show famously opened with the words: "Your mission, Jim, should you decide to accept it, is ..." Following the briefing, Phelps was told: "As usual, should you or any member of your IM Force be captured or killed, the secretary will disavow any knowledge of your existence. This tape will self-destruct in five seconds. Good luck, Jim." After the puff of smoke cleared, Phelps always accepted the mission, usually involving some un-American foreign power.

Graves was very proud of – and proprietorial towards – Phelps, and when the big-screen version of Mission: Impossible (1996), starring Tom Cruise, was released, Graves was aggrieved that the character played by Jon Voight used the same name. "I am sorry that they chose to call him Phelps. They could have solved that very easily by either having me in a scene in the very beginning, or reading a telegram from me saying, 'Hey boys, I'm retired, gone to Hawaii. Thank you, goodbye, you take over now'," Graves remarked.

Born Peter Aurness in Minnesota, of Norwegian-German stock, he was the son of Rolf Cirkler Aurness, a businessman, and Ruth Duesler, a journalist. His older brother, the actor James Arness, also made his name in a TV series (Gunsmoke). After two years in the US air force, Graves studied drama at the University of Minnesota.

His first credited film roles were as a confused youngster in Rogue River (1951) and as Dane Clark's blind brother in the western Fort Defiance (1951). In 1952, Graves featured in The Congregation, produced by the Protestant Film Commission, an evangelical organisation, and had the leading role in Red Planet Mars, a McCarthyite tract in the guise of a Christian science fiction film. Graves played a scientist who gets messages from Mars, which pretends to be a utopian society but is controlled by Soviet agents, setting out to destroy the freedom of the US. As a result, Christian revolutionaries overthrow the communist government in Russia.

Graves's blond, rather bland good looks were brilliantly used by Billy Wilder in Stalag 17 (1953), revolving around a German informer masquerading as an American PoW. The director's brother, W Lee Wilder, who churned out low-grade science fiction movies, then cast Graves in Killers from Space (1954) as a nuclear scientist captured by aliens (kitted out in hooded sweatshirts, mittens and eyes made out of ping-pong balls), who manages to save Earth from them.

In It Conquered the World (1956) and Beginning of the End (1957), Graves battled against a Venusian and giant (back-projected) grasshoppers. He then reverted to treachery in a series of B-westerns: War Paint (1953), The Yellow Tomahawk (1954), Robbers' Roost (1955) and Canyon River (1956).

But, in 1955, Graves did manage to work in four excellent movies, though in minor roles. In Jacques Tourneur's Wichita, he played Morgan Earp, brother of Wyatt (Joel McCrea), and he appeared as military men in John Ford's The Long Gray Line and Otto Preminger's The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell. He also had a small but key role in Charles Laughton's haunting The Night of the Hunter. As Ben Harper, who shares a prison cell with a "fire and brimstone" preacher (Robert Mitchum), he talks in his sleep about the hidden $10,000 he has stolen from a bank, thus setting the evil preacher on the scent of the money.

In the 1960s, Graves's stern face was seldom off the TV screen. He started the decade with 34 episodes of an Australian western series called Whiplash, in which he played an American, Christopher Cobb, who established the first stagecoach line in Australia in the 1850s. He continued mostly in TV westerns, and the odd film, until he hit the jackpot with Mission: Impossible.

Jim Abrahams, who wrote, directed and produced Airplane! with the Zucker brothers, David and Jerry, thought that Mission: Impossible "was just so stupid and was great to send up". They had the wit to cast the straight-as-a-die Graves as Captain Oveur – much corny play is made of the character's name and that of his co-pilot, Roger Murdock, such as "Roger, Roger" and "Over, Oveur." Oveur is also at the helm with a young boy, Joey, whom he asks questions such as: "You ever seen a grown man naked?"; "Joey, do you like movies about gladiators?"; and "Have you ever been to a Turkish prison?"

It's hard to believe that audiences ever took Graves seriously again, but they did and he returned to a new series of Mission: Impossible from 1988 to 1990. He also hosted more than 50 episodes (between 1994 and 2006) of Biography, in which he sounded like an authority on every subject, whether they were artists, politicians, generals or film stars.

From 1997 to 2007, Graves made a number of guest appearances as John "The Colonel" Camden, the grandfather in the squeaky-clean Christian family in the TV series 7th Heaven. A devout Christian himself, Graves is survived by Joan, his wife since 1950, and by three daughters.

• Peter Graves, actor, born 18 March 1926; died 14 March 2010

The Times obituary has a couple of interesting pictures.

March 15, 2010
Peter Graves, ‘Mission: Impossible’ Star, Dies at 83
By MICHAEL POLLAK

Peter Graves, the cool spymaster of television’s “Mission: Impossible” and the dignified host of the “Biography” series, who successfully spoofed his own gravitas in the “Airplane!” movie farces, died on Sunday. He was 83.

He died of a heart attack at his home in Pacific Palisades, Calif., said Fred Barman, his business manager.

It was a testament to Mr. Graves’s earnest, unhammy ability to make fun of himself that after decades of playing square he-men and straitlaced authority figures, he was perhaps best known to younger audiences for a deadpan line in “Airplane!” (“Joey, do you like movies about gladiators?”) and one from a memorable Geico car insurance commercial (“I was one lucky woman”).

Born Peter Aurness in Minneapolis, the blond, 6-foot-2 Mr. Graves served in the Army Air Forces in 1944 and ’45, studied drama at the University of Minnesota under the G.I. Bill of Rights and played the clarinet in local bands before following his older brother, James Arness, to Hollywood.

His first credited film appearance was in “Rogue River” (1950), with Rory Calhoun. Mr. Graves’s getting a Hollywood contract for the picture persuaded his fiancée’s family to let her marry him. He changed his name for that movie to Graves, his maternal grandfather’s name, to avoid confusion with his older brother.

He soon found himself in classics like Billy Wilder’s “Stalag 17” (1953), where he played a security officer with a secret; Charles Laughton’s “Night of the Hunter” (1955); Otto Preminger’s “Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell” (1955); and John Ford’s “Long Gray Line” (1955).

Mr. Graves became known for taking all his roles seriously, injecting a certain believability into even the campiest plot. He appeared in westerns like “The Yellow Tomahawk” (1954) and “Wichita” (1955); a Civil War adventure, “The Raid” (1954); and gangster movies (“Black Tuesday,” 1954, and “The Naked Street,” 1955). He played earnest scientists in science fiction/horror films: “Killers From Space” (1954), “It Conquered the World” (1956) and “Beginning of the End” (1957, about giant grasshoppers in Chicago). There was also cold war science fiction anti-Communism: “Red Planet Mars” (1952).

Other movies included “East of Sumatra” (1953), “Beneath the 12-Mile Reef” (1953), “A Rage to Live” (1965), “Texas Across the River” (1966), “Sergeant Ryker” (1968), “The Ballad of Josie” (1968), “The Five-Man Army” (1969), “The Clonus Horror” (1979), “The Guns and the Fury” (1981), “Savannah Smiles” (1982), “Number One With a Bullet” (1986), “Addams Family Values” (1993), “The House on Haunted Hill” (1999) and “Men in Black II” (2002).

 

Martin Agency -Mr. Graves in a Geico commercial, spoofing his own image.

In 1955 Mr. Graves began his career as a television series regular as the star of “Fury,” a western family adventure series about a rancher named Jim Newton, his orphaned ward and the boy’s black stallion. It ran until 1959 on NBC, helped pioneer television adventure series and solidified Mr. Graves’s TV credentials.

Some of his hundreds of television credits include “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” “Whiplash” (1961), “The Dean Martin Show” (1970), the Herman Wouk mini-series “The Winds of War” (1983) and “War and Remembrance” (1988), “Fantasy Island” (1978-83) and “7th Heaven” (1999-2005). He served as the host or narrator for numerous television specials and performed in television movies of the week like “The President’s Plane Is Missing” (1973), “Where Have All the People Gone” (1974) and “Death Car on the Freeway” (1979).

Mr. Graves played his most famous television character from 1967 to 1973 in “Mission: Impossible,” reprising it from 1988 to 1990. He was Jim Phelps, the leader of the Impossible Missions Force, a super-secret government organization that conducted dangerous undercover assignments (which he always chose to accept). After the tape summarizing the objective self-destructed, the team would use not violence, but elaborate con games to trap the villains. In his role, Mr. Graves was a model of cool, deadpan efficiency.

But he was appalled when his agent sent him the script for the role of a pedophile pilot in “Airplane!” (1980). “I tore my hair and ranted and raved and said, ‘This is insane,’ he recalled on “Biography” in 1997. Some of the role’s lines (“Have you ever been in a Turkish prison?”) looked at first as if they could get him thrown in jail, never mind ruining his career. He told his agent to tell David and Jerry Zucker and Jim Abrahams, the director-producers, to find themselves a comedian. He relented when the Zucker brothers explained that the secret of their spoof would be the deadpan behavior of the cast; they didn’t want a comedian, they wanted the Peter Graves of “Fury” and “Mission: Impossible.”

Mr. Graves used his familiar earnest, all-American demeanor in service of some of the comic movie’s most outrageous moments. He reprised the role of Captain Oveur in “Airplane II” in 1982.

Starting in the mid-1980s Mr. Graves was the host of a number of television science specials on “Discover.” In 1987, he became the host of the Arts and Entertainment Network’s long-running “Biography” series, narrating the lives of figures like Prince Andrew, Muhammad Ali, pioneers of the space program, Churchill, Ernie Kovacs, Edward G. Robinson, Sophia Loren, Jackie Robinson, Howard Hughes, Steven Spielberg and Jonathan Winters.

In 1997, Mr. Graves was the subject of his own “Biography” presentation, “Peter Graves: Mission Accomplished.” In 2002, Mr. Graves was interviewed for a special about the documentary series, “Biography: 15 Years and Counting.”

Mr. Graves won a Golden Globe Award in 1971 for his performance in “Mission: Impossible” and in 1997, he and “Biography” won an Emmy Award for outstanding informational series.

In 1998, he joined his wife, Joan, in an effort to get Los Angeles to ban gasoline-powered leaf blowers from residential areas, testifying before the City Council, “’We’re all victims of these machines.”

In addition to his brother, he is survived by his wife, Joan Graves, and three daughters, Amanda Lee Graves, Claudia King Graves and Kelly Jean Graves.

Derrick Henry contributed reporting.

Sy Syms: 1926-2009

Remembrances



For an 'Educated Consumer,' He Discounted Designer Suits

By STEPHEN MILLER

Sy Syms was a pioneer of off-price designer labels whose fame rested on folksy commercials that belied his talents as a merchandiser.

Mr. Syms, who died Nov. 17 at age 83, is remembered by many New York men as the source for their first suits, and by television viewers of both sexes as the star of late-night ads featuring Mr. Syms proclaiming, "An educated consumer is our best customer."

Originally a seller of bargain men's clothing and haberdashery in the Wall Street area, Mr. Syms later opened stores in suburban malls. He offered designer-label clothes at discounts he claimed were 30% to 50% and more off retail prices.

Mr. Syms's monotone gave few clues to his background as a broadcaster. Ultimately, Mr. Syms joined the pantheon of other do-it-yourselfer admen in the New York area, such as Tom Carvel in the ice-cream business and Victor Potamkin, an auto dealer. Mr. Syms was savvy enough to set up his own ad agency to ensure that he got the agency discount when he bought airtime.

"He had the ability to be a merchant, a promoter and a financier all at the same time," says Howard Davidowitz, chairman of Davidowitz & Associates, a retail consulting and investment banking firm. "He is the first guy to offer discount designer suits on a major scale."

Investment bank and retail consultant; interesting combination.

Born Seymour Merinsky in Brooklyn, Mr. Syms was the son of Russian immigrants who started out in the collars and cuffs business. He served in the Army during World War II, studied broadcasting at New York University on the G.I. Bill, and worked as a radio broadcaster for a few years in the late 1940s, calling minor league baseball games.

In 1950, Mr. Syms joined his brother's clothing store, "Merns," near Manhattan's financial district. In 1959, he left to open his own store, called "Sy Merns," and was forced in a legal dispute to use a different name, according to an account provided by the company. He chose "Sy Syms," and opened on Cortlandt Street, near his brother's store and a few blocks from Wall Street.

I remember Merns, vaguely.

"It was his joy to be on the selling floor from 12 noon to 2 o'clock," says Marcy Syms, Sy's daughter and now chief executive of the company. "That's when the traders and bankers and lawyers would come in." Today, salespeople are still called "educators," she says, which follows his habit. "He loved to explain the clothes."
Obituaries

* Notable deaths from the business world and entertainment industry from Tributes.com.

The Cortlandt Street store made headlines when U.S. Steel Corp. wanted to eject Syms to make way for construction of a skyscraper in 1967. With months still remaining on his lease, Mr. Syms refused to budge and told The Wall Street Journal it would take "a minimum of $100,000" to get him to move. He soon moved for a much smaller sum.

Mr. Syms's shop on Cortlandt Street was adjacent to the Hudson Tubes. There, trains ran to New Jersey, where an estimated 90% of his customers lived. In 1971, he opened his largest store ever in Paramus, N.J., and began more aggressively moving into marked-down brand-name suits. He also added women's wear.

To support his expansion plans, Mr. Syms started advertising on the radio, reading the scripts himself. The first television ad came in 1974, and it was Mr. Syms who took credit for the trademark "educated consumer" phrase. It replaced an earlier slogan, "Unbelievable Syms!"

As his business expanded, Mr. Syms cut deals with big European labels such as Armani and Brioni to buy their excess production, and would then sell it at something close to wholesale.

In the early days, Syms clerks would snip the designer label out of the suit before handing it over to customers. Stores were kept Spartan, with black walls and plain racks weighed down with huge amounts of merchandise.

The formula worked, and Syms expanded in the 1970s and went public in 1983. Ms. Syms succeeded her father as CEO in 1998. This year, Ms. Syms led Syms Corp. in the takeover of retailer Filene's Basement. Altogether, Syms now operates 52 stores.

One fan was New York Mayor Edward Koch, who has shopped at Syms since the 1960s. "I just bought two jackets there," Mr. Koch said in an interview. "They're both big bargains."