http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mi2Dusyg5A
In a film career that spanned more than half a century, the late Peter Graves (1926-2010) was a dependable leading man, often at his best in non-leading roles, who worked memorably with Billy Wilder (Stalag 17), John Ford (The Long Gray Line), Roger Corman (It Conquered the World), Otto Preminger (The Court Martial of Billy Mitchell), and the Zucker Brothers (Airplane). Along the way, he also co-starred with Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, and Lillian Gish in Charles Laughton’s masterpiece of American Gothic, The Night of the Hunter (1955, above), an independently produced gem recently voted No. 2 by Cahiers du Cinema in its poll of “The Most Beautiful Films Ever Made.” Graves’ part begins at 5:36.
ADDENDUM 3/18 – Friend of Bright Lights, Ecrans partagés d’Olivier E., takes a look at Night of the Hunter’s pervasive water imagery here. (You don’t have to read French to enjoy the screen caps.)
Even while defeating giant grasshoppers he exuded class, but Peter Graves was best known for battling and out-witting evil-doers, spies and bad-guys…
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Even while defeating giant grasshoppers he exuded class
You’re so right, Chucky. Peter Graves showed earnest commitment and kept a straight face even while battling the leotard-wearing, ping-pong-ball-eyed extraterrestrials of Killers From Space, directed by W. Lee Wilder, Billy Wilder’s so-called “idiot brother.” What does such good Kharma get you? If you’re lucky, it gets you Stalag 17, Night of the Hunter, and a TV series that everybody fondly remembers.
BTW, those giant grasshoppers scared the @#$! out of me when I was a 7-year-old drive-in attendee, not the grasshoppers themselves, but the eerie chirping sound they made prior to their appearances.
Graves was indeed more versatile than his stolid image implied. It’s hard to imagine anyone pulling off the cheery pedophile pilot in Airplane as he did. Even in smaller venues, he could shine. He played a hilariously uptight newscaster in an episode of Golden Girls, cheerily (again) complaining about wearing a girdle and fretting about his weight.
And re: those grasshoppers. I have a similar traumatic memory related to another ’50s “nature gone wrong” movie: Attack of the Crab Monsters — the shot of the horizon, then those “crab monsters” suddenly rearing up! An early encounter with the pleasurable terrors of the id.