'Fury' and Peter Graves

Classic TV actor Peter Graves died last night. I rarely feel grief or loss when hearing about the death of a celebrity, but I did with Graves. I only have two titles under “Favorite TV shows” on my Facebook profile and Graves was the lead in one of them (“Mission: Impossible”). He also appeared in what I consider one of the funniest movie scenes of the 20th century, his conversation with little Joey in “Airplane” (“Have you ever seen a grown man naked?”).

But appropriate to this thread is Peter Graves’ starring role in the Saturday morning TV series, “Fury” (1955-1960). He played Jim Newton who adopted an orphan street kid named Joey. Holy Crap! I just realized that the name of the boy in “Airplane” was an in-joke about this series! That never occurred to me before. Wow.

Now, where was I? Oh, yes, “Fury.” Anyway, Jim moves Joey to the Broken Wheel Ranch. There, Joey tames the wild horse of the title and becomes the only person who can ride him. We waited eagerly each week (and took seriously) the scene when Fury would return to the ranch to get help (“Is Joey in trouble? Take us to Joey, boy. Take us to Joey.”). Bobby Diamond, who played Joey, is now an attorney in Los Angeles.

There is a fan site called brokenwheelranch.com, but beware. McAfee gives this a red alert meaning “dangerous.” That is why I didn’t make the link clickable. Copy and paste if you want to take your chances.

Here’s to Peter Graves.

mf

"I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody." -Franny