Mid Day Distraction

'Mission Impossible' star Peter Graves dies‏

There's hardly anyone left from my childhood tv watching.

Actor Peter Graves was found dead Sunday at his home in Pacific Palisades, according to law enforcement sources. Graves, who stared in "Mission: Impossible," "Airplane!" and Billy Wilder's "Stalag 17"--apparently died of natural causes, the sources said.

Graves was 83, according to a biography on the website IMDB.com.

In a Times story late last year, Graves said he initially turned down the role for "Airplane!" because he thought it was in poor taste--until actors Robert Stack, Lloyd Bridges and Leslie Nielsen signed on to the cast. "They say you are supposed to stretch as an actor, so let's go stretch it," he told The Times' Susan King.

Fred Thompson got a job!!

Good, now maybe he'll stop doing shite like that video. Ugh. But I'm sure alot of people miss his granddaughter.

Fred Thompson is making good on his threat promise to return to acting. The former U.S. senator, whose presidential dreams went up in smoke earlier this year, has landed a guest stint on ABC's out-of-this-world drama Life on Mars, sources confirm to me exclusively. He'll play the NYPD's chief of detectives in a February episode.

Memory Lane

If your cable company carries WGN out of Chicago, at 12 noon EST today they are going to be playing the old shows Ray Rayner and Friends, Garfield Goose and Friends and Bozo's Circus. GREAT stuff, especially if you've got kids around that need to be amused.

On December 28, 1953, Chicago area kids were introduced to the whimsical story of Suzy Snowflake "tap, tap, tappin'" on every windowpane, seen on "Garfield Goose and Friends" then on WBBM-TV. Like "Hardrock, Coco and Joe", Suzy too was brought to life by the stop-motion animators of Centaur Productions. Norma Zimmer was Suzy's voice and the song was sung by The Norman Luboff Choir, a premier studio group who recorded with well-known artists, such as Frank Sinatra and Harry Belafonte.