University  1 



 

On being accepted into the University of Minnesota, Peter found a home in the Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity, and learned that everything has its own rules!






Having already made up his mind that from here on in, music would take a back seat to his new interest, he signed up almost immediately to major in ‘Speech’, however after only a few months he was persuaded by the head of department to change his major to ‘Theatre’, to give him a wider appreciation of the subject.

 

The following is a short excerpt from a longer video, that sadly is too long to post to this forum. If you would like to see it, please join us at..

Peter Graves <3 | Facebook


So when I came out of the army after ww2 and went to the University of Minnesota I originally wanted to take a speech major because I had done a bit of radio work so far. So I went to the head of department and he said, ‘I think you should take a theatre major because you’ll learn more and get exposed to all the wonderful literature of the theatre and the history and so forth, I did that and I got hooked. And here we are. Yes it was probably the first play, which was Henry Gibson’s the ‘Wild Duck’ if you will, and I had to play a wonderful rough Norwegian character as all of his were. I had a moment when I wasn’t sure that I had picked the right thing, because my entrance line in the play, was to open the door to the apartment where this party was going on, with a guy that I had with me who was a sort of creepy character, and the first line I ever said on the stage was, ‘Mulvic smelt herring salad, so there was no holding him back. I’ve tried to read that line many times in my life and never been able to do it. And so that time, I thought, geez, maybe I’ve chosen the wrong thing, I should try insurance or something.

Peter Graves


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