And
Kay says: “He’s irresistible”
From Peter McDonald in Hollywood
Mission:
Impossible strongman Peter Lupus is on top of the world over
a girl from Down Under!
And
the feeling, Australian starlet Kay Elliott admitted as the pair posed
together in an outsized pullover, was mutual.
“It
was those broad shoulders and big biceps that made him irresistible
to me,” shapely Kay, a Kim Novak look-alike, teased him.
“What
first attracted her to me, I can’t remember,” Peter retorted,
straight-faced.
“But
it wasn’t her biceps, that I can say for sure!”
Peter and
Kay, one of the stars of the American soap opera General Hospital
(now being released overseas), have been dating ever since meeting
soon after Peter’s marriage break-up earlier this year.
The couple
insist there is nothing secret about their romance, but admit: “We’re
not about to take out ads in the trade papers to announce it.”
“You’ll
find us all over the place, we can set a cracking pace,” Peter
said.
“I
don’t like to be half-hearted about having fun, and one of the
things I like about Kay is that she feels the same way.
"Kay’s
a kook, but in a nice way.
"If
you say ‘Let’s dance bare-foot’ she isn’t
one of those girls who turn around and say, ‘I’d love
to but might ladder my stockings.’”
Ironically,
it wasn’t an episode of Mission: Impossible that Kay
did earlier this year that played cupid to the pair, but one of a
chain of coincidences.
The first
was a scene Kay did with Peter Graves, who had previously starred
in the Australian-produced Whiplash series.
This
set the pair off reminiscing over Australian people and places.
“Peter
and I could have talked briefly, but you know what it’s like
on a set,” Kay said.
“Anyway,
ages later I was over at the studio and dropped in to say hello to
Peter Graves.
"Next
thing he’s calling out, ‘Hey Pete, here’s just the
person to talk to.
“Peter
(Lupus) had been reading about the Australian film production and
he had a real bee in his bonnet about it—he still does.
“We’d
been talking about half an hour when Peter was called on to the set.
He said ‘Let’s continue over dinner tonight.’
“I
was surprised, but I wasn’t about to say no.
"On
the show Peter is more action than words, but off it! He has the words
and charm that leave a girl reeling. But I shouldn’t be telling
him this.”
Exactly
where their romance will lead them, both Kay and Peter refuse to speculate.
“It
would serve no purpose,” Peter said firmly. “When I get
my divorce…it becomes another year before it bcomes final.
Peter is
a former beefcake king, having held titles ranging from Mr. International
Health to Mr. Hercules, and is an expert stunt man and driver.
Peter’s
venture into the worlds of beefcake and acting indirectly stems from
youthful football ambitions. Underweight for gridiron, he began a
body-building course.
Later,
organizers of a new college drama club asked him to take a role in
one of its productions in an attempt to dispel an aura of “sissyness”
about acting.
“I
played a strong-man king, and in one scene I had to stoop down and
pick up a child,” Peter said. “people in the front row
began to cry. ‘This is for me,’ I said to myself.”
When the
6ft. 4in. actor joined Mission: Impossible, however, he specially
shed more than 30lb. off his peak competition weight of 250lb.
“My
size then (I used to have a 53in. chest) would genuinely frighten
people,” Peter said.
“On
top of that I’ve discovered that the girls who watch a show
like this like a guy to be physical, but not too much so.
“Nowadays,
I work out two or three times a week just to keep in shape. But when
I was at my peak I’d be in the gym two to three hours every
day and put away six meals a day.”
At times,
these qualifications inspire a blind faith.
No one
consulted him when it was decided to have him shoulder a crated, 110lb.
Eartha Kitt, a feat he somehow managed at the cost of badly bruised
shoulders and thighs.
This faith,
however, is fickle. Early in the series he expertly skidded a truck
across a tarmac right on to the marker, only to see the camera crew
run away in terror and disappear over the lip of the runway.
But Peter
does not claim an unblemished driver’s record. “This day
we were shooting downtown in Hollywood,” he said. “I guess
we had an audience of a couple of hundred people.
“’You’re
about to see one of the best drivers there is in action,’ Martin
Landau told them as we climbed into this portable color studio, worth
about a million and a half bucks, we’d borrowed from the network.
“I
swung it into a tight U-turn and right into a parked car. Marty laughed
all the way back to the studio where all the network officials were
out chewing their fingernails.
“It
was decided we’d have to reshoot the scene that afternoon.
“No
one mentioned the damage, but suddenly all the network guys were concerned
for me. They figured as I had been doing so much driving that I deserved
a rest.”
Most men
like Peter Lupus are presumed to have brains as small as their biceps
are big, but, if it is true, he is certainly an exception.
Long ago
he realized his Mission: Impossible popularity was exploitable
in a business sense, just as he realized that many dreamed of being
a body beautiful.
But Peter
Lupus knew where most men developed. “I’m opening a chain
of eateries,” he said. “How does this sound” Big
Willie’s Hamburgers?”.
