I’m hard pressed to think of a comedian from the Golden Age of TV that wasn’t seriously fucking impressive in a dramatic role.
Milton Berle floored me with his acting chops. Jackie Gleason was amazing. Don Rickles, Jerry Lewis, George Burns… all remarkably talented dramatic actors.
In what roles?
Bobby Darin as a young American Nazi in “Pressure Point”. Basically a two-man show with him and Sidney Poitier. Great film, BTW.
I saw the American Playhouse he did for PBS back in the 80s; he played a dying patriarch trying to mediate his 4 sons. I thought it was pretty good and sometime after my journalism/drama teacher heard a few of us talking about it and joined in the conversation. He was a great guy and he collected old media: radio shows, short films, certain kinds of music, etc. Mostly tho he loved comedy, which is prolly part of why I and my friends liked him as much as we did: he was on our wavelength.
Anyway, he had a VCR or a Betamax (I don’t remember which) and somehow had a copy of Berle’s appearance on The Dick Powell Show, for which Berle had been nominated for an Emmy. He told us about it and then brought it in and showed it to us. Berle played a blackjack dealer who (with the help of a friend) was trying to skim his employer, gets caught and is faced with a tough choice.
I looked around and found a copy online at Daily Motion but I couldn’t access it, even after signing in and making sure I was well over 50 years old.