Early bit parts by actors famous later.

Cafe Society
1

Watching The Graduate yesterday for the first time in years, I was struck to see two familiar faces in small bit parts.

In the scene where Katharine Ross is in Hoffman’s boarding house room and he tells her the details of his seduction by her mother, Ross screams, bring Norman Fell and other boarders running. The underclassman that exhuberantly offers to call for the police was none other than a very young Richard Dreyfuss.

Near the end of the movie, Hoffman goes to the frat house trying to learn the name of the church where Elaine is to be married. There, Ben Murphy from Alias Smith and Jones tells him to “Save me a piece… of cake”.

Any other obscure sightings you’ve discovered recently in classic movies?

2

In the movie Targets (1968) with Boris Karloff, Mike Farrell, later of MAS*H, is in one of the final scenes.

3

The most surprising is Sylvester Stallone playing a hood in Woody Allen’s Bananas. It seems like a deliberate cameo to modern viewers, but Stallone was an unknown at the time.

Of course, there’s Robert Blake showing up in The Treasure of Sierra Madre, but I doubt anyone recognizes him.

4

I was surprised to see a very young Matt Damon at the dinner table in Mystic Pizza.

5

Harrison Ford’s first movie role was a bit part as a bellhop in Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round.
This is not exactly a secret, as Jay Leno has shown a clip of the entire performance several times when Harrison Ford was a guest. I suspect that by now Mr. Ford is sick of seeing it.

6

Tim Robbins shot Howard Beale at the end of Network.

7

Jack Nicholson as the dental patient in the b&w Little Shop of Horrors

8

Johnny Depp in the original Nightmare on Elm Street

9

Damon Wayans as a fireman in Roxanne
And of course Kevin Bacon (“thank you sir, may I have another?”) in Animal House

10

Farrah Fawcett in Myra Breckenridge
James Earl Jones in Dr. Strangelove

11

Suzanne Sommers was the mystery gal that drove the T-Bird in American Graffetti.

12

Heck, Tom Selleck in Myra Breckinridge, too - he was one of Mae’s lovers.

And you can add in Elliot Gould, making his debut in 1971’s Quick, Let’s Get Married (it was made in 1964, but not released for 7 years).

Or how about Kevin Costner as the dead man in The Big Chill? (Most of his scenes were cut, but that’s him at the beginning, getting dressed for the funeral.)

13

The cell guard who brings Norman Bates a blanket at the end of Psycho is Ted Knight (aka Ted Baxter from Mary Tyler Moore).

14

I was somewhat surprised to see Billy Bob Thornton in Tombstone. He’s the ranch hand who gets into an argument with Doc Holliday, IIRC.

15

A few I recall:

  1. Clint Eastwood was in several cheesey 1950s horror filciks. He was a lab assistant in “Revenge of the Creature From the Black Lagoon,” and was a pilot who dropped a napalm bomb on a giant spider in “Tarantula.”

  2. In “Night Shift,” a bunch of frat boys have an orgy in the morgue. One of the frat boys is Kevin COstner.

  3. Kevin Spacey was a thief on the subway in Meryl Streep’s “Heartburn.”

  4. “Excalibur” features two knights who were then relative unknowns: Liam Neeson and Captain Jean-Luc Picard himself! Patrick Stewart played Guinevere’s father.

  5. John Candy plays one of the graduates in "Class of ‘44’ (a sequel to “The Summer of '42”).

16

Megan Mullally was one of the call girls in Risky Business.

17

Sigourney Weaver is one of Woody Allen’s dates in Annie Hall. It’s a non-speaking role; she appears only by his side in a medium long shot, and is not seen again.

18

  1. Kevin Spacey and Joan Severance were Mel and Susan Profit, recurring bad guys (and quite good) on the old TV show “Wiseguy”

  2. Tom Hanks was the nerd-turned-Karate expert who attacked the Fonz in a memorable episode of “Happy Days”

  3. Bruce Willis can be seen in the Jury during the courtroom scene in The Verdict.

  4. Suzanne Sommers was one of the naked women shot in the swimming pool at the beginning of Magnum Force.

  5. Jerry Seinfeld was a host at a restaurant in Sharky’s Machi----just kidding. :slight_smile:

19

:D:D:D:D:D

Full points, dude.

20

Andy Kaufman’s first screen role was a tiny one as a murderous cop (in the St. Patrick’s day parade,) in Larry Cohen’s God Told Me To. (Sometimes called Demon.)

Jeff Goldblum has an early appearance as an X-ray technician in Ken Russell’s Altered States. Don’t blink.