Charlie Sheen in Being John Malkovich.
Some actors played themselves as regulars in TV shows. James Van Der Beek did it in Don’t Trust the B— in Apartment 23 and Jennifer Grey did it in It’s Like You Know.
Each episode of Extras had a star (or several of them) playing themselves.
Shortly before he passed away in 1966, William Frawley (“Landlord Fred Mertz” in I Love Lucy) did a brief cameo in an episode of The Lucy Show. Lucy bumped into him at a bank (I think) and did a double take.
“Say, you look familiar” she said. (Or something like that.) “Have we met before?”
Frawley deadpanned “No, I don’t think so!” and went on his way. The audience laughed long and hard.
I just remembered CBS newsanchor Walter Cronkite’s cameo on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. The idol of WJM news anchor Ted Baxter walks into the newsroom looking for his old buddy Lou Grant. Ted, busy trying to call someone on the phone, sloughs him off by saying “Yeah, yeah, he’s in there” before realizing who he’s talking to. Of course, he was speechless afterward.
It was moments like this that made MTM funny, and not the dweebs Mary habitually dated.
There’s a cameo of sorts in the movie “The Seven-Year Itch.”
Richard Sherman: I can explain everything! The coffee, the toast, the blonde in the kitchen.
Tom MacKenzie: What blonde in the kitchen?
Richard Sherman: Wouldn’t you like to know! Maybe it’s Marilyn Monroe!
The blonde in the kitchen actually was Marilyn Monroe.
That’s it. Different from what I remembered, but that’s clearly it.
I’m pretty sure there was another cameo encounter set in a bank, but I don’t remember who the celebrity was—Sheldon Leonard, or someone like that. I recall watching it just a few years ago, when Lucy was on late at night on CHCH in Toronto.
Former President Gerald Ford appeared with his wife Betty in an episode of Dynasty in 1983
… And Betty Ford called Mary Richards on the phone in the episode of MTM set in Washington, DC. Mary hung up on her because she thought it was a crank call.
I absolutely loved It’s Like, You Know. Really smart and sweet show that deserved a much bigger audience than it got. I imagine it’s super hard to track down…doesn’t seem to be streaming anywhere.
Oh sorry, to keep this from being a wistful digression, Elliott Gould played himself in an episode, and was great in it.