Watching an old 'Untouchables" episode on one of those on-air retro TV channels while making dinner the other day, a young Peter Falk did a really good job playing a smooth, charming gangster. It was a fun episode seeing Falk play a bad guy. Other than, of course, Columbo and the movie “The In-Laws” a long time ago, I don’t think I’ve seen Falk in much else.
Incidentally, in the episode, Falk’s character tries to bribe Elliot Ness with $500,000 in a Swiss bank account (over $10 MILLION equivalent in today’s money!). Shows Ness a bankbook with his name and $500, 000 written in. And it was just to overlook a gambling device that they were installing in stores. Falk’s character to Ness: “an ordinary working man bets a nickel- just a nickel- and he might win $5. What’s wrong with that?” They must have been hauling in a LOT of nickels to be able to bribe Ness with half a mill in 1934 money. Of course, Ness rips up the bank book, grabs the Falk character by the lapels and tells him he’s going to arrest him and throw him in jail soon.
Someone pointed out to me much later that Billy Crystal’s son in “City Slickers” was played by…
I think it’s also an interesting bit of trivia that Sofia Coppola’s first acting gig was playing a boy.
Coppola’s acting career, marked by frequent criticisms of nepotism and negative reviews,[16][17] began while she was an infant, as she made background appearances in seven of her father’s films. The best known of these is her appearance in The Godfather as the infant Michael Francis Rizzi, in the baptism scene.[18][19]
The Untouchables (the TV show, not the movie) was a treasure chest full of people you knew, people you’d know later, and people you don’t remember you knew.
Barbara Stanwyck
Jack Klugman
Edward Asner
Gavin MacLeod
Anne Francis
Telly Savalas
Lee Marvin
Harry Dean Stanton
Michael Ansara
Martin Landau
Rip Torn
Charles Bronson
Robert Duvall
Robert Redford
Kathleen Nolan
Leslie Nielsen
Not to mention enough character actors to fill every background scene for an entire season of Star Trek, Bonanza, and the Twilight Zone combined.
Saw him playing a guest role in another old show not too long ago. After growing up seeing him playing deadpan comic roles in “Airplane!” onward, it’s really weird to see him being equally deadpan but playing it totally straight and non-ironic in older stuff.
Seems like he played “bad guy henchman #1 or #2” in every other episode of every 60s Western there ever was.
I remember that I once saw an episode of The Untouchables that had Elizabeth Montgomery in a cigarette girl outfit ( think Playboy Bunny cocktail dress ). I was amazed! You have no idea just how attractive she was when she wasn’t costumed in funky-klunky 60s gear.
I made a joke here about an episode of Columbo that had a very young Gwyneth Paltrow in it. It was filmed while her mother, Blythe Danner, was pregnant.
I am constantly recognizing actors that I’ve seen in other roles; always have done. When IMDb came along, it was a godsend; but I still like to try and recognize actors by memory without having to resort to the internet. I saw Breaking Away a while ago, and one of the obnoxious college kids looked familiar. Took me a while, but I eventually realized it was the same guy who played Ellis in Die Hard.
I saw the old “The Outer Limits” episode Demon With a Glass Hand and looked up the female lead to see if she had appeared in anything else. Turned out it was Tasha Martel. She had dozens of TV roles in the 60s through the 80s, including Spock’s fiancée on Star Trek. I sometimes wonder if the best compliment to an actor is to say you didn’t recognize them.
And just last night I saw an old movie that had an early role by George C. Scott. Karl Malden was also in it; they appeared together 11 years later in Patton.
Especially now there are channels that re-run ancient programmes and movies. It’s like those endless conversations my parents used to have: “Wasn’t she in that thing where that chap ran away with, oh, you know the one, you must remember…”
Years ago I was watching Dexter on Netflix (back when it was on Netflix), and I was like “hey, there’s Jonathan Banks”. He played an FBI agent in a couple of episodes before landing the much bigger role he played in Breaking Bad and now Better Call Saul.
I can beat ya on early Jonathan Banks sightings-- several months ago I had “The Waltons” on background while working, and Banks had a guest appearance. Jonathan Banks aged early 30s-ish was almost unrecognizable compared to how he looks today, but something about him looked familiar, so I opened up IMDb and…no way!
Since I haven’t commuted in a year, I’ve watched an awful lot of Leave it to Beaver in the mornings, as a break from the news.
The lady in that clip who asked for the bicycle is Diane Brewster, who was Beaver’s teacher in the first season (eventually replaced by Sue Randall). And of course the bald guy was re-cast as Fred Rutherford, Ward’s colleague at work.
But what I came to mention was there is a later episode where Wally gets a haircut from the actor who eventually became Floyd the Barber in Mayberry.
I also recently saw Tony Dow as a biker in Emergency!, and in a different episode, a very young John Travolta as an injured kid they had to treat.
No discussion of Leave It to Beaver can leave out Veronica Cartwright in the recurring role of Violet Rutherford.
She was even a good enough sport to reprise her role in Still the Beaver in 1985 - after she had been in Alien, The Right Stuff, Invasion of the Body Snatchers and several big budget TV miniseries.
I’m a big fan of Northern Exposure and have binge-watched the whole series every 5 or 6 years since the late 90’s when I discovered reruns on A&E.
It wasn’t until I’d watched through the series 3 or 4 times that I realized that one episode aired in 1993 had Jack Black in it playing a high school student (he was 23 at the time).
According to Wiki’s filmography he’d had several acting credits before then, including as the airplane pilot in Waterworld, which I wasn’t aware of.
Leslie Nielsen played a musician/conductor in a movie called Counterpoint (1968), about a symphony orchestra that’s captured by the SS during the Battle of the Bulge while they’re on a USO tour. (The musicians, not the Nazis.) At one point before the big climax, he has an long talk about their plight with the orchestra’s leader, Charlton Heston.
Not too long ago, I watched this movie for the first time in years. That particular scene was so grave, so serious, so deadpan, I was convulsed in laughter the whole time it was on.
