Born as Irena Ludmilla Vladimirovna Augustinovich in Warsaw, Lisa Montell had the dark-but-not-too-dark looks that endeared her to folks making TV westerns in the '50s: she acted on Broken Arrow and Tales of Wells Fargo and The Gene Autry Show and Cheyenne and Colt .45 before '58 – when she was on the big screen, in The Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold – after which she’d pop by whenever The Deputy needed someone to play Rosaria Martinez, or Maverick needed an Andalucia Rubio, or Have Gun - Will Travel needed a Soledad Ortega, and so on for Bat Masterson and Maverick and Frontier Doctor and et cetera.
(Of course, that was hardly the limit of her abilities; pre-'58, you could also see her on Public Defender and Lux Video Theatre and The O. Henry Playhouse and The Millionaire and Cavalcade of America and so on. But that’s also when you could see her in movies like Tomahawk Trail and The Wild Dakotas, because, y’know, that was her signature schtick.)
Arthur Miller’s kid sister Joan Copeland appeared on Armstrong Circle Theatre back in '57, after years of acting on The Web and Pulitzer Prize Playhouse and Suspense and Campbell Summer Soundstage and General Electric Theater.
(In her seventies, she had a recurring role as Judge Rebecca Stein on LAW & ORDER; in her eighties, she was still picking up work on NYPD Blue and Johnny Zero.)
Patricia Barry is set to appear in a movie later this year – sixty years after she was on The Motorola Television Hour with ten-year-old child actor Christopher Walken.
Before that, she’d done Armstrong Circle Theatre and Robert Montgomery Presents and The Philco-Goodyear Television Playhouse; she later made the rounds on more than half-a-dozen other TV shows before 1958, followed by the soap-opera trifecta of Days of Our Lives and Guiding Light and All My Children.
Bernadette Withers made her television debut back in '55, when you could see her on Buffalo Bill Jr and Schlitz Playhouse and TV Reader’s Digest; by '56 she’d moved on to Warner Brothers Presents, and by '57 she’d started her recurring role as Ginger on Bachelor Father (which she kept at in '58 and '59 and '60 and '61 and '62).
She was still working, both as an actress and a stuntwoman, as recently as 2000.
Dickie Jones spent '55 and '56 as the eponymous star of Buffalo Bill Jr after years of working on other TV westerns in his twenties – be it four episodes of Annie Oakley, or ten of The Gene Autry Show, or seventy-eight of The Range Rider – after making his television debut on The Lone Ranger back in '49; he also racked up pre-'58 credits on Navy Log and Chevron Theatre and Mr. & Mrs. North and et cetera.
(Incidentally, his movie credits date back to '34: before he was in Sands of Iwo Jima with John Wayne in the '40s, he was everything from the voice of Pinocchio to the Senate page in Mr. Smith Goes To Washington.)
Rosemary Prinz made her TV debut in '51 on Lights Out, and after appearing on Broadway with Walter Matthau she became a castmember on First Love by '54; she then got work on Robert Montgomery Presents in '55 before starting all those years on As The World Turns in '56.
She’s picked up plenty more work on Broadway as well: a play with Robert Picardo and Jack Lemmon, another play with Theodore Bikel and Louis Jordan, another other play with Hal Linden and Butterfly McQueen, you name it. (Her most recent acting credit was in 2010, at the age of eighty.)
We should probably check thing more carefully guys as several people on here have either been mentioned several times (Anne Jackson and James Hong) or are deceased and have been since before this thread was started.
Here are a few more:
Eilene Janssen, a minor character actress who had several teenaged roles in the mid-1950s including ***Tales of the Wells Fargo ***and Father Knows Best is still very much alive. Although she no longer acts and hasn’t in many decades,she is still with us.
Dewey Martin is still among the living. A “beefcake” actor in the 1950s he had roles in such classics as Climax! and The Loretta Young Show.
Anglo-Russian actress, Joan Lorring will celebrate her 88th birthday this year. Her first television credit was for a role in The Philco-Goodyear Television Playhouse in 1952. Her last credited role in was in ABCs The Love Boat in 1980.
Richard Sanders, best known to today’s viewing audiences as Les Nessman in the 1970’s cult TV hit WKRP in Cincinnati is still alive. He was a child in the in the 1950s and his first credited roles were for The Philco-Goodyear Television Playhouse in 1950.
As far as I can tell, Patti Gallagher hasn’t yet been mentioned and is still alive decades after making her television debut in '53 – the year she was on I Led 3 Lives and You Are There. You could still see her acting on You Are There in '55, and picking up work on Sergeant Preston of the Yukon; by '57, she’d also acted on Navy Log.
Speaking of which: since someone later repeated my mention of James Hong, how about Frances Fong? She also acted on Navy Log – in '56, same year she was on Cavalcade of America after appearing in all those New Adventures of China Smith episodes. (In her seventies, you could see her on the big screen in Rush Hour.)
Back before William Woodson was the iconic narrator on Challenge of the SuperFriends, he was the narrator on Dick Tracy in the early '50s and the narrator on Lights Out in the '40s. He also picked up bona fide acting work – on The Borden Show and The Philco-Goodyear Television Playhouse in the '40s; on episodes of Schlitz Playhouse and the Mickey Spillane’s ‘Mike Hammer!’ TV Movie in '54; on The Adventures of Falcon and Producers’ Showcase in '55; and et cetera.
You could see Wally Cassell on Mr. & Mrs. North in '52 and '53 and '54 before he popped up on The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show and Schlitz Playhouse and Gunsmoke and so on before '57 – when he appeared on Date With The Angels with a young Betty White.
Cassell is ninety-nine now, the better part of a century after all his other pre-'57 television experience – on Treasury Men In Action and The Lone Wolf and Waterfront and Crossroads and et cetera – but before all of that, he was getting work in dozens of movies during the '40s (often simply credited as ‘Soldier’ or ‘Sailor’ or ‘Marine Corporal’ or ‘POW’ or whatever, but, hey, it’s a living).
Lee Miller made his TV debut in '55 on The Bob Cummings Show and appeared on series after series before he started playing Sergeant Brice on Perry Mason in '57, which he kept plugging away at in '58 and '59 and '60 and '61 and '62 and '63 and '64 and '65 and '66 – after which you could see him on all those episodes of Ironside starting in '67, since, well, he maybe wasn’t a great actor, but he sure was terrific at doubling as Raymond Burr’s stand-in.
(Plenty of pre-'57 movie credits as well: in Godzilla, King of the Monsters alongside Raymond Burr, and Please Murder Me alongside Raymond Burr, and Tarzan and the She-Devil alongside Raymond Burr, and Meet Danny Wilson alongside Raymond Burr, and A Place In The Sun alongside Raymond Burr, and…)
Jon Cypher was the Prince to Julie Andrews as Cinderella back in '57, the year when you could also see him in episode after episode of Armstrong Circle Theatre.
In the '60s, he was apparently a castmember on Our Five Daughters; in the '70s, a castmember on Marcus Welby, MD; in the '80s, he was a veritable fixture as Da Chief on Hill Street Blues; in the '90s, ditto as Da General on Major Dad; and, as recently as the '00s, got yet another paycheck with yet another recurring role: voicing a Batman villain shortly before playing a therapist accused of homicide on LAW & ORDER.
Born in 1920, Carole Mathews started getting movie work in '35 and soon found herself acting on over twenty different TV shows from 1950 to 1957.
Note that she was of course still appearing in movies during that period; for example, City of Bad Men, with Tom McDonough as Deputy Tex. McDonough racked up small roles in big-screen westerns dating back to Desperadoes of the West in 1950 – he was billed as ‘Cowpuncher’ in Cattle Drive, and as ‘Trail Herder’ in Tension at Table Rock, and as ‘Posse Member’ in Cave of Outlaws – and in '56 he acted on Schlitz Playhouse, in the “A Tale of Wells Fargo” episode; by '57, he’d moved on to acting in episode after episode after episode of – well, Tales of Wells Fargo, since who else is going to play the ‘Shotgun Guard’ role?
(But I’m being unfair to the guy; his later TV roles really ran the gamut. Why, he was ‘Bank Guard’ on The Lucy Show, sure as he was ‘Prison Guard’ on Mission: Impossible and ‘Gorilla Guard’ on Planet of the Apes after he was ‘Guard’ on The Invaders.)
Elaine Riley got plenty of work on TV westerns in 1957 and earlier – a few episodes of Hopalong Cassidy, a few episodes of The Gene Autry Show, a few episodes of The Range Rider, and everything else from Stories of the Century to The Cisco Kid after making her small-screen debut in 1950 on The Lone Ranger – sure as you could likewise see her on State Trooper and Private Secretary and Public Defender and Combat Sergeant and et cetera.
David Sheiner could be seen acting on The Big Story in '57 after years of getting all sorts of other television work – from Studio One in Hollywood with Art Carney and The Best of Broadway with Joseph Cotten to the old Tom Corbett, Space Cadet series and The Phil Silvers Show – and then moved on to big-screen roles: you maybe remember him from the Lemmon-and-Matthau version of The Odd Couple, or as one of the Biblical types in The Greatest Story Ever Told.
Speaking of which, Greatest Story also featured Carroll Baker, who’d earned pre-'56 TV credits on Danger and The Web – and even Monodrama Theater, on the long-ago DuMont Network – before (a) getting an Oscar nomination for her Baby Doll work, and (b) playing a Schwarzenegger villain, in Kindergarten Cop.
Since they just got mentioned in other threads, I’ll add that both James Lipton and Shelley Berman qualify – Lipton on the strength of his pre-'55 work on everything from Guiding Light to Armstrong Circle Theatre to The Goldbergs, and even playing Michelangelo in a Sidney-Lumet-directed episode of You Are There; and Berman by making his TV debut in '54 on The Philco-Goodyear Television Playhouse, sticking with it in '55 when it morphed into Goodyear Playhouse, and then popping by to do schtick on The Steve Allen Plymouth Show in '57.
A child actor, Ricky Kelman is still among us. He got his start in The Red Skelton Hour in 1954 and was a feature in many projects throughout the mid and late 1950s.
**
Lana Wood**, arguably Natalie Wood’s less talented sister is still around.Her first role was in a 1958’s Have Gun,Will Travel
Dianne Foster,a Canadian actress who did some television in the 1950s (an episode of the 1955 drama Riverboat being a standout, is still among the living. She’ll be 80 this year (2014).