Before starting work in the Bond movies and the Pink Panther films, Burt Kwouk was acting on television in general and before the deadline in particular.
Valentina Cortese made her TV acting debut in 1955, alongside Douglas Fairbanks Jr; after a couple of movie roles in 1956, you could see her on Lux Video Theatre in 1957 and Schlitz Playhouse in 1958 – after which she did a TV miniseries in the 1960s, and another one in the early 1970s, and then picked up an Oscar nomination before doing another other TV miniseries in the late 1970s, followed by one in the 1980s.
Warren Mitchell was making television history in Requiem For A Heavyweight in '57, after playing various other small-screen roles – an art dealer in '56, Oliver Cromwell in '55, and so on – when he wasn’t busy with one pre-deadline TV movie or another. And he’s still up and around in his eighties.
Wiki sez that Marlon Brando’s second wife Movita Castaneda is the last surviving castmember of Mutiny On The Bounty – no, not the one with Brando; the one with Clark Gable – and she earned plenty of small-screen credits before the end of 1956, on Conflict and General Electric Theater and The Adventures of Kit Carson.
After playing Lady MacDuff to Orson Welles as Macbeth, Peggy Webber acted on dozens of TV shows before the cut-off date – including Dragnet in '52 and '53 and '54 and '55, before getting work on westerns like Cheyenne in '56 and Gunsmoke in '57.
Happy Halloween to WWII veteran John Zacherle, who made his TV acting debut on a small-screen western years before hosting Shock Theater in '57 and '58, which begat Zacherley At Large and from there to Chiller Theatre and et cetera.
Rico Alaniz got work on half-a-dozen TV shows – everything from Our Miss Brooks to The Lone Ranger – before playing the sneaky Mister Cousin in '55 and '56 and '57 and '58 and '59 on The Life And Legend Of Wyatt Earp, after which he kept acting in the '60s and '70s and '80s and '90s.
Miss Utah Carol Ohmart got work on The Colgate Comedy Hour and Lights Out and Lux Video Theatre and The 20th Century-Fox Hour before the end of 1957 – after which she spent the rest of the '50s (a) performing on a dozen other TV shows, and (b) playing Vincent Price’s wife on the big screen, in House On Haunted Hill.
Robert Walker Jr looked young as Charlie X on Star Trek, but the dude was actually twenty-six; he’d already been Ensign Pulver in the movies, already gotten classic TV work on The Defenders and Ben Casey and Naked City and Route 66 and Dr. Kildare and half-a-dozen other shows after delivering his first performance on, of all things, First Performance in 1957 – after appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1956.
Movie star Irene Papas earned TV acting credits shortly before and after the 1957 deadline – with Sebastian Cabot and Elaine Stritch, respectively – and in the 1960s did Zorba the Greek with Anthony Quinn, and Anne of the Thousand Days with Anthony Quayle, and The Guns of Navarone with Quinn and Quayle, and et cetera.
Before he became the avuncular face of Turner Classic Movies, Robert Osborne was a struggling actor in the '50s – making his TV debut on Death Valley Days in '54 before acting on Whirlybirds and The Californians and Alcoa Presents: One Step Beyond, not to mention working with Lucy and Desi on The Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse.
He kept at it in the '60s – in the pilot episode of The Beverly Hillbillies, even – but before the decade was out, he’d switched from being an actor to writing books about actors; in the '70s, he landed a Hollywood Reporter column; in the '80s, he became president of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association; and the rest is history.
Tom Troupe and Carole Cook have been married for over fifty years, and have been acting on television for even longer – his credits go back to '57, hers to '56 – and she was just in an episode of Major Crimes earlier this year, sure as he’s got a small part in a movie that’s in post-production, sure as IMDB lists both of 'em as appearing in an upcoming episode of a new TV show that’s now in pre-production.
Catherine Boyle has half-a-dozen TV appearances before the end of 1957 – mostly acting, but also serving as a game-show panelist on The Name’s The Same – and in 1958, she did a movie with Jackie Collins, who’d likewise racked up acting credits in 1957 and 1956 after making her TV acting debut back in 1955.
(I could of course say something here about her big sister Joan Collins, who’s been getting movie roles since '51 and so naturally spent the late '50s making the rounds on The Ed Sullivan Show and The Bob Hope Show and The Steve Allen Plymouth Show when she wasn’t busy as a What’s My Line panelist, but that seems like overkill.)
Jean Marsh is still acting on TV in her eighties as of this year – she got her most recent Emmy nomination in her seventies, back in 2011 – and she’s of course been getting all kinds of work on television for the better part of a century: in the 1990s you could see her on Murder She Wrote, in the 1980s on The Love Boat, in the 1970s on Hawaii Five-0, in the 1960s on I Spy, in the 1950s on Twilight Zone…
…and, sure, those are all after the deadline, but she also racked up pre-deadline TV credits dating back to her small-screen debut in 1952. (And in 1953, she made her big-screen debut alongside Lloyd Bridges, who was already in his forties.)
After making his TV debut on State Trooper in '56, Nicholas Georgiade promptly got work on Playhouse 90 and The Millionaire and Whirlybirds before famously playing Enrico Rossi on The Untouchables in '59 and '60 and '61 and '62 and '63.
Frazer Hines has dozens of 1950s TV credits – and, yes, more than a dozen of them are from '57 and earlier – and he’s still acting on television as we speak.
As it’s the 11th, I’ll mention WWII veteran Fredd Wayne, who made his small-screen debut back in 1949 on The Philco-Goodyear Television Playhouse before performing on Musical Comedy Time in 1950 and then acting on dozens of classic shows before the end of 1957: Maverick, Gunsmoke, Make Room For Daddy, and et cetera.
You maybe remember him as Benjamin Franklin, on Bewitched.
Gladys Holland’s first TV role was in 1952 and has worked sporadically since. Most recently a voice job in 2013.
(I had a half dozen others lined up but upon checking, found they were already mentioned. William Phipps was a good one.)
And happy 89th birthday to the previously mentioned June Whitfield (the mother from Ab Fab). Still has stuff in production.
I see where she had a recurring role on Beverly Hills 90210 – just like Joe E. Tata, who played the sixtyish owner of The Peach Pit, where the cool kids hang out.
Tata doesn’t count, though he misses it pretty close by making his television debut on Peter Gunn back in '60 before getting black-and-white work on first-season episodes of The Outer Limits, and so on. And by “and so on”, I mean he played henchman to various Batman villains: the Riddler, the Penguin, even King Tut…
…which brings me to 1950s pro wrestler Mike Lane, who made his movie debut as a towering boxer in The Harder They Fall with Bogie in '56 before getting television roles on Cheyenne and Maverick and Tales of the 77th Bengal Lancers in '57; he then got work on half-a-dozen other TV shows in '58 and '59 – and was back on the big screen, because who else is going to play the hulking monster opposite Boris Karloff as Victor von Frankenstein? – and after playing Hercules in a sword-and-sandal flick, he likewise earned a paycheck as That Guy Looming Over Adam West.
Dean Jones of course owes his name recognition to Disney roles in That Darn Cat and Blackbeard’s Ghost and The Love Bug and The Shaggy D.A. and et cetera – but before all of that, he was getting TV work on westerns like Outlaws and Stagecoach West and Zane Grey Theater and Tales of Wells Fargo and so on.
And before all of that, you could see the Korean War veteran up on the big screen playing a naval officer in Torpedo Run and a Marine lieutenant in Until They Sail and a sergeant in Never So Few and a corporal in Imitation General.
And before that, he was beating the deadline as a singer on episode after episode of The Steve Allen Plymouth Show when he wasn’t busy on The Spike Jones Show. (And back before that, he was making his screen debut – as, of course, an enlisted man, opposite young Paul Newman in Somebody Up There Likes Me.)