Fifty years ago, Johnny Mathis was acting on The Red Skelton Hour; before that, he was making the rounds on What’s My Line and This Is Your Life in the '50s, and before that he was of course performing on The Ed Sullivan Show back in '57 – same year he was on The Big Record and The Julius LaRosa Show and Perry Como’s Kraft Music Hall and American Bandstand.
Ron Harper was Uncle Jack on Land of the Lost back in the '70s – and while he’s still working decades later now that he’s in his seventies, he made his TV debut decades earlier, beating the deadline on Kraft Theatre with a then-unknown Elizabeth Montgomery in the '50s before spending the '60s bouncing from western to western – Big Valley, Laramie, Wagon Train, Shotgun Slade, Tales of Wells Fargo, The Deputy, you name it – when he wasn’t busy doing light comedy with George Burns.
Holt McCallany is an actor with plenty of work on cop shows – CSI (and CSI: MIAMI), and LAW & ORDER (and LAW & ORDER: CI, and LAW & ORDER: SVU), and GOLDEN BOY, and BLUE BLOODS, and MONK, and et cetera; he’s set to play a detective up on the big screen later this year – and his dad was a Tony winner, and his mom is Julie Wilson, who did a 1956 TV movie before doing Suspicion and Kraft Theatre in 1957.
Billy Graham counts, right?
Noel de Souza was on the Big Bang Theory last night. He played a tutor on the Loretta Young Show 60 years ago.
Wow, he went from playing Paco on Zorro to playing Gandhi on Star Trek. Not a lot of guys can say that. In fact, I’m guessing nobody else can say that.
So long as I’m bumping the thread, let me add that Robert Crawford Jr – who played the recurring role of Pogo on Zorro in '58, before earning an Emmy nomination for his work on Playhouse 90 in '59 – was acting on various TV shows in '57, after making his movie debut in '56; kept acting, on TV and in the movies, in the '60s; and then switched to producing in the '70s and '80s and '90s, before appearing As Himself in documentaries here and now in the '00s and '10s.
Joan Hotchkis was Oscar Madison’s girlfriend on The Odd Couple, but before that she was racking up small-screen credits in the 1960s – episodes of Bewitched, a TV movie with Jason Robards as Abe Lincoln, and so on – and before that, she was acting on Robert Montgomery Presents in '57 and Frontier in '56 and so on.
Was still at it in a TV movie with John Stamos not too long ago, at that.
Roy Rogers of course starred in The Roy Rogers Show back when, and is of course long dead, and so of course can’t tell you about how it used to be. But his kids can, since Cheryl Rogers and Roy Rogers Jr are still with us the better part of a century after acting on that show, sure as they got work in between – this one on Happy Days, that one on The Fall Guy, one or the other on Cagney & Lacey, and so on.
Likewise, since Micky Dolenz was Circus Boy, his sister Coco Dolenz acted on episode after episode before the end of '57, because, well, she was right there, y’know?
Bill Daily is still making TV appearances in the '10s like he did in the '00s and the '90s and the '80s after spending all those years mooching off Bob Newhart in the '70s after all those years as Major Healy on I Dream of Jeannie in the '60s, and as per IMDB he was acting on The Farmer’s Daughter well before any of that – same year you could see him on My Mother, The Car – and so on, dating back to when he was playing announcer on Tonight! with Steve Allen back in '53 and '54 and '55.
Does he still do that cooking show in Albuquerque? That’s where he was living when I lived there. He had a local cooking show. I did not have a TV at the time but still managed to catch it occasionally at friends’ homes.
Betty White Baby!
Wiki sez he effectively retired from regular broadcasting in '09 – when he stopped hosting an Albuquerque radio show – and now only makes occasional TV appearances.
Speaking of which, wiki also sez TV legend Garry Marshall"is also an actor, making his TV acting debut starting as a child with a recurring role in the long-running CBS series The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show (1950–58)" – which I can see mention of all over the web in general, but not on IMDB in particular, so I’m a little reluctant to use it to bump the thread.
That said, there’s another octogenarian who I’m a bit reluctant to mention, but who definitely qualifies, what with his time as a What’s My Line? mystery guest, and his performing on The Colgate Comedy Hour – and everything else from working with Wally Cox and Jonathan Winters on The NBC Comedy Hour to making appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show – all after appearing on TV in the 1951 World Series, not to mention all his pre-1957 appearances in All-Star Games, because Willie Mays.
(He even beat the deadline on Tonight! with Steve Allen, like I was just saying.)
I believe Willie also made an appearance as a warlock on Bewitched in the '60s.
Emmy nominee Meg Mundy was still getting soap-opera work on All My Children in the '00s after doing LAW & ORDER episodes in the '90s after doing movies ranging from Fatal Attraction in the '80s to Eyes of Laura Mars in the '70s after doing TV shows like Naked City and Moment of Fear in the '60s – after acting on a dozen TV shows in the '50s, after earning '40s credits on Suspense and The Ford Theatre Hour.
(To put it the other way around, she’s gone from playing Jo in a made-for-TV version of “Little Women” to getting big-screen work as – well, “Grandmother”.)
Johnny Carson’s [del]second banana Ed McMahon[/del] third banana Doc Severinsen was performing on television back in '57 – and '56, and '55, and '54, and '53. (He also has various TV acting credits: apparently not just stunt casting as Doc The Trumpeter, but as, like, the hotel manager in an episode of Bonanza. Why? I have no idea.)
It’s a shame Rhodes Reason wasn’t mentioned earlier in this thread, since he racked up plenty of early TV credits long before passing away late last month.
But his brother Rex Reason is still with us, long after starring as the title character in Man Without A Gun in 1957 and 1958 and 1959, after acting on Schlitz Playhouse and Conflict and Science Fiction Theatre and et cetera.
(Rex also got plenty of big-screen roles back then: Band of Angels, with Clark Gable; Salome, with Rita Hayworth; Taza, Son of Cochise with Rock Hudson; and so on. And, honestly: ROCK HUDSON AND REX REASON? Sounds like THEY FIGHT CRIME!)
Broadway actress Allyn Ann McLerie is still up and around, after landing a recurring role on Brooklyn Bridge in the 1990s and one on The Days And Nights Of Molly Dodd in the 1980s – and those years on The Tony Randall Show in the 1970s after performing on the Music For A Spring Night TV series in the 1960s – after beating the 1957 deadline on Paul Whiteman’s Goodyear Revue and The Ed Sullivan Show.
(Plenty of movie roles going back through the years, too: All The President’s Men, with Robert Redford; The Way We Were, with Redford; Jeremiah Johnson, with Redford; and so on.)
Back in the 1950s, Virginia McKenna beat the deadline as a young Juliet in a made-for-TV version of “Romeo and Juliet”; by the 1970s, she was old enough to play Mrs. Darling in a made-for-TV version of “Peter Pan” with Mia Farrow as Peter Pan, and Danny Kaye as Captain Hook, and, honestly, that just sounds all kinds of messed up.
In between, she of course earned a 1960s Golden Globe nomination, for Born Free, and that’s probably going to be stuck in your head all day now, and I apologize.
Since there’s fresh discussion in another thread about Raiders of the Lost Ark, I’m reminded that Nicole Maurey of Secret of the Incas fame is still with us sixty years after acting on The Ford Television Theatre in '55. (She also beat the deadline on Casablanca and Overseas Press Club - Exclusive! – which weren’t, respectively, a movie and a tabloid news show, but classic 1950s TV fiction.)