After hosting the Manhattan Showcase TV series in the '40s, future two-time Tony winner and three-time Emmy winner Helen Gallagher was singing on The Colgate Comedy Hour and acting on Kraft Theatre before the end of '57; you could also see her on episodes of The Ed Sullivan Show and Don Ameche’s Musical Playhouse and The Paul Whiteman’s Goodyear Revue and et cetera.
Zohra Lampert was acting on TV back as far back as '56, and after doing episodes of Decoy in the late '50s spent the '60s on classic shows like The Defenders and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour and I SPY and The Man From UNCLE, and kept at it in the '70s (when she won an Emmy on Kojack) and '80s (when she got work on Knight Rider and Airwolf and et cetera) before sticking exclusively to movies in the '90s and '00s and '10s.
Happy 96[sup]th[/sup], Jerry!
Michael Learned, who back in the 1970s was nominated for six consecutive Emmys on The Waltons – and won half of 'em, which is pretty good – did a TV miniseries back in 1963, and a made-for-TV version of Great Expectations in 1962, after earning her first TV credit back in 1961. So she doesn’t qualify.
But her ex-husband Peter Donat – yeah, he’s good back to '57 (Producers’ Showcase), and '56 (Camera Three), and '55 (Showcase, again), and '54 (Kraft Theatre), and '53 (Robert Montgomery Presents). And, man, he’s a That Guy Who Was In That Thing if anyone ever was.
Corinne Conley is still getting work in her eighties – just a few months ago she was on TV acting alongside Erica “Smallville” Durance and Michael “Stargate” Shanks – and in her seventies she voiced Gran Berenstain on the Berenstain Bears cartoon and played Rose Kennedy in that made-for-TV movie about RFK with Linus Roache in the role he was born to play. (Seriously, how did he only top out at a Golden Globe nomination for that one?)
Anyhow, in her sixties she was doing episodes of Forever Knight, and in her fifties she was doing episodes of Quincy M.E., and in her forties it was Hogan’s Heroes, and in her thirties she was frickin’ Dolly on Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer, so, yeah. And in her twenties she was beating the deadline on (a) TV show after TV show after TV show, and on (b) the Flight Into Danger TV movie, where she played the stewardess on a plane where the pilot and co-pilot have succumbed to food poisoning after eating the fish, which means a passenger has to take the controls even though he maybe has a drinking problem and maybe isn’t over Macho Grande.
To bump this for post 666, I’ll note that Keely Smith did “That Old Black Magic” at the fiftieth Grammy Awards with Kid Rock – which was only fair, since that song won big for her and Louis Prima at the first Grammy Awards way back in 1959, the year they sang together on The Ed Sullivan Show.
And they were still singing together on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1960, when she was appearing on The Jack Paar Tonight Show. Heck, they were still singing together on The Ed Sullivan Show even after she did The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson.
And after acting on The Loretta Young Show and The Red Skelton Hour, she made the rounds on The Dean Martin Show and The Joey Bishop Show and so on…
…but, for purposes of the thread, I’ll of course add that, yes, before she and Prima were doing their thing on The Frank Sinatra Show in 1958, she was appearing on TV back in 1957, the year her first album came out.
Kiefer Sutherland’s mom (and Donald Sutherland’s ex-wife) Shirley Douglas is still up and around – that was her as Madeleine Albright in that Path To 9/11 TV movie just a few years back – but back before she was playing the Grandma in a Barney video, and before she was on Alfred Hitchcock Presents with Mike Connors, and even before she had a small role in Lolita back when James Mason was at his best, she was acting on TV (a) before the deadline, and (b) with an intro from Douglas Fairbanks Jr.
Now in her eighties, Betta St. John made her screen debut alongside Jimmy Stewart way back when in Destry Rides Again, followed by an “Our Gang” short, followed by yet other movie work in the '40s and '50s before switching to TV roles in '55 and '56 and '57 (and '58 and '59, for that matter).
She still makes the rounds on occasion: popping in when the surviving original-cast members from South Pacific are reliving their glory days, or when she’s being interviewed about those Tarzan movies she did in the '50s and '60s, and et cetera.
Ed Ames beat the deadline on State Trooper and Cavalcade of Stars and, y’know, The Ames Brothers Show, but you maybe remember him from his Daniel Boone days as the tomahawk-thrower Johnny Carson didn’t know was Jewish.
Poor little rich girl Gloria Vanderbilt was acting on Studio One In Hollywood and Producers’ Showcase before the deadline, after which she spent the rest of the '50s acting on Kraft Theatre and Playhouse 90 and so on, and then she kept acting in the '60s before of course making TV appearances as herself in the '70s and '80s and '90s and '00s and '10s, including rather a lot with son Anderson Cooper.
In the 1980s, Jennifer Grey had a promising career and a distinctive nose, both of which are long gone. But her famous dad Joel Grey is still around, and so has already been mentioned; and her less-famous mom, Jo Wilder, is also still around, more than fifty years after she was acting on The Defenders and The Detectives and so on: back in '56 she was acting on Stanley with Buddy Hackett and Paul Lynde and appearing on Washington Square like Vincent Price and Sammy Davis Jr.
Note that this also makes Clark Gregg her son-in-law.
Korean War veteran Sonny James is still with us long after beating the deadline on everything from The DuPont Show of the Month to The Spike Jones Show to The Ed Sullivan Show, sure as he was plenty busy on Hee Haw in the '60s and '70s and '80s.
Jerry Lewis has been mentioned, and with good reason.
Jerry Lee Lewis, though, has so far escaped mention, despite racking up actor and singer credits on The Steve Allen Plymouth Show as far back as 1957, the year he was appearing on episode after episode after episode of American Bandstand.
Goodness gracious.
Iconic TV game-show host Tom Kennedy – that was him on Hollywood Squares, and on Break The Bank, and on To Say The Least, and on everything else from Password Plus to Password All-Stars to Super Password – was earning paychecks as the announcer on Date With The Angels in '57 and '58; after that, it was all Match Game this and Name That Tune that and The Price Is Right the other and so on for decades.
Surely it was Peter Marshall on Squares and Gene Rayburn on Match Game?
Also, To Say the Least? Are you sure it wasn’t You Don’t Say?
The only other thing I remember Tom on was Split Second, but it’s not listed above.
His IMDB page credits him with roughly a dozen appearances on Hollywood Squares, as well as dozens of credits hosting To Say The Least, plus, y’know, Match Game.
Oh, that’s on there too – and him hosting Doctor IQ in the '50s, and hosting About Faces in the '60s, and hosting It’s Your Bet in the '70s, and hosting Body Language in the '80s, and a bunch of other stuff. How much time have you got?
Oh, and so long as I’m bumping this thread with that reply, I’ll add that your healthy skepticism brings to mind the SDMB’s favorite magician and constant inspiration to us all: The Amazing Randi, who beat the deadline on live national television by spending an hour and a half in a sealed metal coffin on the bottom of a swimming pool on the Today show to beat Harry Houdini’s record. And then, sure, from 1959 to 1967 you could see him on Wonderama, and after doing I’ve Got A Secret he was the magician in the pilot episode of Sesame Street in 1969 – followed, of course, by all those appearances on The Tonight Show in the 1970s and 1980s, followed by his own James Randi: Psychic Investigator series in the 1990s, followed by various episodes of Penn & Teller: Bullshit in the '00s, followed by plenty of stuff right here in the '10s.
Karen Pendleton spent '55 and '56 and '57 as a Mickey Mouse Club Mouseketeer, stopping off along the way to do Along The Oregon Trail (and Westward Ho, The Wagons up on the big screen, but that’s irrelevant).
Jolene Brand has 3 tv appearances in 1957, one on Burns and Allen. She’s 81 now and has been married to George Schlatter since 1956!
I see she did an episode of Zorro in '58 – alongside Jack Lilley, who’d been acting on that show since back in '57 (the year he was also acting on Cheyenne) and kept at it in '59 (when he was also on Maverick and Rawhide and Bat Masterson) and '60 (when he was also on Sugarfoot and Have Gun - Will Travel and Wanted: Dead or Alive).
He then spent the '60s and '70s and '80s and '90s playing a stagecoach driver whenever they needed one on The Wild Wild West, or Gunsmoke, or Little House on the Prairie, or Rough Riders, and et cetera; in the '00s and '10s, he’s been working steadily as a wrangler on TV and in the movies; IMDB has his most recent credit right here in '15.
I see Maureen O’Hara is set to get special attention at the Oscars later this month, long after all that small-screen work she got in the '60s – that was her as Mrs. Miniver in the 1960 Mrs. Miniver TV movie on CBS, and that was her as Lady Marguerite in the DuPont Show of the Month’s made-for-TV version of “The Scarlet Pimpernel” later the same year, and after that she was singing on The Ed Sullivan Show in '61 and '62, sure as she was beating the deadline on The Ed Sullivan Show back in the '50s well before that, and likewise on Lux Video Theatre, sure as she made the 1950s rounds on The Bob Hope Show and The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show and so on and son, forever and ever, amen.