Teen idol Bobby Rydell was beating the deadline as a regular on TV Teen Club in the 1950s, because of course he was. And he was appearing on The Red Skelton Hour in the '50s likewise, and after doing The Red Skelton Timex Special in 1960 you could still see him acting in skits on Red Skelton’s show in 1961 (when he was still a teen) and 1962 (after he hit twenty) and 1963 and 1964 and 1965, and then doing a TV movie with Red Skelton in 1966, and et cetera.
Happy birthday to Roger Mudd, who produced his first half-hour TV documentary back in 1957, the same year he conducted his first live TV studio interview, followed by rather a lot of stuff in the '60s and '70s and '80s and '90s and '00s and '10s.
Chubby Checker was playing mystery guest on What’s My Line in 1962 after singing on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1961 after appearing on The Dick Clark Show in 1960 and 1959, which isn’t nearly good enough. But Fats Domino, who beat him to it in 1958, was singing on The Steve Allen Plymouth Show years before that – specifically, the year Fats made the first of his own Ed Sullivan Show appearances.
(Heck, go find the 1957 episode of The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet where little Ricky Nelson makes his singing-and-dancing debut when a real swell band comes to town; what’s that tune they’re playing? “I’m Walkin” is what they’re playing.)
Bambi Linn was already mentioned, but the other surviving castmember from the original opening-night production of “Oklahoma” is George S. Irving, who then beat the deadline by acting on The Goldbergs and Producers’ Showcase in the 1950s, and kept his hand in during the 1960s by narrating the Underdog cartoon when he wasn’t appearing on The Patty Duke Show and Car 54 Where Are You and so on before winning the Tony in the 1970s.
And then he was the voice of Heat Miser!
After making his small-screen debut on Chevron Theatre, Robert Horton was acting on The Lone Ranger in '54 and Public Defender in '55 and Alfred Hitchcock Presents in '56 before playing Flint McCullough on Wagon Train in '57 and '58 and '59 and '60 and '61 and '62 before doing TV movies as improbably-named protagonists – Danny Paris? Mark Dolphin? – before starring in his own series as A Man Called Shenandoah.
(You know who else was on episode after episode after episode of Wagon Train after racking up early TV credits in '57 and '56 and '55? Scotty Morrow, also still here.)
(Which brings me to my point: today’s the one-year mark for this thread, and as far as I can tell it can keep getting bumped indefinitely; even if one of the guys I just mentioned passes away tomorrow, this latest post is still relevant so long as the other one is still standing. And likewise for plenty of the previous posts: we just lost Lizabeth Scott, but the post that brought her up touched on Marsha Hunt and Cara Williams as well; we lost Mike Nichols, but we’ve still got Elaine May; we lost Elaine Stritch, but still have Steven Hill; and et cetera; I swear, it’s enough to make me swear off bumping the thread with multiple-actor posts!)
(Except – eh, why bother with half-measures? The point’s made; the list simply goes on and on and on; I could keep bumping this thread daily, but it’s like Poe said: I might have adduced other examples, but I should have proven no more.)
We lost another one: Louis Jordan. Did some early TV anthology work, etc., starting in 1953. Referenced in passing earlier but not actually listed as qualifying.
not any longer.
now kaput.