Re: Ralph Waite.
I know. I know.
Anywho, Florence Henderson is 80 years young today and has a few early TV appearances.
Tina Louise of Gilligan’s Island fame – she’s the one blocking your view of the much cuter actress – turned eighty this week, and got her first screen credit on television in '55, and followed that up in '56 with appearances on Studio One In Hollywood and Appointment With Adventure and Producers’ Showcase, and followed that up with appearances on Climax! and The Phil Silvers Show in '57.
And she’s still acting as of this year, with a movie in the works.
As did Woody Allen, who is 78 now.
That guy! Damn, I did not know he was that old. I remember him from St. Elsewhere.
Rita Moreno made her television debut in '52 by appearing on Fireside Theatre and China Smith and Schlitz Playhouse the same year she was all over the big screen in The Fabulous Señorita and Singin’ In The Rain and The Ring and Cattle Town.
She was in four more movies in '53, but picked up yet more TV credits in her free time; yada yada yada, Emmy Grammy Oscar Tony, now well into her eighties but with yet more television work and a couple of movie roles on the way for this year.
He was also an associate producer on Alfred Hitchcock Presents and a director on The Adventures of Kit Carson.
For those of you who can’t get enough of the question, you need to know about the Dead People Server. Dead yet? Check 'em out!
Elaine Stritch, who got all those Emmy nominations on 30 ROCK as Alec Baldwin’s sarcastic mom, had recurring roles on LAW & ORDER and THE COSBY SHOW after decades of TV work – with plenty of pre-'58 credits dating back to the '40s, when she played an insurance salesman’s screwball wife on THE GROWING PAYNES.
In '53 and '54, she was active on GOODYEAR PLAYHOUSE – just like Steven Hill, who likewise wound up on LAW & ORDER after working on TV in the '40s (on SUSPENSE and THEATRE OF ROMANCE and ACTOR’S STUDIO). So he was on MAGNAVOX THEATRE in '50, and ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS in '57, and picked up over a dozen TV credits in between, long before playing the team leader on MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE.
Didn’t he also play a man who was accused of stealing a radio in an episode that Aunt Bee was the lone holdout on a jury and ultimately forced the jury to vote Not Guilty and it was finally found out that the accused was really not guilty?
[quote=“GuanoLad, post:23, topic:681218”]
June Foray is still around, and is still doing it. /quote]:eek:
I just watched 12 Angry Men, and was struck by the cast – most of them would have easily qualified for this thread, except that all but one are dead. Henry Fonda, Lee J. Cobb, E. G. Marshall, Martin Balsam, Jack Warden, John Fiedler, Jack Klugman, Edward Binns, Joseph Sweeney, Ed Begley, George Voskovec*, Robert Webber
- the only one still alive
Two-time Tony winner Marian Seldes, now in her eighties, got plenty of TV work from '51 to '57: Lux Video Theatre, Kraft Theatre, Matinee Theatre, Zane Grey Theater, General Electric Theater, and everything else from Playhouse 90 to an episode of Gunsmoke to a TV movie about Emily Bronte; she kept working on TV and in the movies during the '60s, and the '70s, and the '80s and '90s and '00s and '10s.
And then there’s two-time Oscar winner Luise Rainer, now well over a hundred, who was acting on the Chevrolet Tele-Theatre back in the 1940s before getting work on the BBC Sunday-Night Theatre in '50, and Faith Baldwin Romance Theatre in '51, and Schlitz Playhouse in '52, and Lux Video Theatre in '53, and Suspense in '54.
Yes, you’re both correct: “Jack Nicholson played the baby’s father in ‘Opie Finds a Baby’ and played the defendant in ‘Aunt Bee the Juror’.” Assuming that first one is when he was arrested for speeding.
There’s also DeadOrAlive.
Sean Connery got all kinds of television work in '57 and earlier: a small part on The Jack Benny Program, the leading role on a BBC production of Requiem For A Heavyweight, a TV movie of Anna Christie, and everything else from Sailor of Fortune to Dixon of Dock Green.
He was later up for the role of Captain Von Trapp in The Sound Of Music, which of course went instead to Christopher Plummer – who was likewise pretty busy on TV back before '58, in made-for-television versions of The Prince And The Pauper and Othello and Cyrano de Bergerac and Oedipus, The King when he wasn’t busy getting work on Kraft Theatre and Ponds Theater and General Electric Theater and Broadway Television Theatre and et cetera, and then spent the rest of the '50s in TV movie versions of The Philadelphia Story and A Doll’s House and Johnny Belinda while Connery embarked on the role of his career: playing the villainous O’Bannion in a Tarzan movie. 
David McCallum is not only still with us, but still a TV regular on NCIS!!!
Irwin Corey, born July 29, 1914
As far as I can tell, he got his start on TV in '58, which just barely misses the OP’s cut-off date. But the villain from the first episode of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. was played by Fritz Weaver, who had television roles back in '57 on Studio One In Hollywood and The DuPont Show Of The Month after making his debut in '56 on The United States Steel Hour.
Nehemiah Persoff got his start on television in the '40s before getting work on Playhouse 90 and Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The United States Steel Hour and Kraft Theatre and The Alcoa Hour and so on by 1957, after which he spent the rest of the '50s making the rounds on Twilight Zone and The Untouchables and et cetera.
June Lockhart.
James “David Lo Pan” Hong was a castmember – Number One Son Barry Chan – on The New Adventures Of Charlie Chan back in '57, after getting work on Crusader and Four Star Playhouse and The Millionaire and Sky King and The Man Called X and Crossroads back in '56 after yet more TV work in '55, and is of course still acting well into his eighties.
Since folks in another thread just mentioned her, I’ll note that Carol Burnett was getting TV work back in '55 – on The Paul Winchell Show – before she became a castmember on Stanley in '56, and is still working in her eighties.
Oh, and speaking of women who got eponymous shows, Patty Duke was acting on Armstrong Circle Theatre in '56 and stuck with it in '57 – same year she branched out onto The DuPont Show Of The Month and Kraft Theatre.