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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Medium Cool – Star Spotting!

Medium Cool – Star Spotting!

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Medium Cool is a weekly series related to popular culture, mostly film, TV, and books, with some music and games thrown in.  We hope it’s a welcome break from the anger, hate, and idiocy we see almost daily from the other side in the political sphere.

Arguments welcomed, opinions respected, fools un-suffered.  We’re here every Sunday at 7 pm.

I can’t recall who it was, but *someone suggested this as a possible future topic—movies or TV shows where you spotted an actor in an early role before they were famous, like an early Perry Mason where Leonard Nimoy was the killer.

CliosFanBoy!

Medium Cool – Star Spotting!

I would have liked to have seen that one!  Maybe Steeplejack (Perry Mason watcher extraordinaries) can let us know when that one will be showing next?

What are some of the other shows where you could frequently see future stars when they were still young pups?  Seems to me that along with Perry Mason, Rockford Files and Law & Order were frequent starter roles for aspiring actors were .  Or maybe the shows that had a lot of the young pups were just really great at spotting talent early?

Speaking of the Rockford Files, was Angel the antecedent of “Mozzie” on White Collar?

Anyway, anything that’s even remotely within throwing distance of this topic is fair game.  Just looking for something simple to start off the conversation this evening.

*out yourself in the comments if you are the someone who recommended this topic!

Reader Interactions

108Comments

  1. 1.

    Manyakitty

    Lots of fun people showed up on The Waltons. First two that come to mind are John Ritter and Jonathan Frakes.

    Also, I remember when Kevin Bacon was on Guiding Light. (We were not a General Hospital family)

  3. 3.

    piratedan

    You can also catch Nimoy in the Outer Limits I, Robot episode.

    There’s also a very young Bob Redford in an extremely poignant Twilight Zone episode.

  4. 4.

    eclare

    Paul Rudd was Phoebe’s boyfriend/husband on Friends.  I really didn’t think that much of him til the latest season of Only Murders…he was excellent in that.

  5. 5.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    Seems to me that along with Perry Mason, Rockford Files and Law & Order were frequent starter roles for aspiring actors were.

    Yup. I watch all three regularly and it’s incredible how each represents a generation of actors “coming up”.

  6. 6.

    Hilbertsubspace

    Nimoy’s second appearance is in Zombies of the Stratosphere (1951) an old serial.  His first spoken line was “Yes, one of our small TNT bombs should do.”

    I’ll have to dig it out to check if my memory is correct

    Edit: This is the correct serial.

  9. 9.

    A Ghost to Most

    Not film, but music. I knew in 2005 that Jason Isbell would become America’s finest songwriter of his generation.

  12. 12.

    kalakal

    Clint Eastwood’s first speaking  role was as the fighter pilot in Tarantula. At least the credits say it’s Eastwood, You see 5 seconds of a helmet and oxygen mask

  13. 13.

    Scout211

    One that really surprised me was Chris Pratt.   I used to watch Everwood and really liked that show.  Finding out years later that Chris Pratt played Bright Abbott was a bit of a shocker.  He looked so different then than he does now.

    That was a good show.  RIP Treat Williams.  

  15. 15.

    Juju.

    Adam West appeared on “Bewitched “ in the episode “Love is Blind”. Jack Warden and Jack Weston also appeared in early episodes. Marty Ingels appeared as Diaper Dan and he ended up married to Shirley Jones.

  16. 16.

    Scout211

    Seems to me that along with Perry Mason, Rockford Files and Law & Order were frequent starter roles for aspiring actors

    And The Love Boat was a show for actors whose stars were starting to dim. I used to watch The Love Boat with my sisters and it started to be almost a parody with all the fading actors as guest stars.  LOL

  17. 17.

    funlady75

    I have been a TCM movie junkie for a long time……Little blond  Natalie Wood in movie with Orson Wells, Colbert, Brent.

  18. 18.

    Yet Another Haldane

    Good timing!  I just finished rewatching Local Hero after many years.  (A) It holds up very, very well.  Too many movies from the 1980s have been visited by the suck fairy; this is not one of them.  And, more pertinently, (B) a very young Peter Capaldi is adorable as an awkward oil company gofer.  (C) Bonuses:  Denis Lawson (uncle of Ewan McGregor) who played Wedge in the original Star Wars trilogy, is the hotel owner.  Buddy Quaid, father of Randy and Dennis, plays Crabbe.

    The film is more melancholy than I remember, but it’s warm and funny.

  21. 21.

    billcinsd

    George Clooney was in Return of the Killer Tomatoes, although he had had several TV credits, including a year on Facts of Life before this

  22. 22.

    dc

    The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents are also good old series for catching famous actors early in their careers.

  24. 24.

    kalakal

    Steve McQueen was the star of The Blob which he probably preferred people to forget.

    Jack Nicholson spent years playing bit parts in Roger Corman movies eg the coachdriver in The Pit and the Pendulum 

    Robert Redford turned up in at least one Alfred Hitchcock presents

  25. 25.

    bmoak

    Recently rewatched The Hunger Games and never realized that Marvel (the tribute who kills Rue) was played by a very young Jack Quaid, now starring in The Boys.

    One of my favorite cult movies of the 80s is Ken Russell’s Lair of the White Worm, which starred relatively young unknowns Hugh Grant and Peter Capaldi.

  26. 26.

    Mousebumples

    I love playing name that guest star.

    I used to love the show Jack & Jill on the ol’ WB, I think (1999, per imdb). Main cast included –

    • Amanda Peet (Whole Nine Yards, Studio 60)
    • Sarah Paulson (Studio 60, American Horror Story)
    • Jamie Pressly (won an Emmy on My Name Is Earl)
    • Simon Rex (Scary Movie)
    • Justin Kirk (Angels in America, Weeds)
    • Ivan Sergei (Crossing Jordan, Charmed)

    I also remember being shocked to see Eric Brady from Days of Our Lives on Supernatural. (Jensen Ackles)

  29. 29.

    What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?

    Zoey Deschanel was in an episode of Frasier – may have been the last season or next to last.

  31. 31.

    BellaPea

    I remember the Robert Redford appearance on the Twilight Zone where he played the Angel of Death. And every time we get a seat on a plane over the wing, I think about Shatner in the Twilight Zone episode about the monster tearing out engines on the plane.

    I was recently watching some mini-series where the lead actor was playing someone who was freaking out because Andy Warhol was on the Love Boat (Karl Langerfield?).

  34. 34.

    RSA

    I remember watching the British series Cracker, with Robbie Coltrane, in the early 1990s, and finding the cast memorable: regulars Geraldine Somerville and Christopher Eccleston, and especially guest Robert Carlyle, all relatively early in their careers. I’m always surprised and pleased to see them again: Coltrane and Somerville in Harry Potter movies, for example; Eccleston in the Doctor Who reboot; and Carlyle in lots of different roles.

  39. 39.

    JaySinWA

    @JaySinWA: Pluto streams a lot of old TV [and not so old] as well. They have a Perry Mason continuous stream along with on demand. I didn’t realize they had it on demand before checking just now.

    Lots of old and not quite so old TV streaming with some on demand.

  40. 40.

    zhena gogolia

    A related topic would be realizing that some of your favorite childhood sitcom stars had big careers in the 1930s, like William Frawley and William Demarest on My Three Sons.

    I always quote my husband saying to me, “I guess Barbara Stanwyck made some movies before she was on The Big Valley.”

  41. 41.

    Kristine

    I remember both Bill Maher and George Clooney appearing in Murder, She Wrote. Maher showed up in a couple of episodes. Clooney was in the episode with Steve Lawrence and Buddy Hackett as feuding ex-partners a la Martin and Lewis.

  48. 48.

    Miss Bianca

    @RSA: Including Mr Gold on Once Upon a Time – he was the guy I kept coming back to that one for! (Robert Carlyle, I mean.)

  49. 49.

    zhena gogolia

    We’re watching the film Bright Young Things, which has a lot of great actors in their young years.

  52. 52.

    Kristine

    @zhena gogolia: Nope, I recall at least two episodes. In one, he was a slimy publicity guy/agent. In another, he and his wife were trying to pull off insurance fraud (spoiler: they didn’t get away with it).

  56. 56.

    Craig

    Stuart Margolin was a gun guy in Death Wish before he was Angel on Rockford.

    There’s a weird scene in the ok race movie Cannonball with Martin Scorsese and Sylvester Stallone as cheap gangsters.

    In Altman’s The Long Goodbye there’s a scene with super young Arnold as a heavy. He smiles and flexes his pecs.

  57. 57.

    Steeplejack

    @WaterGirl:

    The Leonard Nimoy episode of Perry Mason was in the middle of season 6. MeTV cycled through that a few weeks ago and is about to start season 7 in a week or so.

    It’s on at 9:00 a.m. and 11:30 p.m. Monday-Friday on MeTV. The morning episodes are in order and the evening episodes are in order, but they’re in different seasons.

    Tomorrow at 9:00 a.m. it’s the very last episode of the series (9.30, 5/22/66), “The Case of the Final Fade-Out.” Interesting because the murder takes place at a TV studio and the episode includes many real-life series workers in cameos being interrogated and/​or explaining their work. Producer Gail Patrick Jackson is a woman at a bar, and Erle Stanley Gardner has a cameo as a judge!

    Then Tuesday it’s back to the first episode (9/21/57), “The Case of the Restless Redhead.” (The redhead is Whitney Blake, later to be seen as “Mrs. B.” on Hazel.)

    At 11:30 p.m. tomorrow night it’s 6.25 (4/18/63), “The Case of the Greek Goddess.” George Kennedy has a guest appearance.

    There’s another cable channel that shows blocks of Perry Mason now and then, but I haven’t been able to nail down the schedule.

    And, of course, the whole series is available on Amazon Prime in pristine, uncut form.

    There were a lot interesting cameos on Perry Mason. Two that stand out in memory are Robert Redford (wastrel playboy who falls prey to a gold-digging bigamist) and Harvey Korman (sullen bartender at Red’s Reef—can’t remember for sure, but Red’s Reef shows up twice in the series in two different places!).

  58. 58.

    Citizen Alan

    @Kristine: IIRC, Maher’s episode was actually a backdoor pilot that didn’t get picked up. A pity. If he’d spent the next ten years doing a comedy mystery series along with Faith Ford, maybe he wouldn’t have turned into the pompous ass he is today.

  64. 64.

    Steeplejack

    Another show that was practically nothing but interesting guest actors was The Twilight Zone.

  65. 65.

    Citizen Alan

    I remember Ryan Gosling as a teenager first on the awful kids show Breaker High and later as Young Hercules and thinking to myself that he was going to have a career, because he single handedly elevated both series in every scene he was in through natural charisma and the ability to read insipid lines convincingly even at age 16 or 17.

  71. 71.

    Citizen Alan

    @Kristine:  Supposedly, Angela Lansbury  went out of her way to insist on hiring older character actors who’d been out of work for decades for Murder She Wrote just so they could keep their equity cards active and draw medical benefits in their old age.

  72. 72.

    Downpuppy

    @Craig: Stallone as Machine Gun Joe Viterbo getting beat up by David Carradine in Death Race 2000 is still his greatest role.
    Nimoy as a thug on Sea Hunt was pretty good.

  73. 73.

    Citizen Alan

    @eclare: Lol. I first became aware of Bryan Cranston when he played Captain Erickson on Babylon 5. The calm acceptance of what was effectively a suicide mission for him and his crew (literally, as their orders were to allow themselves to be captured by the enemy so that disinformation stored on their computers would lead the Shadows into a trap) was just amazing.

  74. 74.

    Just look at that parking lot

    In 1965 Kurt Russell played  Jungle Boy in a Gilligan’s Island episode.

  75. 75.

    Geoduck

    Kurt Russell had a successful career as a G-rated child actor, to the point that everyone was going WTF when he was cast as Snake Plissken in Escape From New York. Obviously, he proved the doubters wrong.

  76. 76.

    Heidi Mom

    I thought that two actors on screen in an early episode of Midsomer Murders might be a young Orlando Bloom and a young Tobias Menzies, then decided they couldn’t be because they hadn’t been named in the opening credits.  But when I saw the closing (less important) credits, there they were.

  77. 77.

    Kristine

    @Citizen Alan: That’s true. She also went out of her way to showcase Hispanic actors as high school kids/musicians/professionals when other shows only featured them as criminals. I read an interview with one of those actors around the time of Lansbury’s death—he never forgot it.

  79. 79.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Manyakitty:

    I used to watch Another World, and there was one story arc (early ‘70s, I think) with an insane and evil nanny, played by Rue McClanahan.

    Also, though someone else might have mentioned it, but a lot of guest actors on M*A*S*H went on to stardom.

  81. 81.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Scout211:

    And The Love Boat was a show for actors whose stars were starting to dim.

    As was Murder, She Wrote. That was one of Angela Lansbury’s stipulations.

  84. 84.

    kalakal

    There’s a 1969 film of Chandler’s The Little Sister called Marlowe starring James Garner that has Bruce Lee turn up as a heavy. He was huge in Hong Kong but not yet very well known outside. He has a great time smashing up Garner’s office

  86. 86.

    kalakal

    @Yet Another Haldane:

    John Gordon Sinclair who was the star of Forsyth’s previous film Gregory’s Girl has a brief appearance as the drummer in the local punk band. It’s a nice touch as Gregory was a wanna be drummer

  94. 94.

    kalakal

    An interesting phenomenon in reverse is how many British actors turn up in their late middle/old age in British detective shows. Shows like Midsummer Murders, Hetty Wainthrop, Poirot etc are littered with people who used to be big(ish)* 20 or 30 years earlier

    *n the UK at least

  96. 96.

    WaterGirl

    @kalakal:

    An interesting phenomenon in reverse is how many British actors turn up in their late middle/old age in British detective shows. Shows like Midsummer Murders, Hetty Wainthrop, Poirot etc are littered with people who used to be big(ish)* 20 or 30 years earlier

    *n the UK at least

    That might make a good Medium Cool.

  97. 97.

    Geminid

    I was watching an early 1950s TV western a few years ago and I saw a young-looking actor with a familiar face and an even more familiar voice. I waited for the credits and sure enough, it was Charles Buchinski.

    Buchinski changed his name to Charles Bronson not long after. His agent advised this in 1954, at the height of the Red Scare. Buchinski wasn’t very political, but the agent feared that his surname might be a handicap since it sounded Russian.

  100. 100.

    MaryRC

    You can see many now-famous faces just starting out on British TV: Poirot (Emily Blunt, Damien Lewis, Michael Fassbender); the Miss Marple series (Benedict Cumberbatch, Carey Mulligan); Foyle’s War (James McEvoy and Rosamund Pike, both in the first episode).

  101. 101.

    dm

    @BellaPea:

    And every time we get a seat on a plane over the wing, I think about Shatner in the Twilight Zone episode about the monster tearing out engines on the plane.

    Shatner reprised that role in the Twilight Zone movie.  About the only thing I retain from that movie beyond, “Want to see something really scary?”

  103. 103.

    Geoduck

    @dm: No, Shatner did not appear in the TZ movie, the part was played by John Lithgow, who did an equally good job. The bit I will always remember is when the gremlin starts to crush Lithgow’s face, then realizes the plane is about to land, so instead just grins, wags its finger at him, and flies away.

    Years later, Shatner did a guest bit on Lithgow’s Third Rock From the Sun, and so of course they included a joke about seeing things on airplane wings.

  104. 104.

    Cathie from Canada

    @Scout211: When Angela Lansbury died, I read a tribute that said on Murder She Wrote,  she had insisted on hiring old performers so they could keep their guild memberships and health insurance. They never ceased being grateful.

  105. 105.

    MichiganderGail

    Leonard Nimoy and William Schallert had bit, but speaking, parts in “Them!”, one of my favorite movies.  Stephen Colbert did an excellent dramatic turn in a Law and Order: Criminal Intent episode.

  106. 106.

    cintibud

    When my daughter was about 12 she watched a comedy show written by and featuring kids. I watched it a few times with her. It was pretty forgettable for any adult watching, but there was one pudgy black kid on the show who was really good. I was impressed. I was thinking the kid might go somewhere so I remembered his name – Kenan Thompson

  107. 107.

    Miss Bianca

    @Geoduck: late to the thread, but a teenage Kurt Russell makes an appearance in one of my favorite Disney movies from the 60s, “The Horse in the Gray Flannel Suit.” He plays the boyfriend of the girl who owns the horse in question. :)

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