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Best Classic Cameo Appearances

S

Stanislav

What are some of your favorite cameo appearances in classic TV shows?

After I Love Lucy, Lucille Ball's subsequent sitcoms (The Lucy Show, Here's Lucy) started doing a lot of "stunt casting" and trying to grab big-name stars (who can forget Dick and Liz on Here's Lucy?). There were also a lot of cameos and guest stars obviously designed to promote other CBS or Desilu shows. You had Jackie Gleason appearing as Ralph Kramden in one, Jim Nabors as Gomer Pyle in another and, hell, they even did a whole "crossover" episode in which Lucy hires Joe Mannix (Mike Connors). All of these were largely desperate efforts to pump up ratings and keep the franchise fresh.

But there's one cameo, in an episode of The Lucy Show, that is so appropriate, so charming and bittersweet, so right that it stands alone. And that is the 4th season episode in which Lucy and "The Countess" (Ann Sothern) are taking care of a race horse. And who does the track maintenance man turn out to be (in one of the great "reveals" of all time)? None other than William Frawley.

With Vivian Vance (Frawley's arch-enemy) no longer a regular on the show by that point, the way was cleared for Lucy to invite ol' Bill to do the brief cameo.

It's a great moment. The studio audience literally explodes with applause when they recognize Frawley. And in delivering the pat and obvious line ("Haven't I seen you somewhere before?"), there is a special gleam in Lucy's eye, almost to the point of breaking character.

The whole cameo is over in a flash and, sadly, it would be Frawley's last film appearance. He was quite ill when the bit was filmed (in fact, his health was the reason he was written out of My Three Sons -- the studio literally could not get insurance on him), and would die just 4 1/2 months after the show aired. It's quite likely that Lucy was well aware of the perilous state of his health, and wanted to have the chance to share just a moment of screen time with him again before it was too late.

So, on any list of "Classic cameos," that has to rank near the top, IMHO. What are some of your favorites from back in the day?
 
Larry, Darry, and Darryl in the 70's Bob Newhart Show reunion that came a year or so after Newhart ended. It took place the day after the dream from Newhart and they were maintenance workers on the elevator Bob was about to get onto in the last minutes of the show. They were also on a few episodes of Coach, including the final episode.
 
Kind of similar to the Frawley cameo, there's an episode of Coach in which Assistant Coach Luther Van Dam (Jerry Van Dyke) goes to a family reunion. He has a big family, and the room is teeming with relatives. It's established in the reunion scene that (like Luther), the other Van Dams are rather eccentric, and offbeat. In a very quick cameo, Dick Van Dyke walks across the set with a kind of odd look on his face. If you blinked, you would have missed it, except for the reaction of the studio audience.
 
There's a complete episode of "Sing Along With Mitch" on YouTube, where in one segment, one of the singers is Johnny Carson. Don't know if this could be considered a cameo, but "Laugh-In" had a recurring bit callled "The Mystery Person", in which said person was Carson, disguised only with one of those "What's My Line" style blindfolds. The joke was further amplified when Dick Martin would introduce him by saying, "Heeeere's The Mystery Person!" Of course, the most famous Laugh-In cameo was by one Richard Milhous Nixon ("Sock It To ME?").

Some other random ones...

Walter Cronkite and Betty Ford on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show"
Tony Randall peering forlornly from backstage many times on Letterman
 
What about old TV commericals?

Totally forgotten now but I guess it could be considered somewhat a cameo but Herbert Anderson & Gloria Henry ( the parents from Dennis The Menace ) both appeared as a couple ( as a "Mr. & Mrs. Wilson" no less) in a 1968 ad for, of all things....Kool Cigarettes ! !

Of course the happy couple were puffing away to the tune of the jingle "...come up to the KOOL taste".

and of course Jay North was nowhere to be seen in this. It would have been quite odd to say the least watching "little" Dennis Mitchell puffing Kools with his parents but then again since Jay was a long time smoker..maybe not so odd afterall. He would have been smoking age by 1968 anyway.

I remember seeing this on You Tube years ago before Kool ( or whoever owns the Kool brand now ) had it yanked.
 
Harpo Marx suddenly popping up and surprising Groucho on You Bet Your Life.

Former President Harry Truman keeps turning up, all unplanned, on an episode of Candid Camera.

If you'll pardon a movie listing, Marshall McLuhan ("The medium is the message") turns up at Woody Allen's behest in 1977's Annie Hall.
 
Not sire you could call this, a "Cameo" but Jim Jordan of the famed radio series "Fibber McGee and Molly" made his only extended TV appearance on NBC's "Chico and The Man' in an episode aired December 17, 1976. Seeing it in reruns years ago, I recall that Jordan received a very warm applause from the studio audience on his entrance..
 
I remember watching The Soupy Sales Show one Saturday in 1960 when it came from Detriot. At one point, a recording of Tony Bennet's latest song started being played. Then, Bennet, himself, walked through the set. Soupy watched him with that dead-pan look, then remarked, "Nice kid. If he could only sing".
 
There is the episode of "Happy Days" where Fonzie meets The Lone Ranger. In that show, the Ranger is played by John Hart, the actor who portrayed him for slightly more than 50 of the half-hour TV shows in 1952-54 when Clayton Moore had a contract dispute.
 
John Wayne on The Beverly Hillbillies in the episode where Granny thinks that Indians have invaded Beverly Hills.

Also, John Wayne introducing the first episode of Gunsmoke in 1955.

I seem to remember Nelson Rockefeller, the governor of New York, appearing in a cameo of That Girl in 1970 in the episode where Ann loses her engagement ring in a cake baked for the governor and Ann and Don look through every cake to find it.
 
Speaking of "Lucy" in an earlier posting, Robert Stack, Steve London, and Bruce Gordon from The Untouchables (a Desilu production) made an appearance on one of the later Lucy episodes.
 
Cartoon versions of James Woods on Family Guy and the Simpsons, Weird Al Yankovich, Peter Frampton among many others on the Simpsons.
 
Betty Ford (while she was the First Lady) made a cameo on "Mary Tyler Moore".

SNL has been full of cameos over the years. Two that instantly come to mind is Barbra Striesand dropping in on "Coffee Talk" and Arnold Schwarzenegger chastizing Hans & Franz, calling them little "Girly Men"
 
Johnny Carson on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Power outage at Mary's place so we heard his voice but did not see him. Then the credits showed darkness with Carson's name.

Also - Cher on Will and Grace when Jack thought she was a Cher impersonator and he criticized her imitation.
 
Bill1820 said:
Johnny Carson on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Power outage at Mary's place so we heard his voice but did not see him. Then the credits showed darkness with Carson's name.
Click to expand...

Ah...even better, let's not forget Carson's classic cameo on Newhart. ("Hi...I'm Larry...this is my brother, Daryl...and this is my other brother, Daryl...and heeeeeere's Johnny!!") ;D
 
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