Best Cameo Appearance of All Time?

5/26/06 | Reaganesque

[Reaganesque]

It's the beginning of the Memorial Day weekend. We've had our silliness thread to start things off now, how about this:

Who do you think had the best cameo performance in any movie or TV show? You know, someone who had a bit part but stole the show for you.

[dfwgator]

Jack Nicholson in Broadcast News was another example.

[spectre]

That's it! You win..:)

sw

[ol' hoghead]

Richard M. Nixon on Rowan and Martins Laugh In when he said "Sock it to me"!

[Yaelle]

That reminds me that Larry Elder did a cameo on one of the UPN shows. He was hilarious -- the episode took place in traffic court. The character on the show said he would use Larry's book as a weight in his broken toilet tank.

[BluesDuke]

I miss Danny Thomas. He was one of my favorites. Do you remember Jose Jiminez?

Bill Dana. I remember him well, first from the old Thomas show and then his own short-lived show. Not to mention the legend of Alan Shepard's dead-on impersonation of the Jimenez character . . .

I also have some magnificent Danny Thomas moments in my growing old-time radio collection: he was Don Ameche and Frances Langford's comic/music foil on the old Drene Time variety show, which included hilarious domestic comedy sketches hooked around a husband and wife who spent every waking hour (usually, after the shrewish wife woke him up at two in the morning) at each other's throats, often because of her deadbeat brother as played by Thomas. You have probably heard of these sketches, which proved more popular than the full half-hour variety show itself: The Bickersons.

[Hillarys Gate Cult]

Another Duke cameo was at the end of a "Beverly Hillbillies" episode.

[BluesDuke]

Classic Flintstones cameo: the Beau Brummels, the mid-1960s rockers, performing their great single "Laugh Laugh."

Not to mention the Standells, a few years before they became pre-punk garage-style hitmakers ("Dirty Water," "Riot in Cell Block #9," "Try It"), on The Munsters...

[MayflowerMadam]

Lauren Bacall in The Sopranos. Bizarre...

[Yaelle]

Howard Jarvis in Airplane.

What he saved on property taxes, he spent on taxi fare.

[ExGeeEye]

Peter Jackson did the same in all three Lord of the Rings movies. It's always fun to pick out the director in such films.

He put his kids in each of them as well.

FotR: hobbit kids (among 6 or 8) listening to Bilbo tell the story of the trolls (from The Hobbit).

TTT: Rohirric children in the caves behind Helm's Deep, listening apprehensively to the distant march of the Uruk-Hai.

RotK: Gondorian children standing with their mother (really Fran Walsh?) watching Faramir lead his cavalry out for the last charge at Osgiliath, while Pippin sings to Denethor up in the throne room.

[Mr. Buzzcut]

Another "Newhart" cameo was Johnny Carson.

That's great!

[SC Swamp Fox]

the old Batman TV series.

Man, you're old.

They did have some good ones.

[Miss Marple]

I agree, and am glad I read the replies before posting, as I would have posted Suzanne Pleshette on Newhart as well!

That was sheer genius, and a total surprise!

[norton]

"Sometimes you can find a nugget of true comic genius on TV...
Bob Newhart is one."

And Steve Allen was the other.
Stan Freberg, Ernie Kovacs, and Your Show of Shows went before, remember that, in those days..Mel Brooks was part of the hired help.

(Best cameo is a tie between Marceau Marcel and Chuck Yeager)

[feedback doctor]

Tom Cruise in South Park

[BudgieRamone]

I Like the cameos on the Simpsons.
or guessing the voices that are "cameos"

of course my fave is when Smithers gets the Ramones to sing "Happy Birthday" for Mr. Burns.....

"Smithers ..have the Rolling Stones killed.."

[Miss Marple]

Sean Connery's appearance in "Robin Hood" would get my number 2 award, after Suzanne Pleshette.

I agree. I LOVE Alan Rickman, and he was more interesting than Costner (who apparently couldn't be bothered to learn an English accent).

[BluesDuke]

Strangest cameo, if you don't count the like of Richard Nixon and Eric Sevareid on Laugh-In: future Hall of Fame lefthander Sandy Koufax, in 1962, grooving one to Mr. Ed ("OK, Sandy--nice and easy, buddy," hollers then-Dodger coach Leo Durocher), who promptly laced one to the back fence and galloped out an inside-the-park home run.

[tang-soo]

Charleton Heston in "Wayne's World 2"

Robert Patrick (AKA Terminator II's T-1000) in the original Wayne's World.

[longtermmemmory]

YES!