Route 66 (TV Series) - Guest Stars

Guest Stars

The roster of guest stars on Route 66 includes several actors who later went on to fame, as well as major stars on the downward side of their careers. One of the most historically significant episodes of the series in this respect was "Lizard's Leg and Owlet's Wing." It featured Lon Chaney, Jr., Peter Lorre and Boris Karloff as themselves, with Karloff donning his famous Frankenstein monster make-up for the first time in 25 years and Chaney reprising his role as the Wolfman. The show was filmed at the O'Hare Inn, near O'Hare Airport, Chicago, Illinois. Dutch singer Ronnie Tober had a small guest role with Sharon Russo, Junior Miss America.

Other notable guest stars included James Brown (of Leonard's previous show, "Rin Tin Tin," multiple times and the actual Rin Tin Tin dog once with a guest starring credit as a guide dog in "Absence of Tears"), James Caan, Robert Duvall, Dorothy Malone, George Kennedy, Joey Heatherton, Ben Johnson, E.G. Marshall, Walter Matthau, David Janssen, Buster Keaton, Ed Asner, Lee Marvin, Michael Rennie, Tina Louise, Darren McGavin, Jack Lord, Suzanne Pleshette, Anne Francis, Tuesday Weld, Susan Oliver, Robert Redford, Martin Sheen, Rod Steiger, Lois Nettleton, Lois Smith, Sylvia Sidney, Beulah Bondi, Barbara Eden, and Joan Tompkins. Julie Newmar is especially memorable as a motorcycle-riding free-spirit—a role she reprised in a later episode. William Shatner and DeForest Kelley also guest starred, in separate episodes. Lee Marvin and DeForest Kelley were among the many actors and actresses to appear in more than one role in the series. Janice Rule played different characters in three episodes. Two others were Logan Ramsey and Bruce Glover, who both later appeared in the three theatrical movies about Buford Pusser, Walking Tall, Walking Tall, Part 2, and Final Chapter, Walking Tall, and Ed Asner and Lois Nettleton, who appeared in the episode, "The Opponent," appeared in the 2006 Christmas movie, "The Christmas Card." Burt Reynolds, Gene Hackman, among others, appeared in small bit-parts.

In a 1986 interview, Martin Milner reported that Lee Marvin credited him with helping his career by breaking Marvin's nose "just enough" to improve his look. This happened in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, during a scripted fistfight for "Mon Petit Chou," the second of two episodes with Marvin.

Two late third-season episodes, which aired one week apart, each featured a guest star in a bit part playing a character with a profession with which they would later become associated as stars of their own respective mega-hit television series. In "Shadows of an Afternoon," Michael Conrad can be seen as a uniformed policeman, years before he became famous as Police Sgt. Phil Esterhaus on Hill Street Blues. In "Soda Pop and Paper Flags," Alan Alda guested as a surgeon, a precursor to his career-defining role as Dr. Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce on M*A*S*H. Also in the first season episode The Strengthening Angels that aired November 4, 1960 Hal Smith, who played town drunk Otis Campbell in The Andy Griffith Show, also plays a drunk named Howard and is listed in the credits as "Drunk".

A 4th season episode, "Is It True There Are Poxies at the Bottom of Landfair Lake?", featured guest stars Geoffrey Horne and Collin Wilcox. In the episode's storyline, Wilcox's character pretended to get married to Horne's, although it turned out to be a practical joke. A few years after appearing in this episode, Horne and Wilcox would be briefly married to each other in real life.

A noteworthy in-joke occurs during the 4th season episode "Where Are the Sounds of Celli Brahams?" In this segment, Horace McMahon guests as a Minneapolis, Minnesota, festival promoter. His character confesses to Linc his failed ambition to be a policeman. Linc remarks that he looks like a policeman Linc once knew in New York City. McMahon had starred as Lt. Mike Parker on the New York-based police drama Naked City from 1958–63, another TV series overseen by the creative team of Stirling Silliphant and Herbert B. Leonard.