VDP and Eva Marie Saint

Van Dyke Parks mentioned to me that he and Eva Marie Saint were both on a television show when he was a child. Sure enough: Saint appeared in the pilot episode of the single-season situation comedy Bonino . Van Dyke came on board in the fourth episode, playing Andrew Bonino, the youngest Bonino child. The series starred Ezio Pinza as a widowed singer raising his eight children. You can see them all in this photograph. Van Dyke is front and center, with glasses.

As Van Dyke’s IMDb page shows, he had quite a career as a child actor. Of special interest to me: he appeared as Tommy Borden in “The Hero,” a “lost” (kinescope) episode of The Honeymooners. And it wasn’t a bit part: his character has long stretches of dialogue with Ralph Kramden (Jackie Gleason), just the two of them. You can find the lost episodes at Amazon and Tubi.

Related reading
All OCA VDP posts (Pinboard)