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Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor - Drama Series
This is a list of the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series winners.
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Four Star Playhouse
Four Star Playhouse is a television anthology series that ran from 1952 to 1956. The original premise was that Charles Boyer, Ida Lupino, David Niven, and Dick Powell would take turns starring in episodes. However, several other performers took the...
The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp
The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp is a western television series loosely based on the adventures of frontier marshal Wyatt Earp. The half-hour black and white series ran on ABC-TV from 1955 to 1961 and featured Hugh O'Brian as Earp. An off-camera...
Award Nominations:
Maverick
Maverick is a comedy-western television series created by Roy Huggins that ran from September 22, 1957 to July 8, 1962 on ABC and featured James Garner, Jack Kelly, Roger Moore, and Robert Colbert as the poker-playing traveling Mavericks (Bret, Bart...
Award Nominations:
Peter Gunn
Peter Gunn is an American private eye television series which aired on the NBC (produced by Revue Productions) and later ABC (produced by MGM Television) television networks from 1958 to 1961. The show's creator (and also writer and director on...
The Danny Thomas Show
The Danny Thomas Show (known as Make Room for Daddy during the first three seasons) is a sitcom which ran from 1953 to 1957 on ABC and from 1957 to 1964 on CBS. A revival series known as Make Room for Granddaddy aired on ABC from 1970 to 1971.
In...
77 Sunset Strip
77 Sunset Strip is an hour-length American television private detective series created by Roy Huggins and starring Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., Roger Smith, and Edd Byrnes.
The show was the subject of an ownership battle between Roy Huggins and Warner...
Award Nominations:
Father Knows Best
Father Knows Best is an American radio and television comedy series which portrayed middle class family life in the Midwest. It was created by writer Ed James in the 1940s.
The series began August 25, 1949, on NBC Radio. Set in the Midwest, it...
The Bob Cummings Show
The Bob Cummings Show (also known as Love That Bob) is an American television sitcom which was produced from 1955 to 1959, and originally sponsored by R.J. Reynolds' Winston cigarettes. The program began with a half-season run on NBC, then ran for...
Have Gun — Will Travel
Have Gun — Will Travel is an American Western television series that aired on CBS from 1957 through 1963. It was rated either number three or number four in the Nielsen ratings during each year of its first four seasons. It was one of the few...
The Untouchables
The Untouchables is a television series that ran from 1959 to 1963 on the American Broadcasting Company. Based on the memoir of the same name by Eliot Ness and Oscar Fraley, it fictionalized the experiences of Eliot Ness, a real-life Prohibition...
Perry Mason
Perry Mason is an American TV series produced by Paisano Productions that ran from 1957 to 1966. Perry Mason was played by actor Raymond Burr. The title character is a fictional Los Angeles, California, defense attorney who originally appeared in...
Ben Casey
Ben Casey is a medical drama series which ran on ABC from 1961 to 1966. The show was known for its iconic opening titles, which consisted of a hand drawing the symbols "♂, ♀, *, †, ∞" on a chalkboard, as cast member Sam Jaffe intoned, "Man, woman,...
Route 66
Route 66 is an American TV series in which two young men traveled across America. The show ran weekly on CBS from 1960 to 1964. It starred Martin Milner as Tod Stiles and, for two and a half seasons, George Maharis as Buz Murdock. Maharis was ill...
Hennesey
Hennesey is a 1959–1962 television series starring Jackie Cooper as an onshore Navy doctor and Abby Dalton as a stunning nurse. The series was midway between a comedy and a drama, and featured such guest stars as Charles Bronson, Marty Ingels, Jack...
McHale's Navy
McHale's Navy is an American television sitcom series which ran for 138 half-hour episodes from October 11, 1962 to August 31, 1966 on the ABC network. The series was filmed in black and white and originated in a one-hour drama called Seven Against...
Naked City
Naked City is a police drama series which aired from 1958 to 1963 on the ABC television network. It was inspired by the 1948 motion picture of the same name, and mimics its dramatic "semi-documentary" format.
Filmed on location in New York City, the...
The Defenders
The Defenders is an Emmy-winning American courtroom drama series which ran on CBS from 1961–1965. It starred E. G. Marshall and Robert Reed as father-and-son defense attorneys who specialized in legally complex cases, with defendants such as neo...
Combat!
Combat! is an American television program that aired on ABC from 1962 until 1967. (The exclamation point in "Combat!" was a stylized bayonet.)
Created by Robert Pirosh, Combat! ran for five seasons, of which the first four are in black and white,...
The Dick Van Dyke Show
The Dick Van Dyke Show is an American television sitcom which initially aired on CBS from October 3, 1961 and ran until June 1, 1966. The show was created by Carl Reiner and starred Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore. A three-camera/studio audience...
Slattery's People
Slattery's People is a 1964-1965 American television series about local politics starring Richard Crenna as title character James Slattery, co-starring Ed Asner and Tol Avery, and featuring Carroll O'Connor and Warren Oates in a couple of episodes...
Award Nominations:
The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is an American television series that was broadcast on NBC from September 22, 1964, to January 15, 1968. It follows the exploits of two secret agents, played by Robert Vaughn and David McCallum, who work for a fictitious...
The Fugitive
The Fugitive is an American television series produced by QM Productions and United Artists Television that aired on ABC from 1963 to 1967. David Janssen starred as Richard Kimble, a doctor from the fictional town of Stafford, Indiana, who is...
Gunsmoke
Gunsmoke is an American radio and television Western drama series created by director Norman MacDonnell and writer John Meston. The stories take place in and around Dodge City, Kansas, during the settlement of the American West.
The radio version...
I Spy
I Spy is an American television secret agent adventure series. It ran for three seasons on NBC from 1965 to 1968 and teamed Robert Culp as international tennis player Kelly Robinson with Bill Cosby as his trainer, Alexander Scott. In reality, they...
Run for Your Life
Run for Your Life is a television drama series starring Ben Gazzara as a man with only a short time to live. It ran on NBC from 1965 to 1968. The series was created by Roy Huggins, who had previously explored the "man on the move" concept with The...
The Wild Wild West
The Wild Wild West is an American television series that ran on CBS for four seasons (104 episodes) from September 17, 1965 to April 4, 1969.
Developed at a time when the television western was losing ground to the spy genre, this show was conceived...
Judd, for the Defense
Judd, for the Defense is a 53-episode American legal drama originally broadcast on the ABC network on Friday nights from September 8, 1967, to September 19, 1969.
The show starred Carl Betz, who had previously spent eight years in the role of Dr....
The Mod Squad
The Mod Squad is a television series that ran on ABC from September 24, 1968 until August 23, 1973. This series starred Michael Cole, Peggy Lipton, Clarence Williams III and Tige Andrews. The executive producers of the series were Aaron Spelling and...
It Takes a Thief
It Takes a Thief was an American reality television series that aired on the Discovery Channel from February 2, 2005 to April 13, 2007. The show's premise features two former burglars who use their unique expertise to teach people in an unusual way...
Award Nominations:
The Bold Ones: The Senator
The Bold Ones: The Senator (also known as The Senator) is a political television drama series that aired on NBC from 1970 through 1971, lasting for nine episodes (including one pilot Movie). It starred Hal Holbrook as Senator Hays Stowe, a...
Award Nominations:
Mission: Impossible
Mission: Impossible is an American television series which was created and initially produced by Bruce Geller. It chronicled the missions of a team of secret American government agents known as the Impossible Missions Force (IMF). The leader of the...
The Six Wives of Henry VIII
The Six Wives of Henry VIII is a series of six teleplays produced by the BBC and first transmitted between 1 January and 5 February 1970.
The series tells the story of King Henry VIII of England focused on, and often from the perspective of, each of...
Ironside
Ironside (originally broadcast under the name A Man Called Ironside in the United Kingdom) is a Universal television series which ran on NBC from September 14, 1967 to February 6, 1975. The character's debut was in a TV-movie on March 28, 1967.
The...
Mannix
Mannix is an American television detective series that ran from 1967 through 1975 on CBS. Created by Richard Levinson and William Link and developed by executive producer Bruce Geller, the title character, Joe Mannix, is an Armenian-American private...
Marcus Welby, M.D.
Marcus Welby, M.D. is a medical drama that aired on ABC from September 23, 1969 to July 29, 1976. It starred Robert Young as the title character, a family practitioner with a kind bedside manner, and was produced by David Victor and David J. O...
Cannon
Cannon is a detective series which ran on CBS from 1971 to 1976. The series was a Quinn Martin production, and featured many of the company's well-known stylistic quirks. Cannon marked the first time a QM series aired on a network other than ABC....
The Execution of Private Slovik
The Execution of Private Slovik is a nonfiction book by William Bradford Huie, published in 1954, and an American made-for-television movie that aired on NBC on March 13, 1974. The film was written for the screen by Richard Levinson, William Link...
Award Nominations:
The Morning After
The Morning After was a 1974 ABC made for television movie starring Dick Van Dyke and Lynn Carlin. It was based on the best selling novel by Jack B. Weiner, with a screenplay by Richard Matheson. Van Dyke played a successful public relations writer...
Award Nominations:
Pueblo
Award Nominations:
Kung Fu
Kung Fu (1972–1975) is an American television series which starred David Carradine. It was created by Ed Spielman, directed and produced by Jerry Thorpe, and developed by Herman Miller, who was also a writer for, and co-producer of, the series. The...
Kojak
Kojak is an American television series starring Telly Savalas as the eponymous, bald New York City Police Department Detective Lieutenant Theo Kojak. It aired from October 24, 1973 to March 18, 1978 on CBS. It took the time slot of the popular...
Petrocelli
Petrocelli is an American legal drama which ran for two seasons on NBC from September 11, 1974 to March 31, 1976.
Tony Petrocelli was an Italian-American Harvard-educated lawyer who grew up in South Boston and gave up the big money and frenetic pace...
Award Nominations:
The Streets of San Francisco
The Streets of San Francisco is a 1970s television police drama filmed on location in San Francisco, California, USA, and produced by Quinn Martin Productions, with the first season produced in association with Warner Bros. Television (QM produced...
Baretta
Baretta is a American detective television series which ran on ABC from 1975 to 1978. The show was a milder version of a successful 1973–74 ABC series, Toma, starring Tony Musante as chameleon-like, real-life New Jersey police officer David Toma....
The Waltons
The Waltons is an American television series created by Earl Hamner, Jr., based on his book Spencer's Mountain, and a 1963 film of the same name, starring Henry Fonda and Maureen O'Hara. The show centered on the titular family growing up in a rural...
Family
Family is a television drama series that aired on ABC from 1976 to 1980. Creative control of the show was split between executive producers Leonard Goldberg, Aaron Spelling and Mike Nichols. A total of 86 episodes were produced.
The show featured...
Kaz
Kaz is an American crime drama series that aired on CBS from September 10, 1978 to April 22, 1979.
Ron Leibman starred as Martin "Kaz" Kazinsky, a former convict who became a criminal defense attorney after he was released from prison. Leibman won...
Award Nominations:
The Rockford Files
The Rockford Files is an American detective (private investigator) television drama originally aired on the NBC television network between September 13, 1974 and January 10, 1980; it has remained in constant syndication to the present day. The show...
Quincy, M.E.
Quincy, M.E. is a United States television series from Universal Studios that aired from October 3, 1976, to September 5, 1983, on NBC. It stars Jack Klugman in the title role, a Los Angeles County medical examiner. The show was based on a Canadian...
Dallas
Dallas is an American prime-time television soap opera that originally ran from 1978 to 1991. It revolved around the Ewings, a wealthy Texas family in the oil and cattle-ranching industries. The show debuted in April 1978 as a five-part miniseries...
Trapper John, M.D.
Trapper John, M.D. is an American television medical drama and spin-off of the film MASH, about a lovable surgeon who became a mentor and father figure in San Francisco, California. The show ran on CBS from September 23, 1979, to September 4, 1986....
Lou Grant
Lou Grant is an American television drama series starring Ed Asner as a newspaper editor. The series won 13 Emmy Awards, including "Outstanding Drama Series". Asner won the Emmy Award for "Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series" in 1978 and 1980....
Bret Maverick
Bret Maverick is a 1981 television series featuring James Garner in the role that made him famous in the 1957 series Maverick: a professional poker player traveling alone year after year through the Old West from riverboat to saloon. Although the...
Award Nominations:
Dynasty
Dynasty is an American prime time television soap opera that aired on ABC from January 12, 1981 to May 11, 1989. It was created by Richard and Esther Shapiro and produced by Aaron Spelling, and revolved around the Carringtons, a wealthy oil family...
Hill Street Blues
Hill Street Blues is a serial police drama that was first aired on NBC in 1981 and ran for 146 episodes on primetime into 1987. Reruns are currently being aired on AmericanLife TV Network on weekday nights in the United States, and on weekday...
