Before he became a movie legend, Tom Hanks starred in a now-forgotten sitcom series that has an 80% on Tom Hanks has a filmography that few other actors have been able to match. Since the 1980s, when he appeared in Splash, Hanks has earned 13 Emmy nominations, winning seven; ten Golden Globe nominations, winning four; and six Academy Award nominations, winning two. He's worked with directors including Steven Spielberg, Brian De Palma, Nora Ephron, Robert Zemeckis, the Coen Brothers, and Clint Eastwood, to name a few.

He's starred in war epics, classic romantic comedies, blockbuster animated fare, and Academy Award-winning biopics, but like everyone, he had to start somewhere. Plenty of movie stars began their careers in sitcoms before moving on to film, and while there are those outlier examples, like Jennifer Aniston and Bryan Cranston, who are probably more recognizable for their TV roles than their film ones, other actors only briefly stopped in TV land on their way to Hollywood. Tom Hanks, for instance, began on TV, but his show has been all but forgotten.

Tom Hanks Starred In ABC's 2-Season Sitcom Bosom Buddies

Bosom Buddies Features Two Male Roomates Who Dress In Drag To Get Cheaper Housing

In 1980, Tom Hanks appeared in two TV shows. The first was The Love Boat, where he had a one-episode guest spot as Rick Martin. The second was a starring role in the two-season ABC sitcom, Bosom Buddies, where he played Kip Amos Wilson/Buffy Wilson opposite Peter Scolari's Henry Desmond/Hildegard Desmond. The series starts with two friends, Kip and Henry, whose apartment is suddenly demolished. Low on funds and needing somewhere to stay, the pair decides to dress as women so they can get a room at the dirt-cheap, all-female hotel.

Operating under the names "Buffy" and "Hildegard", Kip and Henry live as men outside their apartment for their advertising jobs, and as women inside the apartment. Their misadventures come from trying to balance their two lives while making sure no one catches on to their ruse. While the first season was focused on this dichotomy, in season 2, their use of drag is revealed, and they spend most of the season as men, making it more of a typical buddy comedy sitcom, with only occasional episodes emphasizing the drag element.

The show was originally pitched as a straightforward buddy comedy, as something like a "sophisticated Billy Wilder comedy" (via THR). When the creators of the series, Thomas L. Miller and Robert L. Boyett, pitched the show to ABC, they mentioned Some Like It Hot, a 1959 comedy about two men who dress in drag to avoid murderous gangsters, and the executives seized on the drag idea, insisting Miller and Boyett's show have a drag element. Though the series only lasted for two seasons, its legacy lives on, thanks in large part to Tom Hanks' participation.

Tom Hanks Was Showing His Comedic Talent Long Before He Was A Movie Star

Philadelphia In 1993 Was Hanks' First Big Dramatic Role

Tom Hanks was selected for the role of Kip/Buffy after casting agents found him working as an understudy off-Broadway. Bosom Buddies director, Joel Zwick, recalled the casting agents saying, "This was a guy with no real experience, but he knew exactly what he did well, and he just did it." This was Hanks' first big break, and he had not been in much of anything non-theater related before this performance. While he's much better known for his dramatic roles now, Tom Hanks was at one time almost strictly a comic actor.

Bosom Buddies became known for its quirky, oddball humor and the high levels of improvisation of the cast, particularly between Hanks and Scolari. Hanks quickly proved that he was a comic force, able to think on his feet, and he had a knack for timing and letting others take a joke when it made a scene funnier. It wasn't just Bosom Buddies that successfully put him in a comic role. Hanks followed Bosom Buddies with Splash, Bachelor Party, The Money Pit, Dragnet, Big, and Turner & Hooch in the '80s alone.

Most of these are pure comedies, and Hanks can play the straight man as well as the goofball, and because he's Tom Hanks, every performance is elevated.

Most of these are pure comedies, and Hanks can play the straight man as well as the goofball, and because he's Tom Hanks, every performance is elevated. It wasn't until Philadelphia that Hanks was recognized for a purely dramatic role, and from that point on, for at least a decade, you could not find a bigger movie star than him. Now, he's the man known for Saving Private Ryan, Forrest Gump, and Captain Phillips, but it's his recent performance on things like SNL that reminds viewers that Tom Hanks really got his start in something like Bosom Buddies​​​​​.