On January 2, 1958, Kelman was Norman Fisher in the episode "The Big Jade" of NBC's pioneering police drama, Dragnet, starring Jack Webb. From 1958 to 1959, young Kelman played Homer Foley in three episodes of the NBC children's western series, Buckskin, with Tommy Nolan and Sally Brophy, as a son and his widowed mother living in a hotel in a small fictitious Montana community. In 1958, Kelman appeared in "The Unfamiliar" on Ronald W. Reagan's CBS anthology series, General Electric Theater.